Campus

Campus is the spiritual successor to the much loved surreal sitcom, "Green Wing". It stars Andy Nyman as the tyrannical head of a fictional "new build" university.

This is really forgettable, so much so that I didn't think I had seen it until I realised I had already rated it on IMDb. I like Andy Nyman and I think the role of a crazy, scheming professor is a good fit. There's some familiar supporting cast from Green Wing and some stand ups who have gone on to bigger things like Sara Pascoe and Katherine Ryan.

It has the surreal slapstick of green wing, unatutal dialogue in the same vein as writers like Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker albeit not as slick and a fair dose of vulgarity. I liked Green Wing at the time and it felt fresh, but this is just tedious to sit through. The episodes are nearly an hour and where as Green Wing was tightly scripted this just feels underwritten. I know it is semi-improvised, but so is Curb Your Enthusiasm and that has a consistently higher hit rate in 30 minutes.

Unfortunately Campus only lasted one series and a pilot. It may have built a bigger audience and improved had it ran for another series. The other tragedy is the late 00s weren't prolific for sitcoms and by 2011 there was a drought.

It is almost as if someone set out to remake A Very Peculiar Practice but for some reason took the quirky University academics and oddballs interactions setup and manage to make every part of it utterly charmless , desperately trying to be vile but doing so every line for whole scenes with no humour pay-off or character in there. Comes over more like a child wanting to provoke being given attention kicking the back of someone's seat on a bus for an entire journey Tiresome. Disappointing. A blot on many good peoples careers frankly.

I tuned into this show simply on the off chance I might enjoy it. I left all expectations of it being 'the sequel to Green Wing' at the door and instead judged it based entirely on it's own merit, because I think that's the fairest thing to do... Thankfully I loved it.

Sure it's not to everyone's taste, for some it's too silly, too surreal, too nonsensical and risky. But it still does appeal to many people, especially young adults, probably because it is a likable and fun show for today. The writing is consistently good, the acting is great, and I can safely say I have laughed every episode. I happily recommend anyone to give it a go.

Although I think I get where the writers were coming from when they put 'Campus' together. I'm not altogether sure it translated as well to screen from script. This is a shame, as 'Green Wing' had an impeccable pedigree and worked.

A surreal set of characters inhabit the 'other-worldly' premises of a University campus. The Chancellor is a raving lunatic, the English Professor a womaniser and the Maths and Engineering Professors introverted and likely psychotic respectively. The plot lines weave across these characters with their varying involvement

I liked the exaggerated characterisations, and there are laughs, but these were a little inconsistent. Has taken me a while to circle the square of the one and only season.

Just an endless series of cock and fanny gags. Oh, and jokes about bums and poo as well of course. Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of toilet humour, but when that's all there is it wears very thin, very quickly. Talents such as Sarah Pascoe are wasted here; she seems to have been cast as a bimbo purely because she's blond. The un-pc quips of the VC quickly cease to seem ironic, instead becoming, while maybe not actually offensive, definitely tiresome. The problem with (apparently) sending up such humour is that, when it's a relentless stream without intelligent premise of construction, it requires you to take it at face value. All in all, a bunch of thirteen-year-olds could write something far more witty and engaging than this dross.