Campus

GB

Comedy
English     6.5     2011     GB

Overview

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, lazy womanising English literature professor Matt Beer and newly promoted senior mathematics lecturer Imogen Moffat. 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 the average ratings were 554,000 viewers per episode, or 2.99% of the total audience, which is below the Channel 4 average.

Similar

AfterMASH is an American situation comedy that aired on CBS from September 26, 1983, to December 11, 1984. A spin-off of the series M*A*S*H, the show takes place immediately following the end of the Korean War and chronicles the adventures of three characters from the original series: Colonel Potter, Klinger and Father Mulcahy. M*A*S*H supporting cast-member Kellye Nakahara joined them, albeit off-camera, as the voice of the hospital's public address system. Rosalind Chao rounded out the starring cast as Soon-Lee Klinger, a Korean refugee whom Klinger met, fell in love with and married in the M*A*S*H series finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen." AfterMASH premiered in the fall of 1983 in the same Monday night 9:00 P.M. EST. time slot as its predecessor M*A*S*H. It finished 10th out of all network shows for the 1983-1984 season according to Nielsen Media Research television ratings. For its second season CBS moved the show to Tuesday nights at 8:00 EST., opposite NBC's top ten hit The A-Team, and launched a marketing campaign featuring illustrations by Sanford Kossin of Max Klinger in a nurse's uniform, shaving off Mr. T's signature mohawk, theorizing that AfterMASH would take a large portion of The A-Team's audience. The theory, however, was proven wrong. In fact, the exact opposite occurred, as AfterMASH's ratings plummeted to near the bottom of the television rankings and the show was canceled nine episodes into its second season, while The A-Team continued until 1987, with 97 episodes.

More info
AfterMASH
1983