Love is lost and found in PREMature

Having lost his grandmother and discovered the dark truth about his parents, Prem finds comfort and understanding from the new transfer student, Will, in the second episode of PREMature.

Like the first episode, it opens with a dictionary style definition of a word that represents the theme of the episode. This time, it is ‘c**t’.

The opening scene continues to shock: a girl is giving a boy a hand job for a fiver on the school sports ground, while another boy watches and waits for his turn.

But the normality of such racy activity is suggested by the next scene: Prem (Karanvir Bhupal) and Will (Daniel Costello) are doing homework and talking about girls in the school library. Just another average school day.

Prem and Will have become good friends and go on bike rides in the woods. We get glimpses of their inner maturity, as they discuss problems at home, friendship and Facebook with a level of sophistication not evident in their peers.

We are reminded they are barely 18 years of age, as they debate whether to attend an over-18s only club night, where their bully’s brother is the DJ.

After being insulted by his bully Sunny (Mirza Hassan), Will is keen to get back at him at the party. Though Prem is worried they may get into trouble, he changes his mind later and goes to the party with Will.

In the company of electrifying music and alcohol, Prem and Will are having a good time. Things are about to get crazy when Will spots Sunny from afar and comes up with a plan to take his revenge.

Will takes his beer to the bathroom, then urinates and ejaculates into it. He leaves it by the DJ booth, where Sunny picks it up and starts gulping down the tainted beer.

As Sunny shares the drink with his friends who are also school bullies, Prem and Will burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Back home, Prem’s sister Nina (Samantha Shellie) begins to repair her damaged relationship with mother Neelam (Meera Ganatra).

As Neelam blames and challenges her, Nina points out Neelam is merely trying to escape her broken marriage and demands her to speak her mind.

She says: “You can’t sit at home and do nothing…

“I can’t sit around the house, depressed like you, taking pills. If you stood up to him [father] the first time, we wouldn’t be in this s**t…I don’t even know how to talk to you.”

As if spelling out the harsh truth serves as a wakeup call, they offer sincere apologies to each other later on. They even begin to engage in caring and meaningful conversations.

Neelam finds out more about her daughter’s boyfriend, while Nina encourages her mother start a new life. She says: “Maybe this is the time when you actually get to do something for yourself.”

On the other hand, the men of the family seem to be still struggling to come to terms with the difficult family situation. In a psychedelic episode, Prem takes advice from his cousin’s caged hamster.

It says: “Sometimes life just gives you the middle finger and there is nothing you can do. Don’t let it be the excuse of any b******t.”

Prem’s father Parthav (Manish Patel) is put off by the idea that he should be the one to bring his family back together, because ‘first is the eggs. What’s next?’.

He tries to get through to Nina and even admits: “I’m a piece of s**t for what I did,” but it is not enough to convince her that he is remorseful.

Though Parthav mutters ‘I love you’ as he drags his broken heart out of her bedroom, one can hardly feel his determination to fix his family as we see him rolling a spliff in the final scene.

Catch the third episode of PREMature on March 8, 2015 at 10pm on Community Channel (Sky 539, Virgin Media 233, Freesat 561 and Freeview 63).