Fresh Meat

With Heather out of the picture, Kingsley and Josie can finally get down to the coupley stuff. First up, it's a camping trip to the country, fuelled by alcohol and lingering social awkwardness. Meanwhile, Vod's cunning (read, idiotic) plan to rid herself of Mexican boyfriend Javier reaches its end stage, though it turns out that abandoning him in Rochdale isn't quite the foolproof solution she envisaged. And the pub quiz provides the setting for the latest skirmish in JP and Howard's increasingly bitter battle over fresher Sam.

There's a lack of cohesion about this series of Fresh Meat. The elements of comedy and drama aren't quite gelling with the same effectiveness, while it's telling that the series highlight so far - the orgy that never was - threw everyone together in a room. That collective dynamic has been much missed so far, with Hartnell Avenue's finest largely paired off and in danger of retreading familiar turf (Oregon and Shales, again?).

Still, the incidental pleasures are there courtesy of Vod's continued efforts to shake off Javier (this week: a Rochdale shopping centre) and JP discovering that girls - specifically Sam - can be both cool and funny. A little underwhelming so far, but probably only because standards have been set so high.

Fresh Meat, series 3, episode 3, review

The reunion of the main cast made this the best episode of Fresh Meat so far, says Rupert Hawksley.

Fresh Meat has attracted a reliable audience with its lazy student shibboleths - the obsession with sex and partying, the disdain for housework - but if you took out the coarseness, erections and cynicism you could almost be watching Friends, a show about hugging. Horse laughs arise from the general shenanigans but in these inchoate relationships so too does drama of a softer sort. Vod (for me the least convincing character) may resemble something out of Viz, but her cartoonish wedding last week to a Mexican she brought back from holiday a week earlier drew in other narrative threads of resolution, pathos and reconciliation. For those of us old enough to have students of our own, Fresh Meat can be wearing but, three series in, is still surprisingly watchable.

Fresh Meat gets first class honours for student comedy

The Channel 4 show is one of the finest comedies to emerge this decade.

Fresh Meat series 3, episode 2 blog

For a show that started off relatively slow in Series 1, Series 3 has begun with a bang.

It's a complicated time for the housemates' love lives: Kingsley is juggling the attentions of both Heather, whom he's unable to break up with while her grandfather is ill, and Josie, who's basically living on a coach between Southampton and Manchester. Howard and JP are both after northern lass Sam, and Vod's Mexican lover Javier still speaks no English and is still getting on her nerves, but she has a rashly Vod-like solution for that, which Oregon disapproves of. Another cracker: let's hope this hot streak continues.

Is Vod really the marrying kind? You have to feel sorry for Javier. If only the poor deluded Latino hunk (Peter Gadiot) knew what he'd got himself into. That twisted romance is just one storyline dancing round the campus as spineless Kingsley balances perilously on a love triangle while JP and Howard lock amorous horns over a fresher who, frankly, is way out of both their leagues. Student days, eh, don't you just love 'em?

In tonight's pitch-perfect episode, wedding bells ring on the university campus. Delectably bonkers Vod decides the best way to get rid of her dishy South American lover is to marry him - to Oregon's despair. Also struggling with the finer points of romance is Kingsley, the wet lettuce of the show: he forgot to break up with Heather before locking lips with Josie last week. She's too busy trying to sweet-talk her way onto another course to notice. Not to be left out, fabulously self-centred JP and hapless Howard vie for the attentions of a fresher too smart for either.

Is it just us or has this new series of Fresh Meat not quite got going yet? It couldn't be boring if it tried, but with the Kingsley-Josie-Heather love triangle struggling to achieve comedy lift-off (haven't we been here before with these three, anyway?) and Vod subdued by Javier's presence, it isn't quite hitting the heights either.

It's still full of cherishable moments, of course; mostly courtesy of JP (slightly too expertly portrayed by Jack Whitehall), but they aren't quite coalescing into anything completely satisfying. Tonight, Vod announces a slightly counter-intuitive scheme for getting shot of Javier, there's more romantic confusion for Howard and Josie continues to waver over her course before alighting on pharmacology - to Vod's explosive delight.

With promising scenarios establishing themselves, we can see good times around the corner. But they're not quite here yet.