It’s time for these students to enter the real world
We may have seen the last of Peep
Show, 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 Made in Chelsea) 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 The
Inbetweeners), “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”.
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.
‘What is the protocol when an armed celebrity fugitive is being chased by 12 police cars and seven helicopters?” asked a policeman in The People v OJ
Simpson (BBC Two). Another good question might be, how on earth do you dramatise the most famous reallife car chase in American history? The second episode of this lauded 10-part
American Crime Story series, focusing on the arrest, trial and acquittal of the sports star, showed you how it’s done. Last night the series really took wing. It was a sublime, multi-textured hour of drama, exquisitely shot, masterfully edited and sensitively performed, and directed with virtuoso power by Ryan Murphy, who has made a series operatic in scope, style and beauty.
Few criminal trials are betterknown. When the events of OJ Simpson’s arrest and trial for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goodman took place in 1994, the story dominated American news channels, and media around the world, for months. Even though I was only a child when it happened, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of the enormous significance of the case. This adaptation made the story urgent and real again. The tension built steadily, almost unbearably, throughout the chase, and my heart may actually have stopped beating at the moment Simpson finally left the car to give himself up.
We followed a desperate, erratic Simpson (sympathetically played by Cuba Gooding Jr) in the backseat of his white Ford Bronco with a gun to his head, demanding to be driven away from police. Though tightened up and dramatised, the dialogue stuck closely to the transcript of real-life phone calls made to OJ by police while he was in the car, which were used in the later civil trial. The action flitted between vignettes of those following the events: the police, Simpson’s defence lawyers Robert Shapiro (John Travolta) and (close friend) Robert Kardashian (David Schwimmer), and Simpson’s friends and family. It was a detailed portrait of America and its relationship with violence and celebrity.
If at times The People v OJ Simpson touched on melodrama, I can’t imagine a better way to tell the story than through this majestic TV opera.
Fresh Meat ★★★ American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson ★★★★★