Campus (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Campus is a semi-improvised
British sitcom
created by the team behind the comedy sketch show Smack the Pony
and hospital
-based sitcom Green Wing
, led by Victoria Pile
who acts as co-writer, producer and director. It is set in the fictitious Kirke University and follows the lives of the staff, in particular the power-crazed and callous vice chancellor
Jonty de Wolfe (played by Andy Nyman
), lazy womanising English literature
professor
Matt Beer (Joseph Millson
) and newly promoted senior mathematics
lecturer Imogen Moffat (Lisa Jackson
).
Campus was first broadcast as a television pilot
on Channel 4
on 6 November 2009, as part of the channel's Comedy Showcase
season of comedy
pilots. A full series was later commissioned and commenced airing on 5 April 2011, with the first episode being a re-shoot and expanded version of the pilot. When first broadcast many critics claimed it was too similar to Green Wing and that much of the humour was offensive. However, others praised the show's dark humour
and surrealism
. Campus was cancelled
after one series due to poor TV ratings
. Over the course of the first series (not including the pilot) the average ratings were 554,000 viewers per episode, or 2.99% of the total audience, which is below the Channel 4 average.
", who wants Kirke and himself to become greater, no matter how it is done. He himself often gives out what he sees as the harsh truth to people, but what others consider to be offensive and even bigoted remarks. He is assisted by the "Three Graces
of Admin" - three administrators all of whom are called Grace, and thus referred to as Grace 1, Grace 2 and Grace 3, or "Big Grace", "Pretty Grace" and "Was Once A Man Grace" (Alison Lintott, Chizzy Akudolu
and Matthew Devitt respectively).
Among Wolfe's plans is to exploit the success of newly promoted senior maths lecturer Imogen Moffat (Jackson) and her hit book The Joy of Zero, by ordering her to write a sequel and the other university staff to also write best selling books. His targets include English literature professor Matt Beer (Millson), an unrepentant womaniser, who does hardly any work and who is assisted by postgraduate
student Flatpack (Jonathan Bailey
), a man who reads hardly any books and instead is keen on sport. Beer therefore tries to come up with ideas, but instead spends more time annoying Moffat and mechanical engineering
lecturer Lydia Tennant (Dolly Wells
), who is annoyed by Moffat's success.
Elsewhere in the university, Nicole Huggins (Sara Pascoe
), an accommodations officer, makes an error in the university's accounting system. As a result, everyone in the university has received twice as much pay as normal, giving away over £2 million. It is left to university accountant
Jason Armitage (Will Adamsdale
) to try to retrieve the money. However, he fails to do so. As a result the university is forced to call in Canadian restructuring guru Georgina "George" Bryan (Katherine Ryan). However, due to her fondness for downsizing Wolfe orders for Beer to seduce her in order to make her cuts less damaging.
While Beer tries to carry out Wolfe's orders, he begins to develop feelings for Moffat and starts to suspect that he is falling in love with her. As he tries to reveal his feelings to Moffat, Bryan accepts Beer's offer of sex. In revenge Moffat has sex with Flatpack, who in turn begins to fall in love with Moffat. Meanwhile, Huggins attempts to make Armitage fall in love with her. However, when Armitage reveals that he is already in a relationship with Cecilia Hare (who does not appear in on screen), Huggins claims that she is a lesbian
so that they can still be friends.
By the end of the series, it emerges that Bryan's one night stand
with Beer has left her pregnant. At the meeting in which she is due to publish her damaging final report on the university, her pregnancy causes her to reevaluate her priorities, realising that destroying the lives and careers of the staff would be cruel. Wolfe persuades her to modify her report to put Kirke in a better light, and offers her a job at the same time. The series ends without resolving the relationships between Beer and Moffat or Armitage and Huggins, who eventually sleep together in the final episode, with Huggins claiming that Armitage "turned" her hetrosexual rather than reveal the fact that she lied.
, Robert Harley
, James Henry
, Oriane Messina
, Richard Preddy
and Fay Rusling
. It also has the same composer, Jonathan Whitehead
. Campus references Green Wing in the show, with the motto of Kirke University being: "With wings." Filming for the series took place during the summer months of 2010, at the University of Bath
campus, with some additional internal shots being filmed at Buckinghamshire New University in High Wycombe.
