Comedy Showcase: Campus, Friday 10pm, Channel 4

Posted by Will Parkhouse

 

With the BBC currently receiving complaints a gogo for daring to broadcast anything that might mildly irritate anyone – even about safe shows like Have I Got News For You (apparently you're not even allowed to call the Queen a "Kraut" these days without people bellowing) – it's hard to imagine the broadcaster commissioning a comedy like Campus.

Thanks, then, Channel 4, which last night kicked off its experimental Comedy Showcase series – a testing ground for new talent, the first series of which engendered full-length commissions for Plus One, Free Agents and The Kevin Bishop Show – with a show full of scatological swearing and general unpleasantness.

Produced and directed by Green Wing creator Victoria Pile, you could definitely see similarities between the two comedies' collage/montage method of character development. Campus swapped Green Wing's hospital setting for the buildings of Kirke University, following the goings-on of the lecturers and admin staff – and what a revolting-but-very-funny bunch they were.

The opening scene set the tone/laid down the gauntlet, with vice chancellor Jonty de Wolfe (pictured - Dead Set's Andy Nyman on fantastic form) addressing a student in a wheelchair with patronising glee: "Just because Stephen Hawking, a famously disabled spastic, created his theories of black holes and the boundary condition of the universe, whilst sitting in his wheelchair, it doesn't mean that you will be able to."

Plotwise, it was perhaps a bit loose, and some of the surreal moments seemed a bit unnecessary – de Wolfe started appearing in a green dress for no reason at some stage, for example – but with a generous spattering of Chris Morris-esque lines like, "Yesterday I was weeping figurative man tears over the future of this impotent s***pit of a university", Campus must surely be a shoe-in for a proper commission. Suck it up, Auntie.

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Comments

[Astaroth]

Alison claims that it's a 'very acquired taste of comedy'; I beg to differ.
It is totally lacking in anything which might be called 'taste'.
Where 'comedy' is concerned it's about as funny as syphilis, and I've never felt any desire to 'acquire' that most amusing of spirochaetes.
Campus is indeed far more akin to something which might be 'caught' rather than 'acquired'!

[jimmy jitt]

i love the quirkiness of stuff like this but the humour content was lacking.
green wing - 10/10,
campus - 3/10.

[Astaroth]

Green Wing was exceptionally funny, but then, it had an exceedingly good cast to complement the writers.
Campus was simply gross, and if it contained any humour at all then you must require an IQ in single figures in order to find it.
I hope it and its perpetrators disappear down the nearest Black Hole, never to be seen again; like so many recent 'comedy' offerings it seems to believe that all you require is an excess of filth and insults ... what happened to intelligence?

[Keith Gompertz]

Very funny, and oh so spot on.The English lecturer under pressure from a "corporate" VC to publish was equally apposite.
As for the cash problem being hidden, well, I don't know if this actually happens, but at times it feelds like it.Bring it on.

[Alison]

Thats exactly what I thought!! It was hard to get into, it's a very acquired taste of comedy, but I kinda liked that lazy person that seemed like a boss and shot himself? He was funny..

[Sue Fleming]

After about 5mins I got the gist and turned off. Why was the character so like a poor man's Ricky Gervais? I found it base, sick and not humorous at all and I was most disapointed - certainly not Green Room standard