Fresh Meat (C4 student comedy from Peep Show creators, starring Inbetweeners kid and Jack Whitehall)

Searched, but couldn't find anything on this series yet, despite it being two episodes into its second season and, in my mind, very funny indeed.

It kind of feels like a "what happened next" for one of The Inbetweeners, largely due to the presence of Joe Thomas but also in the way it nails the haplessness of clueless teenagers who are desperate to be adults despite living in the responsibility-vacuum that is the first year of university. It seems far more sympathetic to its characters than Peep Show was, which perhaps explains the Inbetweeners-y feel too.

Jack Whitehall's turn as... well, himself, basically, is comedy gold, and the three female leads are excellent, especially Kimberley Nixon and Zawe Ashton.

It captures the humour of the university experience incredibly well, and much better than the short-lived Campus managed a couple of years ago. I know that a big chunk of people on my corridor (marketing / comms / press / web for a university) are glued to it. There's just enough HE in-jokes, characters observations, and obvious / ludicrous gags and set-ups to keep the humour varied.

Here's the wiki page for cast details etc - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Meat_%28TV_series%29

I loved the first series - haven't watched any of the second. Considering it's "another comedy about students" it's surprisingly sharp and nails a lot of experiences I've had directly on the head.

Get the two new episodes watched!

So many of the situations and interractions are so well observed, it's almost like The Office in terms of making me cringe in self-recognition. The completely incapable interractions between people only just discovering what sex is are amazingly on the money and remind me of things I'd long since forgotten (or so I thought). Kingsley and Heather in the pub in Monday's episode was just astonishing, as was the "today, it's almost like you're stalking her" thing. Housemate confined to bed with illness and abscence not noticed for several days was spot-on, too.

Is the second series funnier? The first series really suffered from only around half the characters being funny in the first place.

Love this unconditionally. The arc of the first series was unexpected and beautifully done. It sets the characters up as stereotypes and gradually enriches them, bringing in themes of money, class and the problem of fashioning a new identity for yourself at university - no longer children but not quite adults. The turning point was the acid road-trip episode - a broad sitcom premise giving way to real empathy. The performances are brilliant, especially Nixon and Ashton. Howard's the only weak link for me because he still seems like a sitcom character with no background or inner life. Otherwise it's wonderful.

I think we maybe talked about it on the rolling UK comedy thread? I haven't seen any of the new series yet, but I shall be rectifying this shortly.

I enjoyed the first series, but thought it got worse as it went on due to increasing seriousness of storylines (the girl being sad because her horse was dying was a nadir). Watched the first of series 2 and thought it was a little weak - I swear there were a few recycled jokes from Peep Show in there.

The Oregon/lecturer storyline was both slightly depressing AND unfunny, and although she seems like the breakout actress I don't really get what people are seeing in Ashton either. About halfway through I realised I was basically watching this for Jack Whitehall's character, even though I don't have much time for him as a comedian.

Emma and I can't stand him as a stand-up but loves him in this.

OTM (xp)

xp OTM

to Sicko - he's perfect for the role.

Yeah, I haven't been as sold on this series. Vod never having any money feels like it should be going somewhere, but I'm not convinced it is, the identity of the guy hanging round outside the house in the last episode was WAY too telegraphed and I don't get the point of the new flatmate at all. That bit of plot wasn't even needed, assuming the point was to bring Heather into it, since the whole point is supposed to be she's Josie's best friend.

Sabine worked really well this episode as a counter-balance / splash of reality. Reminded me of the couple of mature students I knew as a student - one of them was very much a safe-haven for me for several months, away from the madness of halls and 19 year olds full of drugs.

The bit where Sabine says she doesn't drink and they're looking at her aghast - "but how do you have sex?" - took me right back to being 18. I didn't think she'd work but she's great as a truly adult counterpoint.

I had the opposite reaction to chap to the increasing seriousness of the storylines. I loved seeing all of Oregon's boho front melt away as she reverted to the posh girl (not called Oregon) with a pony (much to Vod's horror), and then having that become the outlet for JP's otherwise inexpressible grief for his dad was perfect.

this programme is fucking embarrassing. I'm still a student mind...maybe you need a level of remove to enjoy it?

basically if a comedy can't make three stoned 22 year old dudes laugh it isn't funny IMO

Loved last series, really enjoying the new one. Still find myself muttering "EVERYBODY! DAVE'S FIXED THE DISHWASHER!" from time to time when a particularly thorny work related issue is resolved.

Feels to me like it's just the right level of funny and observational student life stuff, certainly reminds me on occasion of my glory years in Brum (although I never lived in such a massive student gaff). Vod obviously amazing, but tends to be JP who brings the big lols - his guide to life in The North last week was A+ ("They're all cabbies in the North, Giles...for a price").

