Zawe Ashton

Fresh Meat at 10

A decade on from freshers, TV's top students remember their raucous heyday. "We were basically dirty, smelly Friends".

Top 40 TV Shows of 2016: #29 Fresh Meat

As usual, these six episodes were wince-inducingly familiar for anyone who's every sat through a terrible job interview, thrown a half-arsed party or embarked on an ill-advised relationship, touched with moments of real pathos as the gang said one final farewell to their student home.

We say a fond farewell and rather a sad goodbye to the students of Manchester Medlock University in the final episode of Fresh Meat. As a massive fan of all four series of the comedy drama I was hoping for a satisfying finale and thankfully I wasn't disappointed. The episode started with all of the gang, bar second year Josie (Kimberley Nixon), learning their final grades for their course. Most got what they were expecting with the exception of Vod (Zawe Ashton) who achieved a 2:1 and Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie) who got a 2:2 despite her feeling that she deserved a better grade. There was also good news for Howard (Greg McHugh) as he achieved his dream of a first and a job at Ordnance Survey however he briefly believed that all of his housemates would be coming with him. Luckily after working at Vod's graduation ball, which was moved to their house, Howard acquired the social skills he needed to live with other people. Elsewhere Josie finally realised that she had feelings for JP (Jack Whitehall) especially after he finally stood up to his brother and rejected an offer of the job at his bank. Instead JP hoped to live his dream of being an estate agent and if he was really being able to drive one of those minis. I do feel that everybody pretty much got what they deserved and the extra scene that was available online saw all of the boys living together whilst Vod and Oregon were in Laos researching the latter's novel. I did worry that writer Tony Roche would have a lot to get through but I think he gave each character an equal amount of time however I felt that this final episode deserved a little more than fifty minutes to wrap everything up. As is always the way with Fresh Meat, the comic moments were incorporated with elements of drama such as JP standing up to Tomothy and Oregon finally revealing her true self to her parents. My favourite revelation of this final episode had to be the fact that Howard actually lived two streets away from the share house and that his annoying parents kept trying to invite the rest of the gang round. Overall I feel that all six of the cast members have benefited from their time on Fresh Meat and most have already gone on to bigger and better things. So while I've enjoyed spending time with the gang over the past four and bit years I feel it's best that we never return to see what these characters are up to again as it would spoil for what has been in my opinion an almost perfect series.

Fresh Meat, Channel 4, TV review

The antics of this larger-than-life lot still appeals way beyond the student realm.

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.

9 questions for the cast of Fresh Meat

JP, Vod, Howard, Oregon, Kingsley and Josie are back for one final series. But is this really the end of the Channel 4 comedy?

Fresh Meat cast interview

Towards the end of last year, I caught up with the cast of Fresh Meat; Zawe Ashton (Vod), Charlotte Ritchie (Oregon), Joe Thomas (Kingsley), Kimberley Nixon (Josie) and Jack Whitehall (JP), ahead of the fourth (and sadly) final series.

Zawe Ashton would love a Fresh Meat movie

Zawe Ashton - Vod herself - told Digital Spy​ that she would totally be up for making a movie sequel in the future.

A vocal Twitter audience aside, scarcely anyone's been watching Channel 4's office saga. A shame, because they would have seen a mordantly funny dissection of post-uni existence, anchored by fine performances from Zawe Ashton, as beleaguered civil servant Katherine, and Sacha Dhawan, as her permanently mashed-up "boss" Danny. Still, this age of timeshifted viewing means that no show is truly "dead', and there's a chance Not Safe For Work will find a second life online.

This Zawe Ashton-starring dramedy is mounting in momentum as the various members of the team (even wild card Danyak) continue their journey from Northampton to London to present to the minister. Along the way, backstories previously hinted at are fleshed out, past ghosts confronted and so forth. It's often said that travel is all about the journey, not the getting there, but it's fair to say that the arrival at the ministry is pretty magnificent, too. Such a good series: warm and absurd, serious and moving.