Campus is created by Pile, who also acts as producer and director. She sets up the stories, ideas and characters. Once enough material was created, the actors were brought along to read the scripts with the other writers. Millson claims that the eight writers go off and write their own version of the show, and then all the versions are read. Pile claims that she decided to set the show at a university because display various kinds of relationships, similar to the hospital setting of Green Wing.
hairstyle, and also Wolfe's use of other voices, which he has since gone to claim as being a form of multiple personality disorder. He also claims that Wolfe thinks he is sane, but is actually insane. Pile said of the character: "We've all had bosses that are power hungry and status obsessed and it's a kind of extension of what we all know and recognise in our fellow human beings, and sometimes in ourselves."
With regards to other characters, Messina describes Jason Armitage as being "awkward" and finding every situation difficult. Millson describes the relationship between Beer and Moffat as being similar to Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing
. Wells claims that Tennant, "has got to the point now where she'd be greatful for anything... but she would prefer a man". Ryan describes Bryan as being the show's villain.
The characters Flatpack, Grace 2 and Grace 3 were not in the pilot and were later additions. Bailey describes the relationship between Flatpack and Beer as a, "one-sided unrequited
beautiful love." Bailey also claims that he is an "open book" due to his simpleness.
, while womanising English lecturer Matt Beer (think about it) and speccy maths star Imogen Moffat (Joseph Millson and Lisa Jackson) have big shoes to fill if they're to be Campuss answer to Guy
[Secretan] and Caroline [Todd, characters from Green Wing]."
Sam Wollaston of The Guardian
disliked Campus, saying: "Ah, I see, Campus (Channel 4) is taking that path: the offensive one. There's nothing wrong with that; offence can be good, if done artfully. There's plenty of it here - Jonty's bigotry and English literature lecturer Matt Beer's (comedy name, like beer mat, but the other way round!) sex pesting. There is talk of rape by pigs, and odd-shaped anal cavities that lead to odd-shaped stools. I'm just not convinced it is being done very artfully. It seems more like offence for the sake of offence. Compare it with the beautifully crafted filth of Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It
. If he is the Michelangelo
of offence, this is Rolf Harris
."
However, Caitlin Moran
of The Times
praised it saying she hoped a full series would be made. She wrote of the pilot: "Although, like Green Wing, Campus works as an ensemble of freaks, perhaps the most intriguing mutant is Vice Chancellor Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman). Initially, he looks like the weakest character - a small, bumptious David Brent clone who keeps attempting Jamaican patois to make a point. But by the end of the show he has turned into a more sinister version of the shopkeeper in Mr Benn
- wandering around the library in a floor-length taffeta ballgown, urging depressed students to commit suicide and, on one occasion, simply disappearing in the middle of a monologue, as if it were a Las Vegas floor-show, leaving his English lecturer Matthew Beer (Joseph Millson) holding a madly clattering clockwork monkey, and his jaw."
in The Guardian wrote that: "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."
Graeme Thomson wrote for The Arts Desk that, "Campus tilled familiar ground with diminishing returns and zero warmth", while Dan Owen for Obsessed With Film about Wolfe that: "He's David Brent
meets Charles Manson
. It's just a shame his performance is just one of many bonkers turns, because there's so much weirdness it almost becomes suffocating."
There were positive reviews of Campus. Rob Clyne wrote for Sabotage Times that: "The overall picture of Campus isn't yet a clear one. At times it feels a little like a few sketches have been slung together, especially as a lot of the Jonty stuff comes out of nowhere. But these are only small gripes – Campus is hugely original, some may say it is genre defining. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but this is pure entertainment which doesn't need to fall under a specific category."
Louisa Mellor from Den of Geek attacked some of the complaints against the show saying: "The complaint about implausibility in comedy always baffles me. No, you wouldn't meet people like these in real life. Yes, they are unrealistic. We are all talking about sitcom aren't we? Jonty, Matt, Lydia et al are comic creations, little grains of truth worked up into misshaped pearls of comedy weirdness. It might help to place it on the family tree of The Kids in the Hall
, Big Train
or (at a fairly hefty push) Monty Python
, rather than as having descended from the much more straightforward worlds of The Royle Family
or The Office
."
On BBC Radio 4 Extra's comedy discussion show What's So Funny? host Rufus Hound
and guest Dom Joly
both enjoyed the show. Joly described the show as, "one of the funniest things I've seen in three or four years. It made me laugh so much, so quickly."