Dwight, this is how I initially felt about Spaced when I first saw it. It was so close to my real life that a lot of the things people thought were funny about it just felt terribly pedestrian. I came round to it in the end. I think Fresh Meat is actually funny to me because it reminds me of a life I once led, and many experiences I'd rather forget about.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd get as much from this if I didn't have both a 10-year+ remove from being a student and the tie of working at a university ever since.

DL OTM about Sabine - the "how do you have sex?" line also took me right back to being a 1st year undergrad. Also OTM about the increasibly serious storylines - it reminded me a bit of Skins at its peak, too.

When I was a student we used to gather up to watch Jam. Essentially gentle, character-based comedy is not what makes you laugh at 20/21/22 iirc.

OK, second episode a lot better. Sabine is good I think, she reminds me of a lot of Dutch people I've met. Good of them to introduce a nagging older figure and make her actually quite nice, and probably correct in her complaints. Not sure the writers are great at plotting though; the muggers storyline didn't really build up to any kind of punchline for example.

The bit where Sabine says she doesn't drink and they're looking at her aghast - "but how do you have sex?" - took me right back to being 18.

Sadly I read this as an accurate comment on the British's attitude to alcohol rather than that of young people.

Love this show. Was at uni in Manchester and yeah there's a lot of subtle stuff in there that brings it all back. Howard is a great character, love his sheep jumper.

Bantonio Banteras

Yeah, I think Howard makes me laugh the most. Reckon I'm looking for different things in this show than the stans are.

Tonight's was crap.

I watched the S2 opener the other night and I kind of enjoyed it but I still can't put my finger on why it doesn't quite work. Think the problem is the core cast, it's either a lack of onscreen chemistry between the leads or (more likely) a lack of thought about how these characters might actually relate to one another.

Like with a series like Community (which admittedly has had a longer run to play with) they made an effort to explore the dynamics between different pairings within the group before bringing in additional characters and storylines. Even E4 comic dramas like Misfits give the viewer a real sense of a group dynamic at play. In Fresh Meat the characters go off and do their own things constantly and even when they're all together I don't get a sense of, say, how Oregon might relate to Howard (for better or worse). I know that's how things work in real student halls but it doesn't necessarily make for great sitcom.

I think the problem lies with the writing rather than the cast, who are generally fairly good IMO. The writers can definitely come up with funny lines, but as Matt says seem to have little idea how to bring things together into a dynamically funny whole.

Haha wtf at the last episode

Yeah that was slightly odd. The dentistry incident was flagged way in advance so it was almost anti-climactic, and played (as a set-piece) very obviously for lols. The burglary scenario wasn't outrageous though - a colleague of Em's apparently had a very similar uni burglary experience.

I think the two things that made it work were JP's eagerness to befriend a "native" - I remember the strange disconnect between students and locals well (and live amongst it now at work and at home!), and there's a definite strange glee in 'befriending' a local, be they a handyman, university employee (outside lecturers), someone you see in the record shop, or whatever - and Josie's continuing arc of emotional crumbling; although some incidents are obviously over-inflated for giggles, the emotional heart of it rings true to me. I knew people who went off the rails, who changed personality totally, who lost sense of who they were, for all sorts of reasons, and halls / digs / university is an awful magnifying class of a context for that to happen in.

am hoping they don't go all serious with josie's alchoholism.

Yeah I might give up on this, the last few have irritated more than amused me. Shame, the cast are all doing a fine job.

It took me the first five minutes of last nights' to decide I can't be bothered with this any more. I'm hoping the decline from series 1 is due to Bains and Armstrong concentrating their efforts on writing an ace series of Peep Show.

I realise I'm being a bit like Shakey on a Star Wars thread here.

i'm so far behind - have only one more episode to watch on 4OD - but have absolutely loved this.

will there be more?

love the fact that every single character is to some degree and on some level a bullshitter.

All students are. All young people are.

All grown ups too.

I see this and Girls, in their very different country-specific ways, as parallel riffs on the bullshitting and neurotic self-reinventions of youth.

Totally.

absolutely, Dorian, excellent point.

I've stopped visiting the ilx girls thread, tbh, as it was harshing my mellow big time. but one of the things i love about that show, and this one, is it has the courage to present its lead characters as selfish dickholes on a very looooooooong (and perhaps ulimately unfinished) path to any form of redemption or wisdom. really treasured how in the first season Oregon in particular was such a bullshitter, and so credulous of other bullshitters.

Not to bring up the old race/privilege/Girls debate again but one thing I like about Fresh Meat is how the different classes, and subtle gradations within classes, are thrown together - as they often are in the first year at university. I loved the relationship Oregon had to her own privilege in the first season - the attempt to mask her old self with a new identity, and how that mask was slowly peeled back. Josie was more interesting this season for the same reason, with her messy failed attempts to submerge her "boring" former self. And they're thrown into relief by a character like Sabine who knows exactly who she is and has no pretence whatsoever.

