Schooldays are the happiest days of your life? Well, there are plenty of belly laughs in the BBC3 classroom with the third series of Bad Education. It’s the new term and the kids have come down with a serious dose of puberty over the holidays. Jing has turned into a Camus-quoting existentialist, regular fall-guy Joe has gone vegan while Rem Dogg has gone full emo about five years too late.
But to be very honest little has really changed apart from the haircuts in this consistently witty, quietly conventional sitcom. Stephen (Layton Williams) is still intent on dancing and vogueing his way to stardom, Mitchell (Charlie Wernham) is still the yob with a heart (and a crush on new classmate Cleo) and overgrown kid Alfie Wickers (Jack Whitehall) is still an A-star twat of a teacher. The first episode finds Alfie in danger of losing his job when it turns out that the school is broke and staff cuts have to be made. This, inevitably, is due to a dodgy business venture involving a pitifully poor fashion range designed by bell-end headmaster Mr Fraser (Mathew Horne), who this year has opted for a fetchingly naff Peter Andre-style curtain fringe.
It is not quite explained then how they have found the budget to employ Alfie’s dad Martin as new Deputy Head, but his addition to the cast is good for the comic plot, with Harry Enfield playing Martin like a cross between Alan Sugar and Colin Hunt. Before you know it a strike has been called, with the teachers and pupils manning the barricades together as if they are in Les Mis. Although I don’t ever recall seeing a hog roast or mixing desks in Les Mis.
What is good about Bad Education – apart from the obligatory gross-out giggles – is that it is so uncynical. There is no attempt whatsoever to make this a cool Skins-type series. Underneath any superficial bravado the daft kids at Abbey Grove Comprehensive are all pretty decent. And Alfie, despite a impressively high level of stupidity that makes you wonder how he ever landed the job in the first place, does care about his class.
If you are looking for character development you have come to the wrong place. Bad Education will always go for the gag first, the narrative second. There’s a very stupid mock online advert for Mr Fraser’s latest hopeless invention, the Segdesk – part-Segway, part, erm, desk – which feels inserted at random but is still very funny. And co-writer Whitehall is very well cast. It is easy to be dismissive and say that his posh-teacher schtick is no great stretch, but full marks to Whitehall, it is hard work to look this thick.
The League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson is a script editor but I can’t see much in the way of dark, perverse comedy. Although Alfie does get some tomatoes thrown at him. But for BBC3 the script is genuinely ambitious and certainly can't be accused of dumbing down. Of course there are quips about porn and Game of Thrones, but there are also references to Sartre and Kierkegaard. I don't think this is the intention, but I ended up wishing that I’d gone to a school like Abbey Grove. And maybe even had a teacher like Alfie.
Bad Education is on BBC3 at 10pm, Tuesdays.