After the series was cancelled, fans of the show complained to Channel 4. Out of 105 complaints that were sent to Channel 4 about Campus in June 2011, most of them complained about the programme's cancellation. It was the second most complained about programme on Channel 4 that month, the most complained being the documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Fields.
of the first series was released on 16 May 2011. It features deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes documentary, and an re-edited version of the ending to the series as extras. While the Comedy Showcase pilot version of the first episode has not yet been released on DVD, it is currently watchable available via Channel 4's on demand service
4oD
.
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
British sitcom
British sitcom
A British sitcom tends, as it does in most other countries, to be based on a family, workplace or other institution, where the same group of contrasting characters is brought together in each episode. Unlike American sitcoms, where twenty or more episodes in a season is the norm, British sitcoms...
created by the team behind the comedy sketch show Smack the Pony
Smack the Pony
Smack the Pony is a British sketch comedy show that ran from 1999 until 2003 on Channel 4. Its title was intended to sound like a euphemism for female masturbation; the working title was Spot the Pony. The main performers and writers on the show were Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips...
and hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
-based sitcom Green Wing
Green Wing
Green Wing is a British sitcom set in the fictional East Hampton Hospital. It was created by the same team behind the sketch show Smack the Pony, led by Victoria Pile, and stars Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt....
, led by Victoria Pile
Victoria Pile
Victoria Pile, also known as Vicky Pile, is a British comedy writer, director and producer, most noted as the creator of two Channel 4 comedy programmes, the sketch show Smack the Pony and the sitcom Green Wing.- Writer :...
who acts as co-writer, producer and director. It is set in the fictitious Kirke University and follows the lives of the staff, in particular the power-crazed and callous vice chancellor
Chancellor (education)
A chancellor or vice-chancellor is the chief executive of a university. Other titles are sometimes used, such as president or rector....
Jonty de Wolfe (played by Andy Nyman
Andy Nyman
Andy Nyman is an English actor and magician.Nyman first came to note with his performance as a hard nosed director in Musical! and then as Keith Whitehead in the cult film of the Martin Amis novel, Dead Babies...
), lazy womanising English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
Matt Beer (Joseph Millson
Joseph Millson
Joseph Millson is an English actor and singer. He trained at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in Sidcup.-Theatre:* The Lifted Veil at the National * Pillars of the Community at the National...
) and newly promoted senior mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
lecturer Imogen Moffat (Lisa Jackson
Lisa Jackson (actress)
Lisa Jackson is an English actress. Recent roles include Imogen Moffat in the Channel 4 Comedy Showcase sitcom Campus, Sandra in Mike Bartlett's Love, Love, Love, Janice Pearce in BBC Four's Dirk Gently and Joan Helford in Rupert Goold's production of Time and the Conways at the National Theatre...
).
Campus was first broadcast as a television pilot
Television pilot
A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...
on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
on 6 November 2009, as part of the channel's Comedy Showcase
Comedy Showcase
Comedy Showcase is a series of one-off comedy specials featuring some of Britain's fledgling comedy talent. Its format is reminiscent of the much earlier Comedy Playhouse....
season of comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
pilots. A full series was later commissioned and commenced airing on 5 April 2011, with the first episode being a re-shoot and expanded version of the pilot. When first broadcast many critics claimed it was too similar to Green Wing and that much of the humour was offensive. However, others praised the show's dark humour
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
and surrealism
Surreal humour
Surreal humour is a form of humour based on violations of causal reasoning with events and behaviours that are logically incongruent. Constructions of surreal humour involve bizarre juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, irrational situations, and/or expressions of nonsense.The humour arises from a...
. Campus was cancelled
Cancellation (television)
In television, cancellation refers to the termination of a program by a network, typically because of low viewership and/or unfavourable critical reviews. Another reason why television programs can be cancelled is to make room for new television programs...
after one series due to poor TV ratings
Ratings (broadcast)
Ratings is a term used to describe the methods used by radio, cable and terrestrial television programming measure their performance. Ratings are collated using audience measurement.-Mechanisms for Calculating Ratings :...
. Over the course of the first series (not including the pilot) the average ratings were 554,000 viewers per episode, or 2.99% of the total audience, which is below the Channel 4 average.
