'Bad Education' and 'Fresh Meat' - British Show Review
- Jul 7, 2017
- 4 min read
As you may or may not know, I have been in India for the past three months. During that time I was interning, so I didn’t have a particularly large amount of free time. This is especially the case when you consider the fact that India (or at least the organization I was working for) operates on a 6-day work week. Yes, it was as tiring as it sounds.
In order to not collapse of mental exhaustion, I did what I always do and turned to my companion – television. I wanted something new and light. Somehow I ended up searching British sitcoms on Netflix, and I ended up with Bad Education, followed by Fresh Meat.
Both shows star Jack Whitehall as one of the main characters, with the later, Bad Education, being created and partially written by Whitehall as well. I had never heard of Jack Whitehall up to this point, and I had low expectations going into Bad Education. The show looked like it might be some overly-exaggerated show with comedy in the vein of movies like The Hangover, which I tend to avoid because I just don’t enjoy them. The plot was presented as something along the lines of ‘a terrible school with an even worse teacher.’ Promising.
Leave it to the British to prove me wrong. I really enjoyed the show. Jack Whitehall plays main character and teacher Alfie Wickers, a young twenty-something from a posh school who teaches the worst class in history. His students are all expected to amount to nothing by the rest of the staff (and themselves), and they have various personal and family problems that make them a band of misfits.
The show follows Alfie’s daily life as he undertakes highly lax and unorthodox methods of teaching his class history. There is also a good dose of unashamedly humiliating pining on Alfie’s part over a fellow teacher, Rosie Gulliver. Gulliver, played by Sarah Solemani, is a sweet and straight-laced counterpoint to Alfie Wickers’ seat-of-his-pants style of character.
The series is satisfying from beginning to end, and has an appropriately emotional final episode, with just the right amount of comedic highlights. I didn’t always find Bad Education that funny, but it was an enjoyable romp nevertheless.
At a mere 19 episodes, I was finished the show quickly, leaving back where I started and needing another show. Back I went to British sitcoms. What should I discover but another show starring the same actor that I had come to love!
Fresh Meat started a year prior to Bad Education, but ran longer. It aired its final episode in March of 2016. Even coming from a show that also starred Jack Whitehall, I was nervous that Fresh Meat was going to be unpleasant and not to my taste. I think I should give up expecting the worst from British sitcoms at this point, because I also loved this one.
Fresh Meat centers around a group of first-year university students that live together in an off-campus house. The show starts with the group moving in, and ends with the completion of (most of) the group’s three-year university degrees. Jack Whitehall plays J.P. Pembersley, a perpetually-horny geology student from an upper-class family, who seems to think that he can live his entire life as a university student with little aim or ambition directing his future plans.
Then there is Kingsley, an aspiring musician who is studying geology. He has major confidence issues, and develops into the sort of angsty, confused with life character as the show progresses. Melissa Shawcross is a rich girl masquerading under the fake name of ‘Oregon,’ who has dreams of being adored for the world-class novel, or play, or poetry that she has yet to write. Howard is the Scottish representative, also studying geology after a failed stint in philosophy. He is an odd, hermit-like character that you come to appreciate over time.
Also in the house are Vod and Josie. Vod is the ‘rebel’ figure of the house, continually piling bills and debt notices under her mattress and seemingly caring about nothing in the world. Josie is the ‘normal’ one, at least in the first few episodes. She wants to have a great time in university, and then move on to a celebrated career in dentistry. Things don’t work out in any way near to what Josie planned, and the audience gets to experience this organised party girl spiral into an obsessive, confused human being. Josie’s character for me was the most interesting, as she showed an extreme amount of change throughout the seasons.
Once again, the final episode of the show was on-point. The group spend a final day together as they discuss their plans post-graduation, and the relationship that I was hoping for the entire series solidifies itself in an adorable but still in-character moment.
If you are looking to take a foray into British comedy, either Bad Education or the slightly more extreme Fresh Meat are both great places to start.
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