Jack Whitehall

While sometimes not quite the comic steak tartare the title promises, Fresh Meat still provides enough smirk-raising moments, and often some unintentionally moving ones. too. Mainly in the form of Josie and Kingsley, who are still in love with each other and pretending not to be. Even though Kingsley, who's spent the summer growing a "muff on his chin" and now quotes Buddhism For Beginners, is suddenly in demand for his "hot man meat".

But the episode belonged to braying posh boy JP (the quote-perfect Jack Whitehall) who suffered an existential crisis when his chum Giles, with whom he shared experimental "power showers" at Stowe, turns out to be gay. "To bum or not to bum," ponders JP, like a public school Hamlet in a gilet, now forced to question every "toga party", "bender" joke and doodle of a "cock cat". Whitehall hogs all the best lines and it just makes you wish there were more to go around. Hopefully, Giles and newbie "foreign" flatmate Sabine will refresh the comedy bong water in coming episodes.

I loved student flatshare comedy Fresh Meat last time: it was funny and filthy and Jack Whitehall stole the show as the posh berk, the bad advert for public schools you expect from Channel 4 at times like these. Unfortunately Whitehall then played another posh berk in Bad Education which, after a decent start, became quite tedious. It suggested Whitehall could be a one-trick pony (and no stranger to actual gymkhanas). And it's had the effect of diluting his contribution to Fresh Meat, like he's been stealing from his own stash of cheap plonk in the student fridge without realising, topping it up with water.

If the metaphor is extended, other characters are starting to resemble overfamiliar foodstuffs and curling round the edges. Howard, played by our own Greg McHugh, is just a bit more odd, Vod is just a bit more scary, Josie is just a bit more unconvincing about having got over Kingsley, and so on. Of course they're students: any kind of decisive action wouldn't ring true.

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One of the things that makes Fresh Meat work so well is that it's actually a soppy sitcom - with more than a hint of romcom - with the comedy stemming from the characters gauche attempts to project themselves as hard and knowing when the reality is they are anything but.

All the characters are much as we left them. Kingsley has grown an apology for a goatee, but otherwise his and Josie's on-off relationship is still on-off, Vod is still on the scrounge, Oregon is still trying not to be posh and JP is still ... Jack Whitehall. I'm not convinced there's a difference between Whitehall and any of the characters he plays, but for the time being that doesn't really matter as he is rather good at being whoever he is. Writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong also appear to have written out the show's major weakness - geology lecturer Dan - and introduced Giles and Sabine to make sure the meat stays fresh. A comedy that's actually funny. It could catch on.

Satire for youngsters, nostalgia for oldsters: Channel 4's unromantic comedy has something for everyone. The first series also had the odd wobble but was saved by the fact that our student heroes (mismatched tenants in a Manchester house-share) were fleshed out and believable enough that we cared what became of them, even when they weren't spouting jaggedly funny dialogue.

Series two opens with posh berk JP (Jack Whitehall, note perfect) introducing a friend to the North ("The northerner is trusting and loyal like a gun-dog"), before hearing news that makes him seize up hilariously. Scheming nerd Howard has a job at an abbatoir, and Kingsley has grown a tiny beard.

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Fresh Meat: Series 2 Episode 1 review

Joe Thomas & Jack Whitehall shine in the return of this hilarious Channel 4 drama.

The award-winning comedy about a university flatshare returns for a second run. The six housemates are back in their squalid Manchester digs, with Jack Whitehall's posh boy JP in the limelight tonight in a plotline about his public school days. Adeptly combining sharp humour with a well crafted cast of characters and a surprising poignancy, this is one of the best comedies in recent memory.

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