Campus

The disturbing surprise in Campus is that some talented comic acting refuses to be funny. Squatting at the centre of the action is Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman), the vice-chancellor of Kirke University (in-joke: Howard Kirk is Malcolm Bradbury's anti-hero in his 1975 campus novel The History Man, a TV series 30 years ago). A monstrous man, he harasses his scholars - in particular the compulsively randy English professor Matthew Beer (Joseph Millson) - into publishing bestselling books, mimics students' foreign accents and, in this past week's episode, seeks a 25 per cent staff reduction by shouting at passing academics through a megaphone: "F**k off out of it, thank you very much, have a nice day." He locks a visiting bank manager in a cupboard to avoid his bad news, composedly takes tea beside a scholar who has just died, and threatens the university's gullible financial officer with shrinkage.

He and the other characters pursue their lives' strategies - power, sex, money, fame - as independent atoms, hurtling through a universe of others with which they collide. In their relationships, they either prey on others or are preyed on. Anyone seeking to pursue serious work or study is marginal to the main action. The one real success, a book on the concept of zero by a shy mathematics lecturer Imogen Moffat (Lisa Jackson), changes her from a cipher to the status of a tethered goat on which all other animals seek to feed. Where The History Man was, in part, a satire on sociology (Kirk's discipline) and the phoney uses to which it can be put, Campus ignores the intellectual content of a university in favour of concentrating on de Wolfe's awfulness. The more the comic business frantically multiplies, the more inert the matter is: its core, like that of the fictional university, seems absent. There is no "there" there.

Interview: Victoria Pile (Writer and Creator)

An exclusive interview with Victoria Pile about Campus.

Campus offered more Green Wing-esque surrealism

While perhaps not as sharp as its Channel 4 predecessor Green Wing, Campus still dishes out some acerbic and deliciously dark dialogue.

Campus episode 2 review: The Culling Fields

Campus didn't win many friends after its first week. But Louisa liked it. And after episode two, she still does...

'CAMPUS' 1.2 - "The Culling Fields"

Campus got off to a very poor start last week, but everything deserves a second chance. The fact its opening episode was an extension of a 2009 pilot certainly didn't help matters, so I tuned into "The Culling Fields" expecting a firmer grip on things. But while it was less pointlessly offensive and arbitrary, it was generally more of the same dizzy drivel.

A typical exchange from episode two of Campus: "What are you knitting, Grace?" the deranged vice-chancellor asks his PA. "A lover," she replies, bundling up her pink wool. "Do be careful," he warns, "Wool can chafe." His concern is all the more bizarre given that she has just announced that she's leaving because people are burning the VC in effigy and she's keen to get a good view. But bizarre is the baseline for this sitcom; the quieter scenes are bizarre. When the writers get warmed up we get full-on spewings of weirdness: a transvestite secretary forced to wear paper clips as a dress; netball-related bribery; someone eating her own CV. The laughs are scattered thinly (more of scary engineering lecturer Lydia would help), but you can't help willing it to succeed.

Campus - Channel 4

Is university comedy a Damien, a Desmond, or a Douglas?

I could complain that Joseph Millson as the libidinous lecturer in Campus has a standard-issue look. Specifically, this would be a complaint about him not being mad-eyed and Zapata-moustached like the original libidinous lecturer, Anthony Sher in The History Man. But what's the point? Better just to enjoy this six-parter from the team behind Green Wing, although I've yet to find anyone else who likes it.

What does that say about almost everyone I know? That they all went to uni whereas I didn't. Maybe I'm too quick to laugh at portrayals of varsity life where the head of the English department sunbathes on the R of Kirke (the uni's name) spelled out in big concrete letters and declares: "It's like the best vending-machine imaginable. Every September another crop of gorgeous, impressionable girls drops into the drawer at the bottom. I don't even have to press D6 or reach into the perspex flap to grab them." But the truth is I envy my friends their debauchness and, just occasionally, their degrees. Like Joe Lampton, I can be right chippy.

Not that Campus is perfect. It's terribly pleased with its own daring in that very Channel 4 way. I mean, is "vagina" still funny, the eighth time you hear it? Wouldn't it have been wise to save up some of the vaginas to counteract a possible mid-series audience drift? Because isn't there a very real danger the show has over-vagina-ed itself after just one week? I can't help wondering if the late, great Johnny Speight was watching, up there in Comedy Heaven. The Sex And The Sitcom doc the previous week dug up old footage of the Till Death Us Do Part writer bargaining with "four 'bloodys' for two 'tits'" to get his scripts past the TV beaks.

This sitcom about a mediocre university is sex-obsessed and surreal but we still can't resist poking our head round the door. This time, Jonty de Wolfe must make major spending cuts, which means problems for lazy maths professor Matt and dopey 'have you got a tent?' accommodation officer Nicole.

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.