Peep Show creators go back to college for Fresh Meat

Jack Whitehall, Greg McHugh and The Inbetweeners' Joe Thomas are among the stars of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's new C4 university-set comedy
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The cast of Fresh Meat: (left to right) Zawe Ashton as Vod, Charlotte Ritchie as Oregon, Kimberley Nixon as Josie, Joe Thomas as Kingsley, Jack Whitehall as JP and Greg McHugh as Howard

It is a thick, grey summer afternoon on an anonymous industrial estate just outside the centre of Manchester, and inside a vast, beige bunker, Jack Whitehall is wedged into a tiny room with several other young men, his mouth crammed full of drugs. Spitting out a succession of white bags, he turns to the man next to him and demands, like a posh Terminator, "Give me your shoes!"

I've arrived on the set of Fresh Meat, a new comedy-drama about student life from the writers of Peep Show and Four Lions, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. After missing out on a place in university halls, five ill-fitting freshers and one weird third year are forced to share a fetid terrace house. In episode one we see their first painfully awkward weekend together, and watch the house meetings, fights over bathroom rights and drunken fumbling that follow.

Students are funny, or at least their situation is. A bunch of young, confused, horny people given a clean slate to reinvent themselves, forced to breathe the intimate stenches of unhygienic strangers. You'd think it would have been done to death by now, but British television history isn't exactly littered with university-based comedy. After The Young Ones back in 1982 it seems to have just disappeared as an idea.

Why wasn't this show made years ago? "That's what we thought when we started writing," says Armstrong. "I don't know why there aren't more shows about it. We've got young people at a turning point, a lot of emotional and sexual desires and mix-ups. It seems like a natural area."

Bain interrupts: "Maybe we'll discover why when it comes out. When we started having writers' meetings last year there were a lot of anecdotes, many of which went into the show, and we just felt there's a lot of material here, which is an exciting feeling."

'They're quite sympathetic … We've accidentally made a show where the characters aren't totally hateful' – Sam Bain

THE SOUTH BANK SHOW AWARDS, LONDON, BRITAIN  - 27 JAN 2006 Sam Bain. Photograph: Ken McKay/Rex

Joe Thomas (AKA Simon from The Inbetweeners) plays the endearing, under-confident Kingsley, and is similarly puzzled by the lack of uni-set shows.

"It's such a fertile ground for comedy and it's something which people have stayed away from. I think it's because people are scared of [audiences] not liking students," he says. 

That may have once been the case. But we're a long way from the days of Viz's Student Grant. The past 10 years have seen the student population grow to represent a broader swathe of society. And maybe the introduction of hefty tuition fees and the resulting debt is finally garnering sympathy for a social group previously dismissed by some as self-regarding wasters. You have to want an education pretty badly now to land yourself with all of that.

"In Peep Show the characters are fairly unpleasant but it feels like in Fresh Meat they're actually quite sympathetic," says Bain. "Mainly because they're young. We accidentally made a show where the characters aren't totally hateful."  

Bain and Armstrong are drawing on their own, albeit distant, experience of sharing a house while at Manchester University in the 90s. They met on a creative writing course in their final year and decided to share digs. They've been writing partners ever since.

'It's a lot like working with David and Rob on Peep Show. It's nice having other writers around because they understand how hard it is to get a funny line' – Jesse Armstrong

THE SOUTH BANK SHOW AWARDS, LONDON, BRITAIN  - 27 JAN 2006 Jesse Armstrong. Photograph: Ken McKay/Rex

"We lived together for a year," Bain remembers. "There were four of us: me and my mate and Jesse and his mate. But then his mate didn't really like my mate and my mate didn't really like his mate and I didn't really like Jesse's mate and Jesse didn't really like my mate. So it wasn't the best …"

It's such awkward social uncertainty that Armstrong and Bain are so adept at capturing in their dialogue: a perfect fit for a bunch of terrified proto-adults, living away from home for the first time.

