Fresh Meat: it's time for the students to grow up - review 

, the fantastic long-running sitcom about two mismatched housemates, but another comedy from writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain still has one more hurrah to go. Fresh Meat (Channel 4), about a group of layabout, mismatched students in Manchester starring Jack Whitehall as misguided, perennially baffled public schoolboy JP, has begun its fourth and final series.

With the arrival of JP’s obnoxious, wonderfully named banker brother Tomothy  (played by Richard Goulding in a pastiche of the worst specimens from reality show

) to whip JP’s life into shape, the gang decided to have one last crazy night of partying before knuckling down to exam revision.

Unfortunately, wild parties don’t mix well with this group of neurotic dimwits. Kingsley (Joe Thomas, better known as Simon in

, “a man who eats American cornflakes because he thinks it makes him more interesting” attempted to bed a sophisticated Italian woman to feel more grown-up. JP stared mournfully at a traffic cone he’d pilfered, wondering if “maybe there’s more to it”.

Fresh Meat: behind-the-scenes pictures from series two

Previous series were sharp and lively, with some excellent comic mileage wrung from the clashing personalities of the students in JP’s flatshare from hell. Despite the often horrifying dysfunction of the characters, the show was always wonderfully compelling because of the combination of smart gags and touching loyalty drawing them all together, a rag-tag band of no-hopers against the world. But it’s difficult not to conclude, from the strength of this episode at least, that everyone’s getting a little tired.

There were enough good jokes to keep things ticking along, but energy levels were low, and, for this group of doomed souls, almost every possible dynamic between them has been explored.

As the students approach graduation, they’re reaching the inevitable realisation that the student lifestyle can’t last forever, and that’s probably just as well. It’s time for everyone involved with Fresh Meat to seek pastures new – and judging by the careers many of the cast have built up off the back of its success, the future looks bright for all of them.

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