Plot
Campus revolves around the lives of the staff of Kirke University, a plateglass university under the control of vice chancellor Jonty de Wolfe (Nyman). Wolfe is described as "a comedy grotesqueGrotesque
The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
", who wants Kirke and himself to become greater, no matter how it is done. He himself often gives out what he sees as the harsh truth to people, but what others consider to be offensive and even bigoted remarks. He is assisted by the "Three Graces
Three Graces
The term The Three Graces may refer to:* Charites, known in Greek mythology as The Three Graces, goddesses of such things as charm, beauty, and creativity...
of Admin" - three administrators all of whom are called Grace, and thus referred to as Grace 1, Grace 2 and Grace 3, or "Big Grace", "Pretty Grace" and "Was Once A Man Grace" (Alison Lintott, Chizzy Akudolu
Chizzy Akudolu
Chizzy Akudolu is a British actress. In 2002, she was one of eight new comedy performers who won the BBC Talent Initiative, The Urban Sketch Showcase. All eight performed a comedy sketch show in front of BBC casting directors and producers at the Tabernacle Theatre, Notting Hill.Her first...
and Matthew Devitt respectively).
Among Wolfe's plans is to exploit the success of newly promoted senior maths lecturer Imogen Moffat (Jackson) and her hit book The Joy of Zero, by ordering her to write a sequel and the other university staff to also write best selling books. His targets include English literature professor Matt Beer (Millson), an unrepentant womaniser, who does hardly any work and who is assisted by postgraduate
Postgraduate education
Postgraduate education involves learning and studying for degrees or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree generally is required, and is normally considered to be part of higher education...
student Flatpack (Jonathan Bailey
Jonathan Bailey (actor)
Jonathan Bailey is an English Actor. He was born on 25 April 1988, in Aylesbury Vale, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. He is not to be confused with another English actor named Jonathon Bailey born in 1940s who played young Prince Arthur in the 1950s TV series Adventures of Robin Hood...
), a man who reads hardly any books and instead is keen on sport. Beer therefore tries to come up with ideas, but instead spends more time annoying Moffat and mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
lecturer Lydia Tennant (Dolly Wells
Dolly Wells
Dolly Wells is a British comedy actor, best known for playing several characters in the Channel 4 Show Star Stories alongside Kevin Bishop and for being the Head of the Marmite Love Party Fay Freely, the Marmite commercials during 2006...
), who is annoyed by Moffat's success.
Elsewhere in the university, Nicole Huggins (Sara Pascoe
Sara Pascoe
Sara Pascoe is a British writer, stand-up comedian, and actress.Pascoe has appeared in a number of television programmes, including The Thick of It and Being Human, as well as all-female sketch show Girl Friday , which she co-wrote.In August 2010, Pascoe performed her first show at Edinburgh, Sara...
), an accommodations officer, makes an error in the university's accounting system. As a result, everyone in the university has received twice as much pay as normal, giving away over £2 million. It is left to university accountant
Accountant
An accountant is a practitioner of accountancy or accounting , which is the measurement, disclosure or provision of assurance about financial information that helps managers, investors, tax authorities and others make decisions about allocating resources.The Big Four auditors are the largest...
Jason Armitage (Will Adamsdale
Will Adamsdale
Will Adamsdale is an English actor.Adamsdale was educated at Eton College and the Oxford School of Drama. In 2004, he starred in a self-penned one man show called Jackson's Way at the Edinburgh Fringe. The intended run for the production was ten days, before the intervention of cult comedian...
) to try to retrieve the money. However, he fails to do so. As a result the university is forced to call in Canadian restructuring guru Georgina "George" Bryan (Katherine Ryan). However, due to her fondness for downsizing Wolfe orders for Beer to seduce her in order to make her cuts less damaging.
While Beer tries to carry out Wolfe's orders, he begins to develop feelings for Moffat and starts to suspect that he is falling in love with her. As he tries to reveal his feelings to Moffat, Bryan accepts Beer's offer of sex. In revenge Moffat has sex with Flatpack, who in turn begins to fall in love with Moffat. Meanwhile, Huggins attempts to make Armitage fall in love with her. However, when Armitage reveals that he is already in a relationship with Cecilia Hare (who does not appear in on screen), Huggins claims that she is a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
so that they can still be friends.
