Jack Whitehall

While its antecedent, They Think It's All Over, managed to show the surprisingly sharp side of sporting figures such as David Gower and Steve Davis, A League Of Their Own merely plays down to expectations. Team captains Andrew Flintoff and Jamie Redknapp, though likable enough, aren't terribly interesting, leaving the burden of entertainment on James Corden and his interchangeable support staff of panel-show comics, which, for this fourth series, includes Jack Whitehall, Jason Manford and Lee Mack.

After a shaky second episode, Fresh Meat was more or less back on form tonight, as the gang tried out the classic student past times of going on blind dates and changing their courses.

Once again, the characters could have been more subtly drawn. Jack Whitehall's character in particular is a posh-boy parody that needs never have been created, since Whitehall's own accent and persona would be enough for the perfect private-school kid anyway.

And it's not just the characters who are over the top at times. The storylines - which this week included Oregon getting down and dirty with Professor Shayles - have also been a little far-fetched at times.

But while Fresh Meat can be broad and brash when it wants to be, it also has its sublimely low-key, awkward moments, stuffed full of pauses and brilliant dialogue.

This week's standout scene was a shining example of this, as Professor Shayles offered Oregon employment cleaning his kitchen. 'We can talk, too...the oven, in particular, is very dirty... about literature,' he said, delivering the best line of the series so far.

With material like this up its writers' sleeves, Fresh Meat looks set to go from strength to strength.

Radio Times review

Fresh Meat definitely feels more comedy drama than sitcom in this episode: less frenetic, more ambling, but with big belly-laughs later on. The freshers are still finding their feet in the shifting sands of university life. The character who sums this up best is sweet, foolish Josie: Kimberley Nixon's facial expressions change, often several times a second, between confidence, uncertainty and panic, as she tries, usually too hard, to make friends and influence people.

It's an amazing performance, adding layers of comedy to the bare bones in the script, but it's still upstaged by Jack Whitehall as would-be womaniser JP, who makes hay with a brilliantly tasteless sex-related storyline.

Meanwhile, Oregon's flirtation with her tutor reaches new levels as he pays her to clean his fridge and grumbles about his wife, neatly nicknamed "the selfish Jean".

It's the best house-sharing sitcom since Spaced and last week's opening episode wasn't a fluke. The new series from Peep Show's Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong delivers laugh after excruciating laugh in its second episode tonight as it skewers the student lifestyle and Russell Brand's head into the bargain.

Tonight Robert Webb turns up as an over-eager tutor, ("On Twitter I'm Dan, Dan the Geology Man!") as Kingsley and co attempt to throw a party.

While Vod's sole aim is to cop off with the lead singer in a band, Oregon (who has adopted Vod as her new role model) is desperately trying to hide the fact that she has a car lest her housemates discover that she is (gasp) secretly middle-class and normal.

Once again though it's Jack Whitehall as the obnoxious JP who's trying hardest to impress. The scene involving a rowing machine and a spliff is just superb.

It's not a treat you get every day, the joy of stumbling on a loveable, bankably funny sitcom. So make the most of this, because after the assured start in episode one, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's unromantic comedy set in a student house gets into its stride tonight.

Jack Whitehall is still the standout, playing sordid toff JP, fresh from Stowe and full of phrases like "The guy's a ledge", "No problemo" and "Heinous". His assurance is a little dented tonight when he bumps into two old school chums he's desperate to impress.

Meanwhile, the awkwardness mounts between star-crossed non-lovers Kingsley (Joe Thomas) and Josie (Kimberley Nixon) as the housemates decide to have a party - and it turns into a "brodeo".

Fears that oddball Vod (Zawe Ashton) may be a bloodthirsty murderer get the second episode of this student comedy from the creators of Peep Show off to a promising start - especially as the victim appears to be Russell Brand. Things become more predictable when Josie (Kimberley Nixon) suggests the housemates throw a party in the hope it might push her and Kingsley (Joe Thomas) together - hopes dashed when her boyfriend turns up unexpectedly. But that's minor trouble compared with the fallout when absentee housemate Paul discovers that JP (Jack Whitehall) has turned his room into a gym.

I warmed to Channel 4's Fresh Meat, a timely "dramedy" from the writers of Peep Show, and starring comedian Jack Whitehall and Simon from The Inbetweeners as a pair of first-year students arriving to share a house with other nervy, blustering innocents. The early scenes were a bit forced (a problem of social awkwardness translating into dramatic awkwardness) but there was nothing a drink and a visual knob gag couldn't put right.

Does it have the makings of something more than its load-bearing parts of sex, drugs, Pot Noodle and questionable hygiene? Well, we ended on a promising romantic standoff (soundtracked by the late troubadour of bedsit angst Elliott Smith) and it was quite funny. Who would have guessed Jack Whitehall could be so brilliantly convincing as a posh, annoying prat?

Fresh Meat's premise: six students with nothing in common forced to share a house in Manchester. But while the early publicity focused on the fact that the show stars Joe (Simon in The Inbetweeners) Thomas, anyone who saw Chickens will know that his presence is no guarantee of quality, so focus has shifted to Jack Whitehall's acting debut as the hip-hop-loving public schoolboy tosser JP.

Rightly so, because while Simon (sorry, Kingsley) has the will-they-won't-they love interest - and gets to do plenty of that scrunchy-eye, shaky-head, "I wish I'd never said that" thing that Thomas's characters are destined to do for the rest of his acting days - JP gets all the best lines.

"High motherfucking threadcount," he declares of his conquest's bedsheet. And when he's not showing respec' to his Tupac poster or dusting off his beloved bongos, JP is mainly getting drunk to enable him to bed girls so he can phone up his friends and tell them afterwards.

He's funny because he's a recognisable type, but Fresh Meat is rather too full of those and, at almost an hour, should really do more in terms of both comedy and drama. Perhaps Robert Webb's geology lecturer will provide these as the series develops. Though it's unlikely he will prove as enduring or endearing a character as the real-life Mr Drew.

Peep Show and The ­Inbetweeners fans, listen up. Fresh Meat stars Joe Thomas and was written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, so deserves your attention.

It's a great sitcom about freshers in a university house-share - a sit so ripe with possibilities you might wonder why it hasn't been strip-mined for com before.

Actually it has; of course there was the classic The Young Ones, and some of you might have seen a short-lived BBC3 comedy a couple of years ago with much the same premise called Off The Hook, starring another Inbetweener, James Buckley.

But Fresh Meat is much more assured and has wonderfully subtle ­characters.

Joe Thomas is the token normal one as Kingsley, and Kimberley Nixon plays nice, sweet Josie, his female ­counterpart.

More intriguing are Vod (Zawe Ashton) who's like a younger, female, sexually ­ambiguous version of Peep Show's Super Hans and Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie) who tries too hard to be tough and play down her swottiness - and fails at both.

There's also Greg McHugh as Howard (think a young, Scottish Nick Frost).

But it's stand-up and panel-show regular Jack Whitehall who steals the show as cocky public schoolboy JP.

We first meet him in the men's toilet waving a wrap of cocaine at a total stranger. We've never seen Jack acting before but he turns out to be surprisingly good at it. Unless - of course - this is what he's like in real life.

Inbetweeners star Joe Thomas strikes out on his own and heads to university as Kingsley, one of a mixed bag of housemates thrown together as freshers in this engaging but surprisingly straightforward new comedy from Peep Show writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. The horror of realising who the university wheel of fortune has stuck you with is cringe-inducingly on the money, with Jack Whitehall in scene-stealing form as posh schemer JP.