Bad Education

Bad Education - TV review

Jack Whitehall and Abbey Grove School need some special measures - unless, of course, it's all a send-up.

Bad Education, Jack Whitehall's enjoyably puerile sitcom, has returned for a second series and this time around has to contend with Big School, another BBC school sitcom in which the main joke is that the staff are no more grown-up than the pupils. For my money, Whitehall's Abbey Grove edges Walliams' Greybridge in the comedy league tables, thanks mainly to its youthful anarchy. At 25, Whitehall is barely out of short trousers after all, and it is his admirable willingness to make himself look silly - often repellently so - that carries the show. He is ably supported in the staff room by an understated and terminally unimpressed Sarah Solemani and an unhinged, livewire Mathew Horne as the would-be trendy Head who wears neon trainers and lives for the banter.

The opening episode was defiantly gross-out, involving a swimming gala, toilet humour, nudity, and a disfiguring reaction to chlorine. Around the edges, it packed in a lot of good jokes, from hair puns to digs at Mumford and Sons. It's scattergun stuff, but the clearly gifted Whitehall should trust his writing and the performances to carry the comedy more. He resorts to off-colour, physical gags too often here, but that may just be start-of-term hijinks. Shows promise.

The first series of Jack Whitehall's "newly qualified teacher" sitcom was the highest-rated comedy in BBC3 history, so naturally it was commissioned for a second. In this opener, Abbey Grove is holding its annual swimming gala, and in a direct homage to ITV's Splash, it closes with a special synchronised diving competition. Elsewhere, Miss Gulliver reveals a new lover, and it's not Alfie. The jokes are pretty thin; you'd do better waiting for Whitehall's return as posh "ledge" JP in Channel 4's Fresh Meat later this year.

Series two of Jack Whitehall's sitcom kicks off with that most excruciating of school rituals: the swimming gala. Naturally, the teachers are far more competitive than the pupils and place hefty bets.

Sporting a new bowl haircut that will also bring back ugly memories for some viewers, Whitehall's character sets about bribing his class into the pool but is thwarted by a lifeguard even meaner than the deputy head.

Michelle Gomez plays the latter with gleeful menace, while Mathew Horne returns as the highly inappropriate, equally frightfully coiffed headmaster. Prepare for lewd gags and the eye-watering sight of Whitehall in nothing but Y-fronts.

Jack Whitehall's hapless teacher Alfie, the indomitable deputy head Miss Pickwell (Michelle Gomez) and master of the one-liners Grayson (Jack Bence) are back for a new term at Abbey Grove, where kids and staff are as gleefully caricatured as ever. That's gleefully in the proper sense of the word, not in the Glee sense, where the caricatures might be more subtle but the lines are a lot less funny.

Plotwise, everything centres around Alfie's ongoing infatuation with Miss Gulliver and a swimming competition, with the two strands fusing beautifully in a rip-roaring conclusion. But the plot is throwaway, something to hang a load of laugh-out-loud, knowing one-liners on, as delivered by a deft cast that breezes through them.

Chuck in a load of cultural references that anyone aged ten to 30 will easily get, and star and writer Jack Whitehall can put his feet up and relax. Job done. Grayson's withering 'Oi, Mumford & Sons called. They want their gay one back!' to Whitehall's Alfie stood out for us, but there are so many more. As far as school sitcoms go, Bad Education is top of the class.

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Jack Whitehall has said the new series of his sitcom Bad Education will feature a Breaking Bad-esque scene as his character Alfie attempts to make drugs with his pupils.

Speaking about the second season of the hit BBC Three show, Whitehall revealed that there is plenty of nudity and drug-taking for viewers to enjoy in the new series. 'There's some nudity in this... there's actually quite a lot of toplessness!' the comedian said.

'The other day we filmed a big sequence where Alfie cooks up drugs with his class - à la Breaking Bad - but then ends up consuming some of the drugs. We do a scene where I'm tripping out and... I got completely f**king mad! I end up losing some of my clothes and losing a lot of my dignity.

'When I was at school, I got caught being drawn naked by my friend. It was like Titanic - except my friend wanted to draw a girl and the girl would only let him draw her if I agreed to let him draw me first - so that it was an art project rather than just... perverts drawing people!

'I was complicit in it - I was his wingman and took it for the team. The irony was we got caught by our teachers halfway through so she never got naked...'

The first episode of Bad Education, which aired on iPlayer last week, featured a naked Alfie being humiliated in front of teachers and pupils after a sychronised diving competition went badly wrong.