By the end of the series, it emerges that Bryan's one night stand
One Night Stand
One Night Stand is an HBO stand-up series that first aired on February 15, 1989. The half-hour series aired weekly and featured stand-up comedy specials from some of the top performing comedians. The series originally comprised 55 specials over the course of its four years on HBO...
with Beer has left her pregnant. At the meeting in which she is due to publish her damaging final report on the university, her pregnancy causes her to reevaluate her priorities, realising that destroying the lives and careers of the staff would be cruel. Wolfe persuades her to modify her report to put Kirke in a better light, and offers her a job at the same time. The series ends without resolving the relationships between Beer and Moffat or Armitage and Huggins, who eventually sleep together in the final episode, with Huggins claiming that Armitage "turned" her hetrosexual rather than reveal the fact that she lied.
Production
Campus shares connections with an earlier Channel 4 sitcom Green Wing. It has six of the same writers: Victoria PileVictoria Pile
Victoria Pile, also known as Vicky Pile, is a British comedy writer, director and producer, most noted as the creator of two Channel 4 comedy programmes, the sketch show Smack the Pony and the sitcom Green Wing.- Writer :...
, Robert Harley
Robert Harley (writer)
Robert Harley is a British comedy writer and performer, most noted for his work in the sketch show Smack the Pony and the sitcom Green Wing, where he also plays Charles, the CEO of East Hampton Hospital Trust. He is the co-founder of independent production company Monicker Pictures.- Performer :...
, James Henry
James Henry (writer)
James Henry is a British comedy writer, best known for his work in the sketch show Smack the Pony and the sitcom Green Wing. He began his career writing for children's television program Bob the Builder, and is currently developing two projects. Hero Trip is a huge-budget superhero/road trip...
, Oriane Messina
Oriane Messina
Oriane Messina is a British comedy writer and performer, most known for her work in the sketch show Smack the Pony and the sitcom Green Wing. She has had a working partnership with fellow writer Fay Rusling since 1999. In 2007, she appeared briefly as a nurse in sitcom Not Going Out.- Performer :-...
, Richard Preddy
Richard Preddy
Richard Preddy is a British comedy writer and performer, most noted for working in the sketch show Smack the Pony and the sitcom Green Wing...
and Fay Rusling
Fay Rusling
Fay Rusling is a British comedy writer and performer, most known for her work in the sketch show Smack the Pony and the sitcom Green Wing. She has had a working partnership with fellow writer Oriane Messina since 1999.- Performer :- Writer :...
. It also has the same composer, Jonathan Whitehead
Jonathan Whitehead
Jonathan Whitehead is an award winning music composer, born in 1960 in Denton, Lancashire, who is most noted for writing music for television comedies such as The Day Today, Brass Eye, Black Books, Green Wing, Campus and Nathan Barley. He studied music at the University of Bristol and now lives in...
. Campus references Green Wing in the show, with the motto of Kirke University being: "With wings." Filming for the series took place during the summer months of 2010, at the University of Bath
University of Bath
The University of Bath is a campus university located in Bath, United Kingdom. It received its Royal Charter in 1966....
campus, with some additional internal shots being filmed at Buckinghamshire New University in High Wycombe.
Campus is created by Pile, who also acts as producer and director. She sets up the stories, ideas and characters. Once enough material was created, the actors were brought along to read the scripts with the other writers. Millson claims that the eight writers go off and write their own version of the show, and then all the versions are read. Pile claims that she decided to set the show at a university because display various kinds of relationships, similar to the hospital setting of Green Wing.
Character development
Jonty de Wolfe is described as a "pseudo-magic figure" by co-writer and editor Christian Sandino-Taylor. Nyman says that in his world, "you are never quite sure whether that's actually him doing stuff or just his madness... he's clearly potty." Nyman was responsible for Wolfe's appearance, including his quiffQuiff
The quiff is a hairstyle that combines the 1950s pompadour hairstyle, the 50s flattop, and sometimes a mohawk. The etymology of the word is uncertain but may derive from the French word "coiffe" which can mean either a hairstyle or, going further back, the mail knights wore over their heads and...
hairstyle, and also Wolfe's use of other voices, which he has since gone to claim as being a form of multiple personality disorder. He also claims that Wolfe thinks he is sane, but is actually insane. Pile said of the character: "We've all had bosses that are power hungry and status obsessed and it's a kind of extension of what we all know and recognise in our fellow human beings, and sometimes in ourselves."