Am I the only person still watching this?

It remains excellent.

No, you're not - it's great.

Thought series two was pretty pants, is this one better?

Still watching. Find all the Josie/Kingsley stuff unwatchable, but the rest of it is still v good.

I loved the bit at the end of the last one, when JP was crying about his girlfriend dumping him and Vod was all "you're too good for her" and he whimpered "do you mean that" and she replied "nah, it's just what people say, innit?" and gave him a hug. Really nicely done.

Everything Vod does is golden. The Josie/Kingsley stuff *is unwatchable, but only because I'm pretty sure I was in a similar relationship during my first year at university.

I swear it's way better than when it first started, it's great. Appreciated Oregon's little story of everyday sexism - not sure I've seen that addressed in quite that way in thatmedium before.

I've been bingewatching this on Netflix, and I just got to the episode where Vod's mom comes to visit, and man oh man, it was brutal. Since they'd used black comedy before to deal with tough subjects (like JP's dad's death), I thought they were gonna do the same here, but then you get to the final confrontation and there's absolutely no jokes, it's all just horrible and tearjerking. But it was also good retroactive writing, because some things about Vod's character make a lot more sense now... And after this episode I'm even more in awe of Zawe Ashton's performance, the way she captures this specific kind of toughened, noncommittal type I'm sure a lot us were/are familiar with in real life.

Apparently there's gonna be a final series coming out next month? Can't wait to see that!

I love this show so much. Americans! It is now on your Netflix too!!

JP's brother looks and sounds like such a junior Cameron

I just noticed this on Netflix yesterday and this revive reminded me of what it is. So thank you. I'll get on it ASAP (Peep Show is all-time top ten for me).

new season just started yesterday

OTM about JP's brother. Didn't really enjoy this one (the central drugs storyline was crap), though Howard and JP still bringing several of the lolz.

That was really quite moving

And true to life

Josie didn't come out of it too well, but it was a nice, if rather low-key, ending. Vod defending Oregon in front of her horrible mother was nice, and a wee throwback to Vod's issues with her own terrible mother. Would totally watch a sitcom about JP and Howard flat-sharing, in the absence of any more Peep Show. I kind of wished the revision barge had been more of a focus of last week's episode.

(the fact they're flat-sharing in the future was in the deleted scene on the Channel 4 website)

I missed that deleted scene. I hope they don't make any more, this is definitely the natural ending point

I did a fist pump when Howard got a first and I'm not ashamed to admit it

I would have loved Zawe to become the Who companion. Possbly as a non-soldier alternative self.

Hadn't realised this was same creators as Peep Show. Hope they do something else as good instead of milking this with Josies new housemates or something.

JUst been reminded by the daredevil thread that this had a really great choice of music . Loads of MC5 and Stooges in the first few seasons anyway. Have wondered who chose the music for it.

Really wasn't impressed by the last season; the characters all seemed a little off, like the writers forgot who they were a bit, and didn't really care about them as much as they used to, which is a shame because I think the first two seasons of this show were marvellous. Kingsley's Italian/Swiss gf was a terrible character and a total non-plot. And the whole thing about Vodstock was really unsatisfying: the thing with the drug dealers stealing the money just seemed dumb, and then the jeopardy over how they would make the party happened was really half-baked (a thousand people partying in the house? how?). And I just really didn't enjoy what they did to Oregon this year.

I don't know. I say all this with love - I thought this show was so wonderful once - but I didn't really enjoy it at all this year.

There were a lot of good lines in it but not really any good plots. I still have a lot of affection for it.

Overall it was probably the weakest series but still better than most other comedies

Kingsley's Italian/Swiss gf was a terrible character and a total non-plot.

Her inclusion was justified by Kingsley's 'mummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmma mia' line for me

yeah actually you're probably right there, that was hilarious. and there were some *great lines in the show.

Am I a ghoul for liking this show? Some of the humo(u)r is problematic but A) Vod is one of the funniest portrayals of all time and B) the humor is much less problematic than say The Venture Brothers — another great show I recently rewatched but goddamn they really leaned into the 00s edgelord schtick in the early episodes.

Blimey:

Ashton was born in Hackney, London, on 25 July 1984.[4] She is the eldest of three children born to a Ugandan mother, Victoria,[5] and an English father, Paul Ashton.[6] Her maternal grandfather, Paulo Muwanga, was President and later Prime Minister of Uganda.[6]

... also this I didn't know:

Ashton is engaged to actor Tom Hiddleston. They co-starred in the 2018 West End and 2019 Broadway revival of Betrayal.[21][22][23][24] They have one child.[25]