Zawe Ashton's favourite TV

The Fresh Meat actor Zawe Ashton on her viewing habits, from The X Factor to Desmond's.

Zawe Ashton: no one at drama school could understand me

"I used to mumble a lot, which isn't ideal for an actress. That soon got beaten out of me!"

Zawe Ashton interview

TV Choice caught up with Zawe Ashton at the start of a new term at Manchester Medlock University...

Zawe Ashton interview

The Fresh Meat star on working in a cinema in Hackney, growing up on British television and moving to LA next year.

Zawe Ashton interview

She's the drug-addled, foul-mouthed student who steals the show in Channel 4's Fresh Meat, but Zawe Ashton is a lot more nuanced than her character. Now the actress is starting to put her own strongly-held opinions into words for stage and screen.

The traditional redemptive sugar substitute is provided by the "heart-warming" (your critical alarm bells should now be ringing) tale of a Birkenhead family holidaying in Lapland. Sue Johnston and Julie Graham star, and Zawe Ashton - so wonderful as Vod in Channel 4's student comedy drama Fresh Meat - plays the tour rep known as "Jingle Jill".

Filming Lapland: The comedy and tragedy of Christmas

Lapland covers quite touching issues that are affecting the Lewis family - like the loss of their family patriarch - and then my character, the holiday rep Jingle Jill interrupts with quite hilarious material. It's very much a comedy drama.

This show can be relied on for great weekly comedy

Fresh Meat's penultimate episode was another excellent offering, with good performances all round, but it's Zawe Ashton as Vod who is beginning to steal the show.

The casting in Fresh Meat is ­brilliant. Where has Zawe Ashton who plays Vod been hiding all these years? The same goes for Charlotte Ritchie, who plays Oregon.

I just hope these freshers fail their exams so they have to stay at uni until they're about 35 and we can keep watching.

This week, Oregon's affair with her sleazy English tutor (Lead Balloon's Tony Gardner) utterly fails to live up to her romantic ­expectations, Josie decides to split up with her boyfriend, doing Kingsley a massive favour, while JP and Howard attempt to score some drugs.

And what's Vod up to? Well, she's actually reading a book.

It takes a special kind of talent to make just reading a book funny or to deliver a line like "I've never tried risotto - who cares?" so that it becomes comedy gold.

And that's not the kind of ability they can teach in the new drama course that Kingsley has just signed up for. Although it offers other benefits.

Fears that oddball Vod (Zawe Ashton) may be a bloodthirsty murderer get the second episode of this student comedy from the creators of Peep Show off to a promising start - especially as the victim appears to be Russell Brand. Things become more predictable when Josie (Kimberley Nixon) suggests the housemates throw a party in the hope it might push her and Kingsley (Joe Thomas) together - hopes dashed when her boyfriend turns up unexpectedly. But that's minor trouble compared with the fallout when absentee housemate Paul discovers that JP (Jack Whitehall) has turned his room into a gym.