If you missed the first series, Fresh Meat is Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain (of  Peep Show fame)’s hilariously awkward vision of student life, a mine of comic potential that hasn’t been so successfully tapped since  The Young Ones.

Previously, the writers exploited students’ attempts to reinvent themselves when they start university, with each one trying and failing to be something they’re definitely not. Joe Thomas as the sweet, fumbling and virginal Kingsley managed to acquire the not-so-apt nickname ‘the pussyman’ and the previously horse-loving Melissa turned up at Uni as self-styled hippie ‘Oregon’. 

A new series means a new term and more attempts at a new start: Kingsley has regenerated again and is now sporting a god-awful excuse for a beard and some pseudo-zen philosophy to match: ‘what a thing does is what a thing is, I’m just letting it do its thing.’ The ongoing romantic subplot between Kingsley and Josie certainly hasn’t changed though: they continue to fail to get together just as drastically.

This story still has plenty of run in it, but it was largely background material this week as Jack Whitehall’s bumbling toff JP stole the show. Whitehall gets a lot of stick for playing nothing but exaggerated versions of himself, and perhaps this is true. But to be honest, he does it really well, so who cares?  Although his portrayal occasionally edges too far into caricature – ‘Sorry, I don’t speak posh’ is one understandable response to his ‘banter’ – several of his moments in this opener are simply golden. 

Showing Giles around (a new transfer from Exeter and an old school-friend from Stowe), JP revels in imparting his knowledge of the local lingo: ‘owt is any, nowt is none… tea is supper, dinner is lunch.’ When Giles reveals he is gay, however, JP finds this harder to adapt to – largely because memories of shared ‘power showers’ (‘you know – like, extreme washing’) at school cause him to question his own sexuality. He is hilariously befuddled – ‘bi-furious’ as Kingsley puts it. But after some patient explanation from Giles that ‘I don’t want to bum you, and you don’t want to bum me’ he is back on form, proudly presenting his gay best friend to the housemates as a new addition to the gang. The thing is, they’ve already promised the room to the iron-willed and frighteningly officious Sabine, who, it seems, does not suffer fools, or people who renege on rental agreements. This could, and probably will, get ugly.

Meanwhile, Oregon’s liaison with Professor Schales is well and truly over, though he refuses to accept it, stumbling around the faculty recalling halcyon days of reading ee cummings to her and weeping, and Howard is still  bloody brilliant. Greg McHugh’s deadpan delivery is a consistent highlight and more Howard  can only be a good thing. It looks like this series will be as compelling as the first. The strength of every member of this young cast is what really makes this show shine and, on the evidence of this first episode, they’re only getting stronger in Series 2.

It’s the summer of 2010. I’m slightly more fresh-faced than I am now, having yet to discover Beowulf. I’ve just spent a tedious year learning important life skills, like how to move a 650W light without breaking everything, so when the opportunity came up to move to Canada for a month and move lights on a whole other continent, I wasn’t going to turn it down. 

The project is called  Locked in a Garage Band and it’s a feature film that raised $20,000 on a website called Kickstarter. I met the producer, Victoria Westcott, on Twitter and interviewed her for a podcast. After following the project through to Crowdfunding fruition, I asked whether there might be room on the set for me.

 A few months later, I arrived in Vancouver and, about five hours after that, I was in the small(ish) town of Mission, British Columbia (coincidentally the hometown of Cherwell favourite Carly Rae Jepsen). 

Victoria was making the film with her sister Jennifer, who is the writer and director of the film. They are both from Vancouver Island, which someone tried to tell me was the same size as Germany (it’s not) but, logistically, it was hard for them to get the top British Columbia actors to go over to the island for the shoot, so they moved production, first to Vancouver, and then to the town of Mission, which seems to mainly be famous for vagrancy. For all its apparent problems with homelessness and drug addiction, Mission turned out to be a quaint little town which didn’t even have a Starbucks.

 I spent a few weeks (one of preproduction, two of production and then a few days as a tourist) basically locked in the eponymous garage. It’s a single location set-up: a group of kids who’ve just graduated from high school get locked in their garage when rehearsing for their band and are forced to confront all their issues. In order to pull this off, however, the cast and crew had to live through much of the plot. The garage was like an oven, filled with about fifteen people at any one time and countless burning lights. That’s where pretty much the whole film was shot so, as you can imagine, it’s hard for me to avoid seeing those breeze block walls in my nightmares.

Writer,  director,  producer,  cinematographer, actors, me – we all lived in the house. I never knew who I was going to be sharing my room with (I remember waking up one morning to have Andrew Jenkins, the film’s leading man, informing me that he would be wearing my underwear today) or who I might walk in on in the shower. Sometimes it was the ridiculously attractive actors, at other times it was a member of the resolutely ‘behind the camera’ crew. Whilst it was claustrophobic at times (I occasionally had to make the 40 minute walk to the local cinema just to get some space) on the whole it was remarkably easy to live with. 

The reason that this experience in June 2010 comes flooding back to me is that, last week, I attended the Raindance Film Festival world premiere of the film, and finally got to see what all those sweaty shooting days turned into. The answer was a very funny Canadian teen comedy, although that’s somewhat missing the point of my nostalgia. In almost every shot I could see myself (not literally, thank God) crouched off screen serving some, usually useless, function. When the rat scrambles about behind some boxes, I remember making that movement with a stick. When someone opens a business school letter, I remember writing and signing it. When a can of Snapple mysteriously disappears between shots, I remember drinking it. 

