New comedy blues

Oh dear. Bain and Armstrong have really excelled themselves when it comes to the awkwardness of British relationships, as Michael Deacon affirms.

Fresh Meat is a comedy about the beginnings of University Life (something which many of us are truly aware of.) I rarely laughed but instead found myself cringing and reeling in pain. We've seen these things before. This has some interesting characters. After all, these are the people who brought us Corrigan and Usbourne. It reminds me of a similar sitcom (with a much smaller budget due to it being BBC) released in 2009 called Off the Hook. This had interesting characters too, but I have discovered (from my own attempt at comic writing), that good characters need good, fresh, original words in between.

The characters have missed on accommodation in halls and have therefore been sent to a large suburban house with plaster board partitions and mouldy bathrooms. They all meet, they're all different characters; the drugged up waster; the weirdo failure; the naiive flower child; the lonely fish in murky waters; the normal girl. They're not supposed to work together. That's where the awkwardness kicks in. It's like scraping tungsten tipped screws down a dusty Victorian blackboard. Yeah, you felt that too. They go to the pub, a jock enters, has sex with one of the girls, then finds out that he, too, is living in the house. Warning: awkwardometer (I made this word up) on red alert.

One point worthy of note (and minor commendation) is the accuracy of the First Meeting. I've given capitals because of the sheer importance of this event in the life of the university student. This is where you set out your stall and where people will ultimately judge you in the future. Interestingly enough, in my first year I avoided this meeting and as a result made very few friends at Uni (oh those heady salad days, how I remember them fondly). Here I saw a few mirrors of people I knew at Uni. But the message I got from this was that you should be true to yourself and be open about new experiences. Don't think of me smoking reefa listening to acid jazz because that is not what happened.

In Fresh Meat, we see Oregon and Vod talking about gap years. Oregon, clearly in that naiive 18 year old frame of mind, she wants to impress and seek acceptance from her peers. As the episode continues, we learn she's more of a book worm and a geek. (This, dear readers, is where the blog author starts to fall in love with her. She's also absolutely beautiful too, but looks aren't everything, may I add).

Bain and Armstrong have used Joe Thomas from Inbetweeners fame. And they've hardly changed his character...which is fine if you want a sequel to those lads moving on to university life. I don't. I won't be watching this shitcom (see what I did there? I took shit and sitcom and put them together. It's been done before, like Fresh Meat) again. Channel 4 please stop commissioning this. Have the balls to say to Sam and Jesse, look guys, we like Peep Show, but this is awful. Come back with something different.





Peep Show Series 8 for example.