Sam Bain

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.

New comedy drama about a student house share from Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the men who wrote Peep Show, and starring Kimberley Nixon (Cranford), Joe Thomas (Simon from The Inbetweeners) and Jack Whitehall (actually good at acting!). Don't be put off by the initial "youth" packaging: this is smart, sympathetic and pretty much adorable from the get-go. Lots of laughs, but the use of Waltz #2 by Elliott Smith at the end near breaks your heart. What an opener.

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.

Interview: Fresh Meat writers Bain and Armstrong

Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the writers of Peep Show, talk about their new comedy-drama for Channel 4, Fresh Meat.

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.

Written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the creators of Peep Show, Channel 4's new comedy-drama about a student flat at the University of Manchester opens with a semi-naked man making grunting noises over some hanging meat, and the tone never quite rises afterwards.
But for viewers who aren't easily offended, Fresh Meat's script is sharp, the lead character Kingsley is a sympathetic figure blessed with the endearing habit of saying the wrong thing to women, and the Gap Yah public schoolboy is rather amusing, even if his language will horrify anyone over 30 (if they can understand half of what he's saying).

Fans of current comedy may recognise a couple of faces in the cast: Kingsley is played by Joe Thomas (best known as Simon, the melodramatic sap who moons endlessly over Carli in E4's The Inbetweeners) and JP, the Gap Yah public schoolboy, is played by Jack Whitehall, the stand-up comedian often seen on panel shows such as BBC Two's Mock the Week and Channel 4's 8 Out of 10 Cats.