Matthew Rudd

The first two episodes of Lead Balloon on BBC4 have been nothing but a joy. Jack Dee might be playing Jack Dee with a sillier name, but his performance in a programme scripted with beauty and precision makes you forgive any element of typecasting or taking the easy option which the unduly churlish could launch his way. After all, the best writers write about what they know best. It's logical.

So, naturally, the first 10 minutes of Lawson's polite gossip with Dee was about the making of the series and Dee's own feelings as an actor and the writer of a semi-autobiographical sitcom [...] Whether Lawson's guests have had anything to plug or not - and in the main, they haven't - is only incidental, as proved by the case of Dee, through whom we got a fascinating, candid 50-minute insight into a complicated life and career.