It can't be long now before either BBC3 or Channel 4 comes up with a themed Jack Whitehall night. Maybe they are merely waiting until he gets his knighthood for services to our TV schedules. 2013 has pretty much been his year, with two hit series under his belt (three if you include the fun-if-throwaway Backchat) and last week a King of Comedy gong at the British Comedy Awards to crown it all.
After Fresh Meat last night on C4, now it was the turn of BBC3 to give this Jack of all Channels some airtime in the tinsel-tinged Bad Education Christmas Special. This is one of those shows that looked like it was filmed in the blazing heat of the British summer with the cast sweltering in their winter woolies as they got up to their usual playtime mischief, with a bit of soppy sentimentality lobbed in for good measure like a lucky sixpence in a Christmas pud.
The wrapping paper-thin plot revolved around Alfie (Whitehall) being pressured by elf-garbed headmaster Fraser (Mathew Horne, making everyone cringe just a little too much with his incessant "banter claus" banter) into directing the annual Abbey Grove Christmas play. He needed to redeem himself to save his job, but Yuletide plays are particularly tense affairs for Alfie - his mum failed to turn up when he was in his school Nativity, which is maybe part of the reason why he turned out to be such a simpering wuss.
The comedy came from his frankly feckless attempts to make a hit out of a dodgy, misguided mash-up of Robocop and The Nutcracker - Robocracker. Rehearsals involved an exquisitely silly trust game where everyone had to roll over each other, including Rem (Jack Binstead), who is in a wheelchair and a series of over-the-top auditions including a very Robert Webb-y Flashdance sdequence from Stephen (Layton Williams). Luckily Alfie got some tips in the nick of time from a passing inebriated Scottish tramp. Any racial stereotypes were purely coincidental in a show-stealing cameo from Greg McHugh, aka Fresh Meat's Howard, who turned out to be a down-on-his-luck actor: “Did you get into Heroin?” “No, I got into Hollyoaks.”
After a few inevitable hiccups and cock-ups, would you blinking well believe it, the chaotic production was a hit and further redemption came for Alfie in the form of his mum flying in from Spain. Could things get any better for him? Well, his romance with Miss Gulliver (Sarah Solemani) appears to be back on too. Somehow Alfie seems to be having more success than Jack Whitehall himself. At this rate he will have been made Minister for (Bad) Education by episode two of the next series.
