Andy Nyman

I'm going to say something which is going to make me unpopular with most critics - I actually like this show.

Having read other reviews of Campus, the vast majority, especially those in the tabloids, derided this new sitcom by the team behind Green Wing. Most said it was bad because it's too similar to Green Wingp. Are these people mad? That's like saying, "This country has a rubbish football team. It's too much like Brazil's."

Campus, like Green Wing, is great, especially the egotistical, power-crazed and bigoted vice chancellor of Kirke University, Jonty de Wolfe, played by Andy Nyman (most famous for being Derren Brown's right-hand man).

Nyman's character also got panned by the critics, arguing his remarks went too far, comparing him unfavourably to David Brent (the fact they have the same beard doesn't help, I guess). There are key differences here, though.

Brent is a middle-manager, is meant to be a realistic character, and in the end his incompetence results in him getting the boot. Wolfe is the master of a surreal and chaotic world, answering to nobody, and as such is able to get away with what he does because there is no-one able to stop him - at least not yet, but there is another character who is due to appear later in the series who might be able to stop Wolfe.

Among the other Green Wing associations made were comparing their characters to Campus'. The misogynistic English Literature professor Matt Beer (Joseph Millson) was compared to Guy Secretan - and to be fair there are quite a lot of similarities - and his relationship with Maths lecturer Imogen Moffat (Lisa Jackson) is similar to that between Guy and Caroline Todd.

I also read one critic comparing mechanical engineering lecturer Lydia Tennant (Dolly Wells) to Sue White, which I think is totally wrong. With all of her idiosyncrasies, odd mannerisms and pomposity I'd argue if anything that she's more like Alan Statham. It is in fact Wolfe who is most like Sue White, but only with much more power.

I have to admit, though, there are some problems with the show. Firstly, the camerawork is quite unprofessional, with some dodgy cuts (watch the scene when Wolfe is on a megaphone talking to a female student about a degree in arseology - his left hand is suddenly on a rail, then on the megaphone and back on the rail again) in this episode in particular.

And in the end I just know Channel 4 will axe the show. The first episode was watched by only 718,000 people, as previously mentioned several times it's been written off by the critics, and nothing I've written will change any of the minds of the bigwigs who run the network.

But in truth, the main reason that Campus is on Channel 4 in the first place is because they decided to axe Green Wing; so if you don't like Campus, don't blame the writers or the other people behind the show, blame Channel 4 for axing the original great work in the first place.

Commerce, Art, Humour, Humanity: all abstracts which Campus assiduously avoids in its mission to become the year's most surprising televisual misfire. Surprising, because this series set around the infantile faculty of a red-brick uni is the baby of Victoria Pile, the creator of the joyous hospital sitcom Green Wing. More surprising, still, because it pretty much replicates its predecessor's entire comedic set-up, from the general mood of institutional chaos to the surreal inter-scene interludes and the central, love-hate flirtation between a scatty neurotic and a smug wannabe lothario.

So where did it go wrong? Probably when Pile became possessed by the spirit of a 16-year-old Frankie Boyle acolyte. For where in Green Wing the sardonicism was lightly sprinkled, this slimes you with an industrial-sized vat of bile. In last week's opener, jokes, in no memorable order, involved: disabled people with "mongy" faces, the word vagina, foreigners talking funny, the word vagina, desperate fat women, women wearing no pants, and the word vagina. That many of these emanated, under the cloak of irony, from as blatant a David Brent rip-off as Andy Nyman's Vice Chancellor only added insult to injury. Might it improve? For many viewers, I suspect, that question is entirely academic.

Campus started this week on Channel 4 and is ­perfect for anyone who believes the world is populated solely by sexual compulsives, psychopaths and the spiritually bereft. In other words, Kevin O'Sullivan would love it.

Star of the show, however, has to be ­brilliant Andy Nyman as the Napoleonic University Vice-Chancellor Jonty de Wolfe.

De Wolfe is very possibly one of the ­greatest sitcom characters of all time, a man happy crippling as many students as ­possible. Like Michael Gove. Only funnier. ­Muuuuuuch funnier.

Campus (C4) went off the rails. This new comedy boasts some of the Green Wing writers and, at first glance, it has much of the same shape and feel: a dysfunctional institution, in this case a university; a clutch of inadequate grotesques who are obliged to work together; and a lot of surreal dialogue.

It was such a successful formula for Green Wing that it's actually a bit of a puzzle why it backfires so badly here. The setting isn't as claustrophobic - characters are forever striding across open spaces, travelling improbable distances for the briefest of encounters - nor does it benefit from our familiarity with TV hospital drama: whatever happened in Green Wing, it also operated as an effective parody.

