Jack Whitehall

Fresh Meat proved itself with drugged-up sixth episode

Fresh Meat may not be the most innovative or original of comedy series, but Jack Whitehall and the gang have earned their second series.

Anyone who has seen E4's Made in Chelsea may be shocked by how much the posh young bucks of real life resemble Fresh Meat's resident toff, JP. That's partly why Jack Whitehall's performance is so sharp - it seems like a big, braying caricature, but maybe it isn't at all.

There's a change of gear for him tonight when JP has to show some real, heartfelt emotion - and he's not the only one. It's the darkest, least larky episode so far.

Jack Whitehall: full throttle comedy

After his success in Fresh Meat, Jack Whitehall is touring the nation. Viv Groskop asks him: 'So, are you the next Michael McIntyre or the next Russell Brand?'

"Are you on a spectrum?" upper-class dimwit JP (Jack Whitehall) asks his geeky flatmate Howard on discovering his ambition to list "everything known to man". Whitehall's exaggerated self-portrait of a performance provides most of the best moments in this fast-improving student comedy. It's the awkward, uncertain and mainly unhappy world of undergraduate love lives which provides the backbone to this episode, however, as Kingsley (played by Joe Thomas of The Inbetweeners) learns that too much of a good thing can lead to embarrassment and Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie) discovers her tutor might not be the sophisticated George Clooney type she'd hoped.

Live at the Apollo performers confirmed

Jack Whitehall, Micky Flanagan and Alan Carr have been confirmed for the new series of BBC One's Live at the Apollo.

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 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".