When undergrad sitcom Fresh Meat first aired two years ago, it felt like it could become a training ground for cutting-edge talent, and that the glamorous, talented likes of Zawe Ashton and Jack Whitehall would just be passing through en route to greater career triumphs. It's now three series in and, unhappily for their agents, but happily for us, the original cast members are all still in place. Like that half-drunk cup of coffee that festers under every student's bed, Fresh Meat can no longer claim to be fresh, but it has grown a life of its own.

By now, our old friends at 28 Hartnell are world-weary second-years and JP (Jack Whitehall) is particularly eager to demonstrate his maturity. He rechristened the house "Pussy Haven" and offered Howard (Greg McHugh) guidance in the fine art of pulling: "Freshers' week started yesterday, they're already getting less vulnerable by the hour." Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie) and Vod (Zawe Ashton) are back from a summer backpacking, where Vod picked up a Latin lover and Oregon discovered herself. Again. "I just realised some stuff in South America... like, some people are rich and some people are poor."

As you'd expect from the writers of Peep Show, it's still very funny, but they do play favourites. JP had all the best lines this episode, leaving new housemate Candice a little underwritten by comparison.

Radio Times review

The university comedy returns for a third series, with the unlikely housemates as second years - and there's still only one thing on JP's mind. Comedian Jack Whitehall was born to play the show's gilet-clad posh berk, who tonight gatecrashes the freshers' fair to attract "hotties". Rivalling Whitehall for the best gags are man-eater Vod (Zawe Ashton) and oddball Howard (Greg McHugh), who comes out with his most outlandish confession yet: he's landed a date.

Josie's in Southampton after being kicked off her course, but still mooning at Kingsley across cyberspace. There's also a new arrival: a home-schooled first year with an unfortunate array of knitwear.

Faye Marsay introduces new fresher Candice

The White Queen actress joins Jack Whitehall, Zawe Ashton, Joe Thomas, Kimberley Nixon, Greg McHugh and Charlotte Ritchie for the new series of the Channel 4 comedy Fresh Meat.

Do you have a girl crush on Vod?

Zawe Ashton reveals all about the women who fancy her hell raising character and why Fresh Meat's creators might "cut the cord" while the Channel 4 comedy is still a hit.

Greg McHugh and Zawe Ashton shine in Fresh Meat

While tonight's instalment of Fresh Meat didn't see the show at its best, there were still some great moments. I loved Howard's story, Vod's holiday romance and the fact that things between Josie and Kingsley aren't as solid as they'd like to think.

Zawe Ashton, aka Vod, is the coolest thing on TV now

The plain-speaking, adventurously dressed star of Channel 4's student sitcom is bulldozing through barriers for black women on screen.

The scheduling of the first two series of Sam Bain's and Jesse Armstrong's student comedy mimicked the university year by starting in early October, so it's a later-than-usual, but still hugely welcome, return for Vod, Oregon, Howard, JP, Kingsley and Josie - except that Josie has transferred to university in Southampton, her inclusion here a stroke of comic genius.

Renaming the house "Pussy Haven", JP (Jack Whitehall) starts a dry-slope skiing society with a strict admittance policy described as "eugenics run by FHM". Vod (Zawe Ashton) has meanwhile returned from her travels with an amorous South American she soon bores of, and Howard manages to land a proper date. The outcome is genuinely heartbreaking.

Psychobitches (Sky Atlantic) finished its first series last night (following last year's pilot), and anyone who says television doesn't make inventive programmes any more should watch it.

Set in the office of a modern-day female psychiatrist, who is confronted by some of history's most famous, unusual or bonkers women, it is surreal, but gloriously different.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the idea was pitched. "We'll have Eva Braun going to see the psychiatrist, and Joan of Arc, of course... Funny? Yes, of course it'll be funny! I know - we'll have Mother Theresa too. Hilarious!"
And, unlikely as it might seem, it works.

