With the advent of Freshers’ Week, we are bound to consider the hackneyed territory of starting university, and I’ve often heard people say that it could be made into a show: if you are of that belief, then wait no longer. The newest project from the creators of Peep Show, hallowed by those with taste as amongst the best British comedy series in recent years, is entitled Fresh Meat and chronicles that time we are all currently witnessing and indeed experienced one, two, three years ago.

The series mocks the young in all its folly, but through the jaded lens of the middle-aged writers, producing a cast of cliché after cliché: the cynical one, the awkward one, the pretty one(s). My personal nadir was the token cocaine scene, in which the token unbearably posh boy states, “this place is crawling with quality anus”. Please.

There are flashes of observational excellence (the “what did you do for your A-levels” fiasco), but this is thin on genuine mirth-inducement. One of The Inbetweeners cast is playing the protagonist Kingsley: it’s the same awkwardness, gabbling, long, pause-punctured conversations about tea and coffee and bed sheets followed by frenetic apologies, but without the raucousness of The Inbetweeners. In imitating the discomfort of the mass trying to impress one another combined with the apathy of one or two more nonchalant freshers, the programme suffers from a severe lack of energy.

With such a potentially rich premise, I can see why it was made into a series; unfortunately, if the pilot is anything to go by, the result is unoriginal. It describes itself as a “comedy drama series about the hilarious and painful truths of being a student”. Here’s hoping that as the characters mature, grow and improve, so does the comedy… and, indeed, the drama.