When Bad Education started on BBC Three in 2012, it was tempting to dismiss it as just a career booster for Jack Whitehall: ticking off a sitcom would be another staging post in the standup comic’s charmed journey towards the comedy A-list. The idea of a sitcom set in a chaotic secondary school didn’t sound as if much thought had gone into it, and Whitehall’s character – rookie teacher and overgrown public schoolboy Alfie Wickers – was bound to be another version of his cheeky-toff stage persona. Great sitcoms require toil and heart to get right – surely Whitehall couldn’t possibly have tossed off a classic?
If you dismissed Bad Education on those grounds and never watched it – congratulations, you were absolutely right. Alfie was Jack Whitehall being Jack Whitehall, everyone else was a flat, lazy cartoon, the series was awful and the fact that it ran for three seasons and resulted in a honking spin-off movie was depressing when you thought about it – although you probably didn’t.
