I'd been looking forward to CAMPUS for a while now. Sure, the trailers raised no more than a mild smile, but anything made my the makers of Green Wing was definitely going to wet my appetite.
I suppose what I was expecting was Green Wing set on a university campus, and stylistically, that is a fair description what CAMPUS is. However, it lacks the soul of Green Wing, and thus fails to please on the same level.
None of the character come across as being particularly likeable, and President of the University 'Jonty de Wolfe', (played by Andy Nyman), particularly outstays his welcome in screen time in this episode. He should be funny as an incompetent and rather racist man in charge, but instead the scripting tries too hard and we are left with a poor caricature of David Brent.
Equally ill considered are the plot lines, which are so scrambled and scatter-gun that you find it hard to care about any of them. That is, except for the saving grace of the episode, an intriguing relationship between English Professor Matt Beer (Joseph Millson), one of the only characters to hold any believable qualities, and newly successful author and Maths lecturer Imogen Moffat (Lisa Jackson). This engaging love interest story is much more reminiscent of what I loved about Green Wing, and at times it is even laugh-out loud funny (at last).
From the evidence of the first hour, CAMPUS certainly isn't able to stand up to its hospital based predecessor. But maybe in the weeks to come, as the characters are developed and the plot finds its way, it will become a decent comedy in its own right.
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