Jesse Armstrong

Channel 4's Fresh Meat has become part of the telly furniture. When that happens to a popular drama, the characters sometimes sit around on actual furniture and do little more than chat.

This can work, depending on the depth of our love for them, but now and again it turns out indulgent, if not disastrous - remember how badly This Life ended? Reconvening for a country house weekend, a favourite show expired through a combination of fierce hotel thermostat and crummy writing. Anyway, Fresh Meat returned for a third series with a lot of sitting around, though of course this is what students do all the time.

They loafed about in the flat, in the union bar - and best of all in Josie's digs in Southampton, where she'd transferred to forget about Kingsley. Only Kingsley was in bed with her and, discreetly, they were "doing it". Oregon was also in the bed because there was no room on the floor, so she said: "I'm having an involuntary threesome." JP was on the floor and he said: "Right, that's it, I'm having a wank." This idea caught on as Howard and Vod woke from their subsidised-beer stupors. "Let's have an orgy!" roared JP. "Come on, it's all been leading to this. Let's just throw ourselves into a sex pie!"

Puerile? Yes. Funny? That too. We know from Peep Show that writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain can do third, fourth, fifth series. These boys have staying power; much more than any course-hopping student fancying yet another gap year. And just because plum-coloured trousers have passed through their post-ironic phase, and just because lots of men who aren't posh wear them, and just because Made In Chelsea has given us real upper-class twits to laugh at, that doesn't mean that JP has outlived his comic usefulness.

He wasn't getting enough sex; in pie form or any kind. He decided: "I'm pulling out my privilege." To the host of the Southampton party, a traffic-lights party no less: "Would you kindly announce to your flatmates that a man with a Coutts Gold Card is in the house!" To a girl he fancied: "I could take you to a place on the Kings Road where Prince Harry got a handjob off an assistant manager of Abercrombie & Fitch." To Howard who, incredibly, secured a date with the girl he fancied: "I don't mean to be rude but she's a proper human being. You're the Pig Man of Arbroath." JP is a fabulous fool, played with utter conviction by Jack Whitehall.

In the latest series of Fresh Meat, Kingsley (Joe Thomas) says that whole weird thing, him and Josie, is "over like Dover". Actually, Josie has transferred to Southampton, but she's still a permanent presence in the Manchester student house via Skype on an iPad. And later they go down there, for a traffic light party.

There's seamen aplenty too - without the "a", I'm afraid. "I've got a sex engine and it runs on cum," says red-trousered JP (Jack Whitehall), all in a froth about the new batch of hotties. Since starting his TV acting career in Fresh Meat, he has pretty much become Mr Right Now. Quite rightly - he's hilarious.

It's sticky and smelly, spunky and puerile. There's not much in the way of story, so it has no right to work over an hour. But it does, somehow. Well, I do know how: by being very funny about the funniest - and most tragic - time (it also rings a bit true, amazingly). I think I can actually feel what a good time Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain had creating it. I know I'm having a good time watching.

It's series three of Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's comedy, and its student sextet are now reaping the benefits of becoming worldly-wise second-years. For sex-starved posho JP and "pig man of Arbroath" Howard, this means taking over the dry-slope skiing society and inviting female freshers over to an ultimately disastrous hot-tub party. Meanwhile, Oregon and Vod return from backpacking in Mexico, the latter with a boyfriend in tow, and Josie starts afresh in Southampton. But can she resist the lure of Kingsley?

This comedy drama about university housemates starring comedian Jack Whitehall is back for a third series, and this time they are no longer naïve freshers.

As the gang return to Manchester Medlock as second years, JP (Whitehall) is now their landlord, having bought the house.

They are joined by new girl Candice, who was home-schooled for the first year and doesn't know who Simon Cowell is.

But the ridiculous schemes continue as Howard and JP try to coax female freshers to join their Dry Slope Skiing Society, and there's trouble when Vod's hunky Mexican summer fling turns up in town.

Sam Bain, who co-writes the comedy with Jesse Armstrong, says of the partnership, "There is some shouting - although usually fun shouting rather than aggressive shouting!"

The scheduling of the first two series of Sam Bain's and Jesse Armstrong's student comedy mimicked the university year by starting in early October, so it's a later-than-usual, but still hugely welcome, return for Vod, Oregon, Howard, JP, Kingsley and Josie - except that Josie has transferred to university in Southampton, her inclusion here a stroke of comic genius.

Renaming the house "Pussy Haven", JP (Jack Whitehall) starts a dry-slope skiing society with a strict admittance policy described as "eugenics run by FHM". Vod (Zawe Ashton) has meanwhile returned from her travels with an amorous South American she soon bores of, and Howard manages to land a proper date. The outcome is genuinely heartbreaking.

Peep Show was originally a live-action clip show

Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show started life as a clip-based offering inspired by animated series Beavis and Butthead, say its creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong.

Writers' Guild Awards 2013 shortlists

Nominations for Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine, Joanna Scanlan, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Stefan Golaszewski, Susan Calman, Sanjeev Kohli, Donald McLeary, David Sedaris, Alice Lowe and Steve Oram.

Having Jez fall in love with Dobby has been the genius idea of the latest series of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's never-disappointing sitcom, which climaxes tonight in some pretty unsavoury places - not least Super Hans's flat. Dobby (the splendid Isy Suttie) is offered a job in New York, but should she stay or should she go?