Campus

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: Channel 4 Telly Review

Green Wing Goes back to school.

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.

Green Wing tribute act better than no Green Wing at all

With variants of Green Wing's cast, Campus (C4) had just enough of its own personality to suggest it could graduate to standing on its own two feet.

Campus, Tuesday 10pm, Channel 4

I didn't see the pilot episode of Campus when it was shown as part of C4's Comedy Showcase back in 2009, but it obviously floated someone's boat at the channel because here it is, extended and back for a full series. So was it worth the punt? Maybe it should have been sent back for remarking...

Campus, Channel 4

Let us begin with the nots. Fashionably weird is not enough. Edgy, whatever that means, is not enough. The repeated use of the word "vagina" is not enough and semi-improvised ensemble acting is not, in itself, quite enough. These were just some of the many not-thoughts which ran through my mind during the opening episode of the much touted Campus. So what did picky me want? I wanted funny.

Campus 1.1 review

I wasn't a fan of Green Wing, the semi-improved comedy based on scripts that were a hodgepodge of jokes, sketches and sight gags gathered from a hive-mind of writers. It was an interesting way to produce a single-camera sitcom, and one that clearly found an audience, but I found its scattergun approach quite tiring. Many of Green Wing's writers are behind Channel 4's new comedy offering Campus, which won't escape "Green Wing in a university" branding, because that's exactly what it is. The uni's motto is even "with wings".

Campus: Your new favourite comedy

Campus, the much awaited follow up to hit show Green Wing, follows the exploits of a tyrannical University Vice Chancellor. One episode in and it is already an accomplished jamboree of surreal vagina jokes and slapstick.

Jonty De Wolfe: Sitcom Monster

Jonty De Wolfe, whom I have only seen in one and a half episodes of Campus, is thus far a series of tics. Like Brent, he is self-absorbed and prone to the politically incorrect faux pas, which he doesn't even realise is a faux pas.