Jesse Armstrong

Black Mirror - "The Entire History of You"

The final part of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror anthology comes instead from the mind of Jesse Armstrong, one half of the writing partnership behind comedies Peep Show and Fresh Meat. This marks a change of style for Armstrong, as there wasn't much to smile about in "The Entire History Of You" (well, beyond the one cereal joke).

Imagine if memories weren't foggy, unreliable things. Imagine if your every moment was logged by a little device implanted behind your ear and wired into your brain. Imagine if you could then view each day, each scene of your life at will and pore over it to the point of obsession. Jesse Armstrong has imagined just that in loving detail for the third of Channel 4's techno-fables.

A sick and sinuous story unfolds of a young lawyer who has an unsatisfactory appraisal meeting, then goes to a dinner where his wife is meeting old friends. Something in her body language bothers him and as he examines and re-examines it, he stirs up a storm of jealousy that can't end well.

Looking for a programme that isn't slathered in festive sentimentality? There's certainly not a sliver of tinsel in sight here. Written by Peep Show's Jesse Armstrong, it's the last in a trio of dark satires on our media-obsessed age. Toby Kebbell and Jodie Whittaker are among the actors trapped in a world where people can opt for a memory implant that records, and stores, all they do, see and hear. But total recall has its downsides.

So how does Charlie Brooker's new comic drama - the first of two, with a third written by Jesse Armstrong - open? A touching tale of a WI picnic in 1940s Lancashire? Not quite.

No, we get angst, nightmare and warped comedy dipped in the blackest of paint. A royal princess is kidnapped and the ransom demand - and please stop reading now if you're of a delicate disposition - is that the Prime Minister must have sex with a pig, live on national TV, or the princess gets it.

Rory Kinnear is brilliantly grim as the PM, horrified to discover his beastly dilemma is all over the internet before he can get a lid on the story. He and the whole cast play it very straight, deadpanning lines like "This is virgin territory, Prime Minister, there's no playbook" - which only makes them funnier.

What unfolds as the crisis plays out is filthy and hilarious, but with a dark, satirical edge. Think The Thick of It - and then some.

The idea of having different writers pen each episode of a sitcom is a good one. It's what they do in American television. And with old hands such as Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong in charge, Fresh Meat has kept up a high standard. Until now.

Tonight's episode of the student house-share comedy isn't bad, it's not bad at all. But by the standards of the series so far, it's a little... blunt. Instead of amusingly suppressed sexual tension between the student housemates, we have sex and (mostly) talk of sex, as well as drugs and talk of drugs.

The storyline that works best is between Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie)and her creepy tutor/lover Professor Shales (brilliantly played by Tony Gardner), who awkwardly criss-cross the murky waters between work and pleasure. Meanwhile, Kingsley makes a revelation about his (so far) sheltered life.

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".

As introductory scenes go, Fresh Meat's was unforgettable. "Sorry, I've just got used to wearing trousers of the mind" was the opening line of the year (and no shilly-shallying). To be honest, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's new comedy was going to need both, being (a), on Channel 4and (b), about students. And in the first episode at least, the Peep Show creators' latest managed to re-arrange the hallowed Pot Noodle and bodily fluid-stained duvet of mingin' cowp undergraduatedom and make it look new and bold.

I caution that this was only episode one because I liked the first of Campus, too, and remember how badly that series unravelled. Campus was mainly about the bored, vain, thwarted, cruel lecturers, though, and so far Fresh Meat has only given us one of those.

Long may it concentrate on the students: secretive Oregon, sweet Kingsley, scary Vod, Welshies-are-hot Josie, poshos-are-hotter-thanks-to-Downton-Factor JP, and not forgetting Howard, the token Scot with the obligatory inter-personal issues, played by Greg McHugh, who's managed to erase all memory of Gary Tank Commander with a brushed-forward barnet, one of Sarah Lund's cast-off jumpers from The Killing (The Real TV Event of the Year) and his fondness for a mixing bowl-sized helping of Coco Pops, his "one-er" of breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I root for Howard, obviously, but my favourite character is probably JP. Well, when you take his George Osborne-esque certainty, Bullingdon Club japery, monogrammed dressing gown, daddy's money, chronic chat-up technique and idiotic prefacing of the mundane (baked potato, high thread-count sheets) with gangsta rap crudeness, adding them to his sense of absolute entitlement over the best or least grotty room in the student house, he's simply irresistible.

"Yaa, boo, hiss!" This is how we're supposed to respond to JP.

Fresh Meat successfully launches with 1.5m viewers

The university-based comedy from Peep Show writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, Fresh Meat, debuted last night with 1.5m.