Fresh Meat

The final round of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's comedy has been all about moving onwards, upwards and hopefully not downwards, as the six housemates approach graduation. JP and Kingsley take the coach down to London for interviews, the former on the way to his brother's company, the latter headed to the hallowed ground of 6Music, while Howard tags along in order to scope out the local environs of Ordnance Survey. More perfectly pitched comedy and perfectly pitched drama from this exceptionally good series.

Fresh Meat's final series has seen its supine students start to think about their futures, albeit with a fair bit of fantasy attached: JP wants to be a sashimi chef, and Kingsley thinks a geology degree will set him up nicely for a radio career. Oddly, it's only Vod who is sorting out her present, tackling her debt woes by getting a job at the pub - bringing out a drinking problem in Howard in the process. And Josie is on the hunt for new housemates: she's after people with the qualities of Ken Hom, Kate Bush and, er, Barney the Dinosaur.

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.

Channel 4 have built a great reputation for sitcoms. Recently they've given us Toast of London, Peep Show and Catastrophe so it'd be easy to think this fine run was continuing with Fresh Meat (C4, Monday) but it isn't so. On the contrary, the run has ground to a loud, embarrassing halt. Fresh Meat might inspire several emotions but none will be as potent as despair.

I mention despair because the show's set-up of a bunch of students sharing a flat will - if you're of a certain age - remind you of The Young Ones, and the comparison will be enough to provoke misery about the state of young comedy today. Aren't humans supposed to progress? The bold Alternative Comedy scene gave us rude, anarchic, hilarious characters who spewed out venom and spiky jokes about Thatcher and nuclear war, but now we have this: students in a flat with nothing to say and only tepid, vaguely humorous lines with which to say it. But perhaps we get the comedy we deserve?

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, Channel 4, TV review

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

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 Series 4 Episode 1 recap (Link expired)

The Fresh Meat gang returned to our screens last night for the beginning of the end (of term, and the show's four-series run). While it didn't quite get off to a flier, there was enough to keep fans interested.

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.