Jesse Armstrong

The last-ever series (boo) of Fresh Meat told us that comedy on C4 might never get better. Eleven weeks away from finals, one night off. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" asks tequila Josie of the supine JP, and therein awaits an entire ocean of stupidity.

The naming of JP's brother as "Tomothy", and JP's explanation, was quiet genius, as has been the strength of Jack Whitehall, and writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, all along.

Fresh Meat (Monday, Channel 4), Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's comedy drama about a group of Manchester students, is now back for its fourth and final series. Dennis Potter once said that you should regard your younger self with both tenderness and contempt, and this is a trick that Fresh Meat brilliantly pulls off with its own young characters, as, safe in the bosom of university, they try on various selves to see how well they fit. Like Bain and Armstrong's Peep Show, it's also packed with great jokes.

On Monday, with finals approaching, the students were increasingly mournful that their university days are coming to an end -- and many Fresh Meat fans, I suspect, will be feeling the same.

Fresh Meat review: time to grow up, sadly

Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's excellent comedy drama isn't quite as fresh as it once was - but it hasn't gone off. Just aged a little.

Fresh Meat's writers on their toga-party student days

Kitchen slugs, bathroom blazes, bodies in lakes ... as the anarchic campus comedy returns, its writers remember the wild (and not so wild) times that inspired the show.

It has been more than four years since the gang enrolled at Manchester Medlock University, and with graduation looming it's almost time for the student sitcom's japes and dramas to come to an end. As with their other hit series, Peep Show, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain seem determined not to let this one bow out quietly, though: the fourth and final series kicks off with Vod trying out a risky moneymaking scheme and resident rah JP getting a lesson in nepotism from older brother Tomothy.

Fresh Meat series 4: bleak truths and knob gags

We chat to the cast of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's university-set comedy drama, Fresh Meat, which returns tonight on Channel 4...

Fresh Meat review

When I first watched Fresh Meat I had no idea what to expect from the show or that over four years on it would still be going strong. However somehow Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's university-based comedy drama has gone from strength to strength and they've been given the rare opportunity to end the series in the way they want to.

Fresh Meat: it's time for the students to grow up

We may have seen the last of Peep Show, the fantastic long-running sitcom about two mismatched housemates, but another comedy from writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain still has one more hurrah to go. Fresh Meat (Channel 4), about a group of layabout, mismatched students in Manchester starring Jack Whitehall as misguided, perennially baffled public schoolboy JP, has begun its fourth and final series.

Radio Times review

So, after nine series, this is the last-ever Peep Show. Creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong make every scene and every word count in a final, hilarious dose of era-ending, squirm-inducing mayhem.

Will Robert Webb and David Mitchell's El Dude Brothers, Jez and Mark, suddenly become Trotter-style winners? Will Jez and Super Hans succeed with their outrageous plot to get April's husband Angus out of the way? Will Jez face 40 without lying to his boyfriend?

While die-hard fans probably already have a good idea about the answers to these and other questions, they will not be disappointed by the excruciating, downbeat brilliance of this fabulous curtain call. This is a classic comedy that will be sorely missed.

Super Hans' real name revealed - or do they?

Writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong say the truth might not be so simple, even though series nine episode two appears to confirm his real name.