After reeling in just over three and a half thousand views across its three episodes so far (including the Christmas special) Union is something of a modest success story for YSTV, what with its ‘The Office’-style parody on the daily life of student politicians. Considering the season is now half way over, and the majority of its viewers are knee-deep in stress, Union need something ballsy to amp up the show’s antics and make it a reason to be considered ‘a productive revision break’. Enter a trip to the NUS conference. Does the episode keep viewers engaged during exam season? Or was it not worth those pivotal fifteen minutes?
Episode three sees Your Union president Chloe spending the day with two, polar-opposite sabbs who both want different things from this ‘prestigious event’ in Liverpool. Mark seeks high and low for tantalising speeches about democracy, all whilst paving his way through more Chelsea buns. Ed, on the other hand, questions his very existence in the conference, sulking like a miserable toddler, at, well… an NUS conference.
The episode does well to take the show’s continuing parody of student politics to new lengths. Whether that be the inherent mockery of the NUS behind Mark’s thirst for democracy, Ed’s crude labeling of the conference as ‘a fuck fest with free food’, or Chloe’s parting question of the episode, ‘I still don’t know what the NUS is all about’, it plays very close to the line in its inherent fun-poking of the matter. Of course, there were little humorous sketches dotted in there as compliments (‘Dear Nick, you lied like daddy did’, to name one), but the backdrop here was the main focus that worked with the season’s tone.
On the other hand, whilst the setting worked for the season as a whole, it did create some frustrating moments in its execution. For one, I couldn’t help but feel that this episode was a bit of troll, particularly with the cliche of ‘phone rings in a formal setting, picks up the phone’ and Ed’s run in at the NUS fair. Also, when you have to rely on cameos from Taylor and Whitmore, that’s a good sign that the steam is certainly running out.
I felt the show’s best moments were back at the student union office, with Neil and Hannah’s run-in with Callum ‘with a c’ Taylor. The script here was at its strongest, with melodramatic lines such as ‘The cutlery here was better in Africa, even when it was bloodstained’ proving to be funnier than subliminal messages about the NUS. Union works best in the hands of its producers and scriptwriters, not the source material of NUS speakers.
Overall, whilst the setting and scenario took the series’ to a much more daring level, the comedy began to lose its juice towards the end, only to be kept going by moments back at the home office. Ed may have said what I was thinking at times: ‘It was so boring, for a second I actually gave up breathing’. At most, episode three can be summed up with a comment on its YSTV page: ‘Kudos for having the balls to do this! Very funny’.
You can watch the latest episode on YSTV here.