The central problem with Campus is that the gossamer-thin thread that tethered Green Wing to a plot has here completely snapped. Everything is too surreal and unmoored. Vice-chancellor Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman) is meant to be monstrously ambitious, but he's just monstrous. He's all over the place - shouting out the window, jumping out of cupboards, putting on accents and indulging in freeform sexist and/or racist rants. His character isn't identifiably pathetic, cynical, inadequate or insane; he isn't even a character, really.

You could probably get away with one Jonty de Wolfe, but in Campus everybody else is just as out there. Student-shagging English professor Matt is cruel, contemptuous and vulgar, generally without cause or consequence. If you're not laughing at a character like that, you end up feeling queasily complicit. The meek Imogen is beyond timid; the dumb Nicole beyond moronic. The result is largely bewildering and occasionally offensive.

There is, it must be said, a lot of talent on show in Campus, exploding in all directions to very little avail. The performances occasionally manage to touch on something strange and original. And even something this misconceived is bound to have a few funny moments whenever the story intersects with some recognisable reality. At one point Matt, a teacher who hates teaching, suddenly stands up in the middle of a tutorial. "Right," he says. "I'm going to take a quick boredom break. I'll be back in April." I'm also going to take a quick boredom break, and give it one more go next week.

The pilot for this surreal sitcom, from the makers of Green Wing and Smack The Pony, was one of our favourites to be road-tested in C4's Comedy Showcase season back in 2009. So here it is at last, with its David Brent-alike university vice-chancellor, Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman), once again in staggeringly un-PC form as he takes potshots at 'foreigns and disabled'. It should bounce along nicely with its good cast and snappy script.

If you found Channel 4's Green Wing too knowingly quirky and surreal, steer clear of Campus. It is in every respect the heir to the earlier series but set in a university that is, as East Hampton Hospital was, staffed with fast-talking oddballs on the edge of desperation. If, though, you loved Green Wing as the freshest, strangest comedy in years, then it has been a long wait for this sequel, but it might be worth it. We're in Kirke University, a concrete jungle overseen by appalling vice chancellor Jonty de Wolfe. Andy Nyman's performance as de Wolfe is somewhere between David Brent and 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy, but way more extreme than either, a grasping, racist bully with disturbing hair and, possibly, magical powers. Sometimes, for no obvious reason, he wears a big green dress. There are many other surreal touches - swallowing cigarettes, wedgies, relentless references to vaginas - and, as with Green Wing, a promising central romance. It takes a while to get into the groove (don't expect to laugh out loud for half an hour or so) but, after that, the brilliant performances will sweep you along.

The first of 2009's batch of Comedy Showcase pilots to get the green-light for a full series, this has been extended to an hour with a lot of the old gags kept in and new ones added.

Produced and directed by Victoria Pile, Campus is basically Green Wing set in a university - minus almost all of that series' charm.

While Green Wing started with likeable characters from which the zaniness developed naturally, here the equation seems to have been turned on its head with zany as the start and end point.

Leading the cast is Andy Nyman as Vice-Chancellor Jonty - a racist, sexist, magical ­combination of David Brent, Sue Sylvester and Dr Evil with hair that resembles an exotic pastry.

Lisa Jackson plays maths geek Imogen Moffat and Joseph Millson is self-appointed English lecturer/sex-god Matt Beer.

It is the work of eight writers and a condition of employment seems to have been that they each had to use the word "vagina" at least once. It's funny, but Needs To Not Try So Hard.

At first, you may take this university-set sitcom for a rip-off of The Office: the main character, the vice chancellor (Andy Nyman), is a suited slob in a goatee who makes casual quips about "spastics". The first difference, though, is that David Brent wasn't offensive on purpose, whereas the vice chancellor is malicious, crude and racist to a frankly implausible degree. The second difference is the standard of the dialogue. "At school they called me 'the big s---'," says one female lecturer, "cos I was a big s---, and I do big s---s." Tonight the VC wants his staff to write bestselling books, because he thinks this will attract rich overseas students, or, in his word, "foreigns".

Well, this could be either fantastic or awful. We're rather big fans of Green Wing over here at Tube Talk, so Campus certainly has a good pedigree - it's by the same writer, Victoria Pile. The comedy all takes place at Kirke University, with Andy Nyman playing the college's vice-chancellor Jonty de Wolfe. One thing's for certain - it's going to be very, very weird. It'll probably be a love it or hate it thing, but if Green Wing's anything to go by, it might be worth giving it a couple of episodes to see if it clicks.

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