Fresh Meat

Fresh Meat, series 3 episode 2, review

Fresh Meat has outrageous jokes and real heart, says Sameer Rahim.

Channel 4's Fresh Meat has become part of the telly furniture. When that happens to a popular drama, the characters sometimes sit around on actual furniture and do little more than chat.

This can work, depending on the depth of our love for them, but now and again it turns out indulgent, if not disastrous - remember how badly This Life ended? Reconvening for a country house weekend, a favourite show expired through a combination of fierce hotel thermostat and crummy writing. Anyway, Fresh Meat returned for a third series with a lot of sitting around, though of course this is what students do all the time.

They loafed about in the flat, in the union bar - and best of all in Josie's digs in Southampton, where she'd transferred to forget about Kingsley. Only Kingsley was in bed with her and, discreetly, they were "doing it". Oregon was also in the bed because there was no room on the floor, so she said: "I'm having an involuntary threesome." JP was on the floor and he said: "Right, that's it, I'm having a wank." This idea caught on as Howard and Vod woke from their subsidised-beer stupors. "Let's have an orgy!" roared JP. "Come on, it's all been leading to this. Let's just throw ourselves into a sex pie!"

Puerile? Yes. Funny? That too. We know from Peep Show that writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain can do third, fourth, fifth series. These boys have staying power; much more than any course-hopping student fancying yet another gap year. And just because plum-coloured trousers have passed through their post-ironic phase, and just because lots of men who aren't posh wear them, and just because Made In Chelsea has given us real upper-class twits to laugh at, that doesn't mean that JP has outlived his comic usefulness.

He wasn't getting enough sex; in pie form or any kind. He decided: "I'm pulling out my privilege." To the host of the Southampton party, a traffic-lights party no less: "Would you kindly announce to your flatmates that a man with a Coutts Gold Card is in the house!" To a girl he fancied: "I could take you to a place on the Kings Road where Prince Harry got a handjob off an assistant manager of Abercrombie & Fitch." To Howard who, incredibly, secured a date with the girl he fancied: "I don't mean to be rude but she's a proper human being. You're the Pig Man of Arbroath." JP is a fabulous fool, played with utter conviction by Jack Whitehall.

After it became one of my favourite programmes of last year, I was a little disappointed by the first episode of this series of Fresh Meat. I personally felt that there was far too much of a focus on JP, who's need to find a sexual partner made the character feel fairly one-dimensional. Additionally, Josie and Kingsley's relationship woes seem a little tired and I'm a bit fed up of this story that's been continuing since series one.

Luckily, the character of Howard seems to be heading in a new direction after finding a potential partner in the attractive Sam (Hannah Britland).

Once again, it was up to Zawe Ashton to provide the laughs as Vod's lost in translation romance was the highlight of the episode for me. The introduction of a new housemate, the home-schooled Candice (Faye Marsay), offered up some new comic possibilities and it seemed she'd been fully integrated into the group by the end of the first episode after being introduced to the wonders of cocaine by Vod.

While this first episode may not have been of the quality that I expect from Fresh Meat, it was still head and shoulders above most of the comedies that TV has offered us this year.

When undergrad sitcom Fresh Meat first aired two years ago, it felt like it could become a training ground for cutting-edge talent, and that the glamorous, talented likes of Zawe Ashton and Jack Whitehall would just be passing through en route to greater career triumphs. It's now three series in and, unhappily for their agents, but happily for us, the original cast members are all still in place. Like that half-drunk cup of coffee that festers under every student's bed, Fresh Meat can no longer claim to be fresh, but it has grown a life of its own.

By now, our old friends at 28 Hartnell are world-weary second-years and JP (Jack Whitehall) is particularly eager to demonstrate his maturity. He rechristened the house "Pussy Haven" and offered Howard (Greg McHugh) guidance in the fine art of pulling: "Freshers' week started yesterday, they're already getting less vulnerable by the hour." Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie) and Vod (Zawe Ashton) are back from a summer backpacking, where Vod picked up a Latin lover and Oregon discovered herself. Again. "I just realised some stuff in South America... like, some people are rich and some people are poor."

As you'd expect from the writers of Peep Show, it's still very funny, but they do play favourites. JP had all the best lines this episode, leaving new housemate Candice a little underwritten by comparison.

In the latest series of Fresh Meat, Kingsley (Joe Thomas) says that whole weird thing, him and Josie, is "over like Dover". Actually, Josie has transferred to Southampton, but she's still a permanent presence in the Manchester student house via Skype on an iPad. And later they go down there, for a traffic light party.

There's seamen aplenty too - without the "a", I'm afraid. "I've got a sex engine and it runs on cum," says red-trousered JP (Jack Whitehall), all in a froth about the new batch of hotties. Since starting his TV acting career in Fresh Meat, he has pretty much become Mr Right Now. Quite rightly - he's hilarious.

It's sticky and smelly, spunky and puerile. There's not much in the way of story, so it has no right to work over an hour. But it does, somehow. Well, I do know how: by being very funny about the funniest - and most tragic - time (it also rings a bit true, amazingly). I think I can actually feel what a good time Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain had creating it. I know I'm having a good time watching.

Review: Fresh Meat series 3, episode 1

A good return to form for the Manchester students, I look forward to next week's installment.

'I'd like to do it again,' reckons Howard as we join the occupants of 28 Hartnell Avenue at the outset of series three of the Bain-Armstrong studentcom. Howard's talking about sex, which looks like being the major theme of this series: after first year ('Beer Year') and before third year ('Fear Year') comes 'Spear Year'. JP inevitably attempts to lead from the front, forming 'Team Hard On' and taking over the Dry Slope Skiing Club in a bid to get laid.

Vod and Oregon are back from South America nursing an unspecified beef, while Kingsley's love life isn't looking quite as simple as it appears to be. And Josie? Stranded in Southampton, but still in constant touch via Skype. It takes a little while to get going, but it's never less than supremely watchable, with all the series plotlines neatly established, a promising newbie in home-schooled fresher Candice (Faye Marsay, late of The White Queen) and the cast slipping into their roles with consumate ease.

The start of the new academic year sees our favourite comedy flock return to the roost as seasoned second years for a third series of lessons in love, pretension and everything in between.

They're older but are they any wiser? Well, JP's salivating over the intake of 'fresh meat', Howard wants to learn how to pull hotties, Vod and Oregon are mysteriously avoiding any mention of their South American adventures and Kingsley's still in denial over Josie - who's gone but not quite forgotten. Ah, the wonders of modern technology...

It's series three of Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's comedy, and its student sextet are now reaping the benefits of becoming worldly-wise second-years. For sex-starved posho JP and "pig man of Arbroath" Howard, this means taking over the dry-slope skiing society and inviting female freshers over to an ultimately disastrous hot-tub party. Meanwhile, Oregon and Vod return from backpacking in Mexico, the latter with a boyfriend in tow, and Josie starts afresh in Southampton. But can she resist the lure of Kingsley?

Radio Times review

The university comedy returns for a third series, with the unlikely housemates as second years - and there's still only one thing on JP's mind. Comedian Jack Whitehall was born to play the show's gilet-clad posh berk, who tonight gatecrashes the freshers' fair to attract "hotties". Rivalling Whitehall for the best gags are man-eater Vod (Zawe Ashton) and oddball Howard (Greg McHugh), who comes out with his most outlandish confession yet: he's landed a date.

Josie's in Southampton after being kicked off her course, but still mooning at Kingsley across cyberspace. There's also a new arrival: a home-schooled first year with an unfortunate array of knitwear.