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Not so humble ambitions for York graduates

Posted on 26 September 2014

University of York graduates Andy Lake and Christian Smith were once stars of York Student Television with their sitcom Humble Pie. Now they are back filming more episodes with ambitions of reaching a much larger internet audience.

Andy Lake and Christian Smith. Credit: Cambridge TV School

University of York graduates Andy Lake and Christian Smith were once stars of York Student Television with their sitcom Humble Pie. Now they are back filming more episodes with ambitions of reaching a much larger internet audience.  

Andy and Christian, both 21, originally wrote their six episode series while at Hills Road Sixth Form in Cambridge and filmed the pilot episode in 2012 as students with York’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television. When it was posted on the York Student Television website, the sitcom attracted 1,000 views in the first 24 hours.  

Andy, who graduated this summer with a degree in Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance, said: “We became overnight sensations – and it’s taken us around three years to follow up on that! We actually wrote Humble Pie before we went to university and it was weirdly like a premonition.  It’s the story of two best friends who embark on the journey of going to uni together.”  

Christian, who graduated from the same degree course, added: “The York course helped us to think in more detail about the text we were writing and our acting skills improved. After graduating from York, we really wanted to revisit our Humble Pie characters and storylines and make sure they reached a wider audience.”  

This time around, Humble Pie was filmed by students at Cambridge TV School – a new venture that offers hands on courses in all aspects of TV Production.  Tutor Carl Homer said: “We were delighted to help out with Humble Pie and our students got another real-life project to work on.  Our aim is for all of our students to gain broadcast credits for their projects.” 

Andy and Christian hope to see the show broadcast on the new Cambridge TV channel in the near future and online.  “Because it’s about university life, it is quite appealing as a webisode format; but if the BBC came along, we wouldn’t turn them away!” said Andy.

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