The characterisations are as inspired as they are off-the-wall. Last night, Sam Spiro gave an hilarious rendition of Jackie Kennedy as a female version of Columbo the detective, and Zawe Ashton played a madly feline Eartha Kitt. Frances Barber's over-the-top version of Catherine the Great was annoying but Harry Enfield gave a brilliant impersonation of "Mrs Alfred Hitchcock" looking disturbingly like Mr Alfred Hitchcock dressed in women's clothes. And Julia Davis was beautifully ditzy as Mary Pickford, the silent film star. "That's seven times now," she complained to the psychiatrist, "that men have tied me to railway tracks..."

The scripts (by a team of writers) are clever, but the whole thing is held together by Rebecca Front, who plays the psychiatrist with a perfect mixture of assurance and bafflement. I know that Olivia Colman has been officially anointed as the nation's new favourite actress, but for my money Rebecca Front is up there. From The Day Today through Alan Partridge, The Thick of It and Lewis to Psychobitches, she is always excellent.

I've seen a few things in the Playhouse Presents series. A bit like going to slightly up-its-own-arse arty theatre (only with big name stars). In my house we've chortled loudly, not because we've thought something was funny but to show we've recognised it as a joke. And in the advert break we've rushed to the kitchen to down a couple of pre-poured and now warm glasses of white wine, after which the second half has been more bearable and passed faster.

Psychobitches, though, which piloted last year, flies past, and is genuinely hilarious. The idea - famous people from history visit a modern-day therapist - isn't entirely new, I don't think (perhaps you can think of the examples: I can't). But it's written, by a vast team of writers, with such originality and wit, imagination and cojones, that it feels like a whole blast of new. In my house at half-time, and again at the end, we were comparing, and reliving - and relaughing at - favourite bits and characters. A nightmarishly needy Audrey Hepburn; Bette Davis and Joan Crawford bitching and backstabbing and bashing each other over the head with their best actress Oscars (it manages to be both clever and silly, a very attractive combo); Margot Fonteyn being very very old; Jacqueline du Pré communicating only through her cello, expressing love, childhood, adultery, coriander (a mournful downwards glissando, perhaps to signify distaste, or wilting?).

My highlight is Julia Davis's Sylvia Plath, but a Sylvia Plath who deals with all her internal strife and angst by adopting the persona of fellow poetess ... Pam Ayres. Davis as Plath as Ayres: it's a mash-up from heaven. Sharon Horgan's delusional, egocentric, megalomaniacal Eva Peron is also a joy, sipping her boobles (champagne) and naming leedle seedies in Argentina after herself, who she refers to in the third person. And the puppet-sized Brontë sisters, coarse Yorkshire slags squabbling on the sofa, mainly about (not) losing their virginity. "It's not me who's the desperate one," Charlotte squawks to Emily. "I'm not the one gagging for it that much her fanny's frothing like a beck in a storm."

So many highlights in fact, and such great performances, from the aforementioned, and from Sam Spiro, Katy Brand, Frances Barber, Sarah Solemani, Zawe Ashton, Jo Scanlon and more. Not forgetting Rebecca Front, as the kind, deadpan, calm (mostly: Audrey pushes her), but also human and very subtly arch therapist. "What do you have?" she asks politely, after Nina Simone has soulfully wailed: "Ain't got no home, ain't got no shoes, ain't got no money, ain't got no class ...". The answer? Depression of course.

They all seem to be having such a brilliant time doing it, it's impossible not to get swept along in the tide of fabulousness and sharp writing and cleverness-meets-silliness, with just a pinch of coriander lunacy. This is very funny women at their very funniest. Oh, plus one man, Mark Gatiss as Joan Crawford, also lovely.

Tonight Howard plays at Poirot after the house is burgled, Kingsley is wobbly-lipped with jealousy because Josie is monopolising his girlfriend, and plummy JP almost bursts with pride when he makes friends with a real-life Mancunian. But it's Vod (played by the superb Zawe Ashton) who steals the show. We're used to her barking behaviour but tonight something is seriously amiss.

Gone are the usual military boots, leather trousers, black lipstick and spiky thatch; instead, she wears a dress, long curly locks and a pink flower in her hair. Even more astonishingly, she's lost for expletives. Could it be? Oh yes: Vod is head over heels in love - and the fallout is hilarious.