It’s a small contribution to a film that has required an enormous amount of time and commitment from the Westcott sisters, but, as summer jobs go, this must be pretty much as good as it gets. You can have your Deloitte internships but I’d rather this any day. Even if you only get to be the hand behind a stick that’s pretending to be a rat. 

Taken in its context: a small scale, six-piece performance meant for continuous giggles, Gap Year: A New Musical Comedy made for a swell fit in the intimate Old Fire Station Theatre. Though not quite “New”, as it plays off the consistent just-leaving-high-school tropes of new friends, unfortunate crushes, and the search to “find oneself”, the musical keeps one laughing while not stepping too hard on too many toes.

Joe Hinds performed a humorous yet solid leading role as Tom, the nervous high school over-achiever, who attempts to flee expectations by taking a three-month backpacking trip through Australia. Tom meets traveling companion Holly (played by Bethan McCann) before departing, and she proves to be the willing agent in pushing him from mishap to revelation. Gap Year employs all the conventions one would imagine while backpacking in Australia: diving in the Great Barrier Reef, sleeping through nights at a rat-infested hostel, trekking around Ayer’s Rock, and touring Sydney. Yet each event is done with a witty twist and an ever-pleasant array of characters from a cokehead bus driver to obnoxious American cheerleaders to a posh, “chundering” Gideon (a certain nod to the Youtube sensation of which the idea for this musical germinates).

From a musical perspective, the songs are fluid and fun. Though composers Tim Gilvin and Patrick Stockbridge seem like relative newcomers to the musical game, they sport impressive resumes and do not disappoint with Gap Year. Unfortunately, their songs make the common mistake of trying to do too much in a small space. Many of the catchy tunes, though pleasant at first, hang around a tad too long and often pair cluttering layers of lyrics, which only prove unintelligible. Yet these slights are more than remedied by the impeccable harmonization of the entire cast with each slip-up quickly buttered over, like honey to the Uni-bred, backpacker-at-heart’s ears. When they are on it, they are utterly melodious, and none are left unimpressed.

As for the comedy, scriptwriter Dan John certainly succeeds in keeping the crowd in high spirits at a quick pace. Gap Year has the fair share of sexual puns, queer asides, and foreigner bashing that one would assume of a play written and acted by a cast of twenty-somethings, but they pull it off in a reasonably respectable manner. Though much of the comedy is somewhat predictable, it is passed around in a light-hearted banter that makes it hard to suppress a constant chuckle.

The cast of six works as a solid unit, remarkably for such widespread newcomers. Never is a role irrelevant. And because of the small number, it is often the minor role-players who bear the challenges of putting on varying characters (I assume Glee had much to do with the cheerleaders’ ability to sing in unwavering American accents). All in all, Gap Year is enticingly active and charming. The musical certainly tops whatever else you were planning on doing this evening, be it “chundering” up those three-pound Jagerbombs or blasting club remixes of Rihanna down your ear holes. And the final message of “Just go to Uni, you wuss! It’ll be fun!” is something any self-interested Oxonian can relate to with a smile.

3 AND A HALF STARS

It was nice not to have studied A View From the Bridge. I went with a completely open mind, not knowing the story, the characters nor how sad the ending was going to be – although I had heard it was tragic. Opening with a narrator who framed the story and took the audience back, the set became a small, minimalist apartment dining room. Its size and structure was perfect to place the scenes within a claustrophobic intensity where relationships often overlapped and the ever-present emotional tension looked set to seep onto the Playhouse boards.

 The play begins just before the arrival of two illegal immigrants from Italy in the house of Eddie Carbone, who lives with his wife, Bea and niece Catherine. It’s clear from Eddie’s response to the announcement that his niece has found herself a job, that his overprotective nature and concealed obsession are about to dictate the lives of the main characters, an obssession which accelerates with the arrival of Marco and Rodolpho, who Catherine quickly falls in love with. The cast managed to create a sufficient amount of suspense through the development of the story; Catherine’s jovial naivety and Bea’s yearning for the resurrection of her marriage complimenting the practical desires of the relatives who are there for work, regardless of the love of their families or the beauty of Italy that they leave behind. As Rodolpho observes, ‘you can’t cook a view.’

 Barney White’s portrayal of Eddie was outstanding, partly for achieving the accent without force or farce, but mainly for a perfect communication of his character’s tortured emotion: his torn loyalties and his feelings for those he supposedly loves. Peter Huhne’s Rodolpho I was fearful at times of becoming too caricatural, but mostly his comedic turns of phrase and reactions to Eddie or Catherine were charming and loveable, and conveyed vulnerability, if occasionally slightly lost in pre-emptive muffled laughter from the audience. The female characters were also interesting, if a little overshadowed by such prominent performances from the main male performances, though I think this was intentional and represented the controlled and strained relationships that formed the basis of the whole story. 

 On the whole, the play was very good but I can’t help but feel this was significantly due to such a strong and sympathetic lead performance, which left me genuinely on the edge of my seat towards the end. A social commentary and emotional story, the final scene didn’t require a closing narration, or an influx of supporting actors who just crowded the stage, but it left a bitter taste, a moral conundrum. Eddie had asserted, ‘some people are not people,’ and A View From the Bridge no doubt made you consider whether there is any truth in that.

 4 STARS