Fresh Meat

The students' thoughts turn to networking, and Kingsley catches the eye of BP executives at a careers fair. Howard's jealous, so decides he needs a new image, the results of which are accurately described by Vod as a "sort of special needs line dancer vibe". Not to be outdone, JP comes up with an idea for a new invention and pays some less fortunate students to work on it. Back at the house, an increasingly potty-mouthed Josie gets annoyed at the amount of time Heather is spending with Kingsley.

Fresh Meat series 2 episode 2 review

Jake finds this week's episode of Fresh Meat an improvement on the first, thanks to a strong cast and decent writing. Here's his review..

The new additions to our freshers' scuzzy house-share come into their own this week. Sabine is the wonderfully square Dutch housemate, a mature student who leaves notes to remind people to clean the grill pan and switch off lights. And Heather appears to be stalking Kingsley, or so paranoid oddball Howard believes. It builds into a splendid episode with just the right mix of character comedy (jealousy, stupidity, rage), farce (JP makes Vod his servant, summoning her with a rape alarm) and downright filth.

The baleful presence of stern new housemate Sabine wreaks inadvertent chaos among her flatmates tonight, courtesy of self-defence classes, cake baking and a shocking confession to tee-totalism that exposes everyone's foibles. 'How do you get off with anyone?' marvels Kingsley. Vod's money troubles force her to take a cleaning job. Howard becomes paranoid after getting mugged for his trainers. JP is bedridden with a mystery illness. By taking problems we've all faced and characters we've all encountered, then pushing them a bit too far (the term 'sex vuvuzela' practically defines the phrase 'so wrong it's right'), Fresh Meat continues to marry sit and com in apparently effortless fashion.

Has Fresh Meat still got student life nailed?

Now in its second series, can the Channel 4 sitcom build on the success of its first year?

Fresh Meat (Channel 4) has clearly eased into a higher gear for its second series. Nothing else on telly is so comically dense: jokes pile up quickly, and you always risk missing something funny by laughing. It's a brilliant mixture of intelligence and idiocy, deploying complex, evolving characters who can still occasionally sum themselves up in one line ("Insufficient funds," says Oregon, staring at a cashpoint screen. "What does that mean?").

The tension has been taken up a notch by the introduction of two new characters: Heather and Sabine. While the housemates we know well become increasingly transparent, these two are freshly opaque. Kingsley, as you might expect, is so keen to believe that Heather is stalking him that he's disappointed when he can't find her anywhere. ("Today," says Oregon, "it's almost like you're stalking her.") But we can't quite discount the possibility that Heather actually is stalking him. We see her largely through his eyes, and she does seem a tiny bit weird.

Howard's recent mugging has the entire household on high alert and misusing their free rape alarms. JP, who's come down with mumps, tries to use his to order soup from downstairs. "I'm sort of being raped by my lack of soup," he says in his defence. Unrepentant, he insists that Vod carry an icetray full of his sperm down to the freezer, in case the mumps make him infertile. I missed what happened next, from laughing.

Meanwhile, Dutch housemate Sabine, who looked set for an unceremonious exit last week, has established herself as an immovable force. As she's utterly straightforward and without guile, no one knows quite what to make of her. "I don't not like her," says Kingsley. "But I also don't like her."

It is a testament to the show's assured execution that the main characters, despite operating only in accordance with their basest motives, all remain extremely endearing. Except, perhaps, the initially sweet-natured Josie, who may be turning into the most calculating housemate of the lot. "I think you're not a nice person," said Sabine, after Josie broke Heather's arm. I found myself thinking the same thing.

Term two trundles on, with Heather increasingly attached to Kingsley, much to the chagrin of BFF Josie. JP is bedridden with mumps, with Vod the only person who can safely care for him. Howard becomes paranoid about household security after getting mugged for his shoes (or maybe just giving them away to three scary but silent hoodies), leading to new housemate/emotion-vacuum Sabine giving self-defence lessons to the girls. As ever, a huge amount packed into the hour, with not a single sub-plot left wanting.

Charlotte Ritchie: one to watch

The hit drama Fresh Meat has created a new star.

While sometimes not quite the comic steak tartare the title promises, Fresh Meat still provides enough smirk-raising moments, and often some unintentionally moving ones. too. Mainly in the form of Josie and Kingsley, who are still in love with each other and pretending not to be. Even though Kingsley, who's spent the summer growing a "muff on his chin" and now quotes Buddhism For Beginners, is suddenly in demand for his "hot man meat".

But the episode belonged to braying posh boy JP (the quote-perfect Jack Whitehall) who suffered an existential crisis when his chum Giles, with whom he shared experimental "power showers" at Stowe, turns out to be gay. "To bum or not to bum," ponders JP, like a public school Hamlet in a gilet, now forced to question every "toga party", "bender" joke and doodle of a "cock cat". Whitehall hogs all the best lines and it just makes you wish there were more to go around. Hopefully, Giles and newbie "foreign" flatmate Sabine will refresh the comedy bong water in coming episodes.

I loved student flatshare comedy Fresh Meat last time: it was funny and filthy and Jack Whitehall stole the show as the posh berk, the bad advert for public schools you expect from Channel 4 at times like these. Unfortunately Whitehall then played another posh berk in Bad Education which, after a decent start, became quite tedious. It suggested Whitehall could be a one-trick pony (and no stranger to actual gymkhanas). And it's had the effect of diluting his contribution to Fresh Meat, like he's been stealing from his own stash of cheap plonk in the student fridge without realising, topping it up with water.

If the metaphor is extended, other characters are starting to resemble overfamiliar foodstuffs and curling round the edges. Howard, played by our own Greg McHugh, is just a bit more odd, Vod is just a bit more scary, Josie is just a bit more unconvincing about having got over Kingsley, and so on. Of course they're students: any kind of decisive action wouldn't ring true.