With regards to other characters, Messina describes Jason Armitage as being "awkward" and finding every situation difficult. Millson describes the relationship between Beer and Moffat as being similar to Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....
. Wells claims that Tennant, "has got to the point now where she'd be greatful for anything... but she would prefer a man". Ryan describes Bryan as being the show's villain.
The characters Flatpack, Grace 2 and Grace 3 were not in the pilot and were later additions. Bailey describes the relationship between Flatpack and Beer as a, "one-sided unrequited
Unrequited love
Unrequited love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep affections...
beautiful love." Bailey also claims that he is an "open book" due to his simpleness.
Pilot
The pilot received a mixed reception when it was broadcast. Jane Simon in the Daily Mirror wrote that: "There are some very funny moments but the staff at Kirke are perhaps a little too eccentric for their own good. It's as if the challenge was how weird can we make these people and still have them breathe oxygen? Vice-chancellor Jonty (Andy Nyman) comes on like a more megalomaniac David BrentDavid Brent
David Brent is a fictional character in the BBC television mockumentary The Office, as well as a recurring character in the NBC series of the same name, portrayed by co-writer and director Ricky Gervais. Brent is a white-collar office middle-manager and the principal character of the BBC series...
, while womanising English lecturer Matt Beer (think about it) and speccy maths star Imogen Moffat (Joseph Millson and Lisa Jackson) have big shoes to fill if they're to be Campuss answer to Guy
Guy Secretan
Guy Secretan is a character in the British sitcom Green Wing, played by Stephen Mangan. In Channel 4's The World's Greatest Comedy Characters, Guy was voted 34th.- History :...
[Secretan] and Caroline [Todd, characters from Green Wing]."
Sam Wollaston of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
disliked Campus, saying: "Ah, I see, Campus (Channel 4) is taking that path: the offensive one. There's nothing wrong with that; offence can be good, if done artfully. There's plenty of it here - Jonty's bigotry and English literature lecturer Matt Beer's (comedy name, like beer mat, but the other way round!) sex pesting. There is talk of rape by pigs, and odd-shaped anal cavities that lead to odd-shaped stools. I'm just not convinced it is being done very artfully. It seems more like offence for the sake of offence. Compare it with the beautifully crafted filth of Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It
The Thick of It
The Thick of It is a British comedy television series that satirises the inner workings of modern British government. It was first broadcast on BBC Four in 2005, and has so far completed fourteen half-hour episodes and two special hour-long episodes to coincide with Christmas and Gordon Brown's...
. If he is the Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
of offence, this is Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris, CBE, AM is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, painter and television personality.Born in Perth, Western Australia, Harris was a champion swimmer before studying art. He moved to England in 1952, where he started to appear on television programmes on which he drew the...
."
However, Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran is a British broadcaster, TV critic and columnist at The Times, where she writes three columns a week: one for the Saturday Magazine, a TV review column, and the satirical Friday column "Celebrity Watch"...
of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
praised it saying she hoped a full series would be made. She wrote of the pilot: "Although, like Green Wing, Campus works as an ensemble of freaks, perhaps the most intriguing mutant is Vice Chancellor Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman). Initially, he looks like the weakest character - a small, bumptious David Brent clone who keeps attempting Jamaican patois to make a point. But by the end of the show he has turned into a more sinister version of the shopkeeper in Mr Benn
Mr Benn
Mr Benn is a character created by David McKee who appears in several children's books, and an animated television series of the same name transmitted by the BBC in 1971 and 1972. Whether in a book, or on television, Mr Benn's adventures take on a similar pattern...
- wandering around the library in a floor-length taffeta ballgown, urging depressed students to commit suicide and, on one occasion, simply disappearing in the middle of a monologue, as if it were a Las Vegas floor-show, leaving his English lecturer Matthew Beer (Joseph Millson) holding a madly clattering clockwork monkey, and his jaw."
Series 1
The first series also had a mixed reaction. Tim DowlingTim Dowling
Tim Dowling is a journalist and author. Dowling moved to the UK at the age of 27 and currently lives in London with his wife and three children....
in The Guardian wrote that: "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."
