The buffoonish characters in Channel 4's comedy Fresh Meat soon win you over, says Adrian Michaels
In Fresh Meat they have something very good going for them, a large cast of clearly differentiated student characters all strong enough to hold up parts of an episode.
Newcomers to the show last night could quickly discern the different and entertaining dynamics in the Manchester student house: Chelsea boy JP(Jack Whitehall) boasting of his Royal connections and Coutts gold card; nerdy Howard (Greg McHugh), the “Pig Man of Arbroath”; pseudish Kingsley (Joe Thomas) – “I’m thinking of shaving off my soul patch”; the pretentious ladies Vod (Zawe Ashton) and Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie), too cool to admit that their trip to South America over the summer had been a disaster.
These characters quickly win you over, and, better, you are keen to find out what happens to them. The acting was well-timed, particularly in one belter of a scene where the characters awoke in a student bedroom in Southampton one at a time, slowly joining a sotto voce debate about whether two of their number in the same room were covertly having intercourse. It was like a tight rock band introducing the different instrumentalists at a gig.
The almost universally vulgar gags were delivered lovingly even while some were shamelessly stolen: scenes where Oregon was to one side doing English-Spanish translation for Vod and Vod’s Latin lover as they were mid-foreplay were nicked straight from the visit of the Spanish Infanta in Blackadder 30 years ago. But since none of the show’s target audience was alive then, why not?
