fri 06/12/2024

university

Liberal Arts

Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio should see an uptick in admissions on the back of Liberal Arts. The wan cross-generational love story was shot on the invitingly leafy grounds of a campus whose alumni over time have included E L Doctorow, Paul Newman...

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Wonderland: Young, Bright and on the Right, BBC Two

In the debating chambers and committee rooms of the Conservative Associations of Oxford and Cambridge lurk the Children of Cameron. The current cabinet is to a large extent an Oxbridge Old Boys club and succeeding generations are already being...

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Fresh Meat, Series 1, Channel 4

So Fresh Meat approaches the conclusion of season one and, against my expectations, I’ve become a devoted fan. When it was announced that Peep Show creators Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain were launching a new sitcom, based around a Manchester student...

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Emmy the Great, Pleasance, Edinburgh

“Are there any freshers in the audience?" asked Emma-Lee Moss halfway through last night’s set. Two voices raised a muted cheer. Whatever else your average 18-year-old might have been doing, cut loose from the apron strings for the first time in the...

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Butley, Duchess Theatre

Ego in academia: Dominic West and Martin Hutson

Ben Butley is poisonous, spiteful, a bully, a sadist and a snob. So how does Simon Gray, who created his titular anti-hero in 1971, ensure that an audience can endure his company? He equips him with the kind of lacerating verbal dexterity that makes...

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The Night Shift, BBC Four

Even taking into account Britain's currently insatiable appetite for the literary, cinematic and televisual output of our Nordic friends, the notion of an “award-winning Icelandic comedy” still sounds a little like one of those lame gags designed to...

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Campus, Channel 4

'Campus' follows the staff of Kirke University, led into battle by Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman)

Let us begin with the nots. Fashionably weird is not enough. Edgy, whatever that means, is not enough. The repeated use of the word “vagina” is not enough and semi-improvised ensemble acting is not, in itself, quite enough. These were just some of...

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The Heretic, Royal Court Theatre

The story revolves around the character played by Stevenson, Dr Diane Cassell, an academic who specialises in sea-level rises, and works at an Earth Sciences university department. Although she is seen by some as a climate change sceptic, a heretic...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Writer Willy Russell

No one understands escapism like Willy Russell. Either side of 1980, he wrote two plays about working-class Liverpool women in flight from a humdrum existence. In one a young hairdresser seeks fulfilment through a literary education with the Open...

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Posh, Royal Court Theatre

When artistic director Dominic Cooke took up his new post at this venue in 2007, he said that he wanted “to look at what it means to be middle class, what it means to have power, what it means to have wealth”. Although this comment caused a lot of...

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Comedy Showcase: Campus, Channel 4

“Green Wing, but set in a university” is one of those useful handles that reviewers were always going to grasp when discussing Victoria Pile’s new improvised ensemble comedy, Campus, the opening try-out in Channel 4’s new Comedy Showcase season of...

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Trinity, ITV2

Secondary school teachers accused of not pointing their brighter students towards Oxbridge might feel vindicated by ITV2’s Trinity - although the messages were a little mixed. On the one hand the fictional elitist university college in this new teen...

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