Graeme Thomson wrote for The Arts Desk that, "Campus tilled familiar ground with diminishing returns and zero warmth", while Dan Owen for Obsessed With Film about Wolfe that: "He's David Brent
David Brent
David Brent is a fictional character in the BBC television mockumentary The Office, as well as a recurring character in the NBC series of the same name, portrayed by co-writer and director Ricky Gervais. Brent is a white-collar office middle-manager and the principal character of the BBC series...
meets Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
. It's just a shame his performance is just one of many bonkers turns, because there's so much weirdness it almost becomes suffocating."
There were positive reviews of Campus. Rob Clyne wrote for Sabotage Times that: "The overall picture of Campus isn't yet a clear one. At times it feels a little like a few sketches have been slung together, especially as a lot of the Jonty stuff comes out of nowhere. But these are only small gripes – Campus is hugely original, some may say it is genre defining. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but this is pure entertainment which doesn't need to fall under a specific category."
Louisa Mellor from Den of Geek attacked some of the complaints against the show saying: "The complaint about implausibility in comedy always baffles me. No, you wouldn't meet people like these in real life. Yes, they are unrealistic. We are all talking about sitcom aren't we? Jonty, Matt, Lydia et al are comic creations, little grains of truth worked up into misshaped pearls of comedy weirdness. It might help to place it on the family tree of The Kids in the Hall
The Kids in the Hall
The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy group formed in 1984, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson. Their eponymous television show ran from 1988 to 1994 on CBC in Canada, and 1989 to 1995 on CBS and HBO in the United States...
, Big Train
Big Train
Big Train is a surreal British television comedy sketch show created by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan, writers of the successful sitcom Father Ted...
or (at a fairly hefty push) Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
, rather than as having descended from the much more straightforward worlds of The Royle Family
The Royle Family
The Royle Family is a popular, BAFTA award-winning television comedy drama produced by Granada Television for the BBC, which ran for three series between 1998 and 2000, and specials from 2006 onwards...
or The Office
The Office
The Office is a popular mockumentary/situation comedy TV show that was first made in the UK and has now been re-made in many other countries, with overall viewership in the hundreds of millions worldwide. The original version of The Office was created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. It...
."
On BBC Radio 4 Extra's comedy discussion show What's So Funny? host Rufus Hound
Rufus Hound
Rufus Hound is a British comedian and presenter. He is also the winner of 2010 "Let's Dance for Comic Relief".-Career:...
and guest Dom Joly
Dom Joly
Dominic John Romulus "Dom" Joly is a British television comedian and journalist. He came to note as the star of Trigger Happy TV, a hidden camera show that was sold to over seventy countries worldwide...
both enjoyed the show. Joly described the show as, "one of the funniest things I've seen in three or four years. It made me laugh so much, so quickly."
Cancellation
Campus was cancelled in June 2011 after one series due to poor viewing figures. Following from the pilot which attracted 900,000 viewers (5% of the total viewing audience), the first episode of the first series attracted only 610,000 viewers (3.7%). The other episodes attracted 540,000 viewers (3.2%), 380,000 viewers (2.3%), 430,000 viewers (2.5%), 440,000 viewers (2.5%), and 360,000 viewers (2.1%) respectively. Over the course of the first series (not including the pilot) the average ratings for the series were 554,000 viewers (2.99%), below the Channel 4 average. A spokesman for Channel 4 said that, "C4 are very proud to have championed Campus and those fans who watched adored it, but there simply weren't enough of them to justify a second series."After the series was cancelled, fans of the show complained to Channel 4. Out of 105 complaints that were sent to Channel 4 about Campus in June 2011, most of them complained about the programme's cancellation. It was the second most complained about programme on Channel 4 that month, the most complained being the documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Fields.
Merchandise
A DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
of the first series was released on 16 May 2011. It features deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes documentary, and an re-edited version of the ending to the series as extras. While the Comedy Showcase pilot version of the first episode has not yet been released on DVD, it is currently watchable available via Channel 4's on demand service
Television on Demand
Television On Demand is an emerging new digital cable service offering. This service concept is based on perceived consumer desire to receive live and pre-recorded programming. TOD provides the end-user with programming, without having to wait for its syndicated air schedule times by major...
4oD
4oD
4oD is a video on demand service from Channel 4. Launched in November 2006, 4oD stands for "4 on Demand". The service offers a variety of programmes recently shown on Channel 4, E4, More4 or from their archives...
.