Viewers follow five characters – Josie, Oregon, Vod, Kingsley, JP and Howard – as they negotiate the visceral terrors of life away from their mums. At the heart of the show is a tentative non-romance between Kingsley and Josie (Kimberley Nixon), a sunny but sexually incontinent Welsh dentistry student; their rooms are separated only by a thin partition wall. "They end up showing their attraction for each other by having blazing rows all the time and telling each other to just fuck off," says Nixon. There's a tenderness underneath the potty mouth, though, and as the viewer is taken past the outer pretence and into the confused characters beneath, you just want to give them a cuddle and some soup.

As the Guardian's day on set wears on, Nixon and Thomas disappear to shoot a two-hander through a tiny hole in said bedroom partition, during which they talk excruciatingly about Kingsley losing his virginity. The director, Nick Wood, snort-laughs during several takes as Kingsley squirms under Josie's inquisition.

While the Fresh Meat house is peopled with flaky teenagers, the trailer village in the studio's car park is entirely populated by charming, confident high-achievers. All of the cast are in their mid-20s, and only one, Nixon, sticks purely to acting (she's already worked with Judi Dench in Cranford). The others are, variously, a top-selling recording artist (Charlotte Ritchie, who plays Oregon; she sings with classical crossover act All Angels); two sitcom writers (Greg McHugh and Joe Thomas); a successful stand-up (Jack Whitehall); and a prodigiously talented screenwriter (Zawe Ashton). But don't hate them because they're beautiful. Although, yes, they are also beautiful.

Whitehall is making his first return to acting since a brief stint as a child performer. He plays JP, a preening, posh pillock with a sense of entitlement the size of South America. He also packs a hip flask containing his own special brew: "It's port, vodka and Baileys – at Stowe we called it the Stoweminator."

'To me Super Hans is a total legend … I love characters who say what everyone is thinking' – Zawe Ashton

Zawe Ashton Zawe Ashton as Vod

"He goes through quite a bit of change, but when we first meet him he's just an idiot," says Whitehall. The bumptious public school boy could have been written for him, and Bain says the similarities were almost too uncanny. "Jack went to Manchester Uni and originally the character went to Marlborough and Jack went to Marlborough, too. I think his initials are also JP. It was a bit eerie, the connections, so we changed a few things."

Having a comedian and several writers within the cast has a positive influence on the show, in ways that become clear from the first episode. "It's a lot like working with David and Rob [Mitchell & Webb] on Peep Show," says Armstrong. "It's nice having other writers around because they understand how hard it is to get a funny line." Webb himself pops up in several episodes as a hideously embarrassing lecturer, Dan The Geology Man.

Greg McHugh, who plays house eccentric Howard, is well known to Scottish viewers as Gary: Tank Commander, a joyously silly sitcom he writes and stars in. The most comfortable in his own skin of all the residents, Howard has been at university for two years when the freshers arrive, but his former housemates have all moved on. The others ask if his friends just didn't want to live with him any more. "That … is what we must assume," Howard replies stoically. Armstrong sums up Howard thus: "He's like, 'Here I stand with all my weird interests – fuck you.'"

Although Armstrong and Bain have written only the first episode they perform a show runner role, ensuring their distinctive, naturalistic tone remains throughout. Perhaps the most recognisable character for fans of Bain and Armstrong's work is Vod, the cool, oblivious and entirely self-focused hard nut who clearly owes her comic heritage to Peep Show's Super Hans. "I love for you saying that," says Zawe Ashton, who plays her initially as an unsmiling git helping herself to other people's coursework. "To me Super Hans is like a total legend … they are two completely different characters, but I love characters who say what everyone is thinking." When Vod becomes bored with Howard's guided tour of the house she barks, "That's enough now, speccy Gandalf. It's time to lead us to the fucking pub."

Back in the trailer park, Thomas is pondering the odd nature of his job. "The places you end up are essentially waste land. It's just a load of caravans on a heath. Everything's in a state of suspended animation while somewhere nearby the same five things are being said over and over again. Even if you were there it would look like nothing was happening. A bit like students, I think. They don't appear to be doing anything … "

• This article was amended on 19 September 2011. The original swapped Greg McHugh's name for his character, Howard. This has been corrected.

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