Campus: ROFL?

I need to stop getting excited about new telly programs because they are related to old ones that I love. It's an automatic response which pretty much always leads to crushing disappointment, like it did tonight with Green Wing writers' latest effort Campus. The trailers were promising, boasting the same kind of over the top, surreal antics once offered by Green Wing. The scene with Sue White (the brilliant Michelle Gomez. Where did you go? Come back to telly, Michelle!) sporting the big Monty Python-type arms is still hands-down one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I was jazzed to see a much needed injection of surreal daftness rejoining television schedules that are over-run with mediocre sitcoms and bland sketch shows. Hurray for the weird!

Campus was slow to start, introducing us to each of the characters, all of which seem to be a rehashing of Green Wing types. Imogen Moffat (Lisa Jackson) and Matt Beer (Joseph Millson) are clearly the series romance. He's an swaggering womaniser, she's a anxious mouse, they're so different but there's chemistry there so watch this space... YAWN. Seen it. Next! Okay, how about the slightly pathetic one, Flat (Jonathan Bailey), who looks up to the womanising Matt Beer, following him about like a sweaty puppy? Oh, right, that type's been done too. Then there's the bizarre, brash, nutter, Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman); he gets the bizarre outfits and the outlandish lines, a bit like Sue White, yeah? Well, to a point yes. The scene where he stands in a green dress, conjures a small cymbal bashing monkey from Matt Beer's sock and then disappears is very Sue White but Wolfe also has bouts of racist behaviour that isn't funny. I think the idea is that Wolfe is meant to be ludicrous in every way and we can see his racism as an offshoot of that but unfortunately it doesn't come off that way. It's eye-rollingly stupid and nothing more.

There are hints of what Campus could be, however; mechanical engineering lecturer, Lydia Tennant (Dolly Wells) is so far sublime, "At school they called me the big shit. Because I was a big shit. And also, I do big shits". Juvenile and crude yes, but also fucking funny. There wasn't nearly enough of her, hopefully she'll feature more as the weeks go on. Also Flat is actually quite good too. He said 'ROFL' and 'sexing'. More of this please. The setting of a middle of the road uni is promising too, and hopefully we'll see a bit more student/lecturer interaction (steady), providing good dynamics for a few funny scenes.

To summarise, although there were a few good bits, nothing as yet has been truly LOLful and I'm not really sure where it's going but I'll maybe stick around for the next few weeks to see if it does finally get off the ground. So unfortunately for Campus, with Green Wing as its sister, it's never going to be the sexy one.