Neil Simon

There weren't many duff notes in Friends, the slick NBC sitcom that ran and ran from 1994 to 2004 and, for those of us with homes full of teenagers, is still running and running. But one of its duffest notes was the casting of Helen Baxendale to play Ross's British wife, Emily. Nothing against Baxendale, but amid all that sassy American humour, she seemed as flaccidly English as a stale Rich Tea biscuit surrounded by freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies.

In fairness, that was kind of the point; we weren't meant to warm to Emily. And Baxendale, deliberately, didn't get many killer lines. But it wasn't just that; whip-smart, wisecracking American humour just doesn't sound right emerging from a British mouth. For the same reason, Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves) was my least favourite character in the otherwise sublime Frasier. It's not that British actors aren't capable of wonderful TV comedy, just that the dialogue in the best US sitcoms is rooted in New York-Jewish traditions of razor-sharp put-downs and one-liners. Think Woody Allen and Neil Simon. On British television, comic dialogue has a different rhythm.

Anyway, all of this brings me to Episodes, in which Matt LeBlanc (dim, amiable Joey in Friends) plays a heightened version of himself in the latest example of what is rapidly becoming a TV genre all of its own: celebrities indulging in a game of double-bluff with us, playing themselves as slightly more neurotic and prima donna-ish than they actually are, which of course suggests that they're not neurotic prima donnas at all. Steve Coogan did this beautifully in The Trip recently, as did Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. In Episodes, it is LeBlanc's turn. He plays Matt LeBlanc, hugely rich and successful thanks to Friends, who to the horror of married British comedy writers Beverly and Sean (Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan) is cast as the lead in the US version of their hit UK show. They wanted their British lead, a fruity RSC type called Julian (Richard Griffiths). But they get LeBlanc.

So far, so good. It's a great idea, with great opening credits: a script flying from London to LA. And there are certainly precedents for television successfully turning a mirror on itself; The Larry Sanders Show of blessed memory did it exquisitely. Moreover, there's something painfully real about British comedy writers being lured to LA by the sweet blandishments of network bosses and the promise of a Spanish-style hacienda in Beverly Hills, only for the semi-detached back in Chiswick to seem even more alluring once the dream starts to sour. You should hear the British writing duo Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who did the whole hacienda thing, on the subject. Yet I find myself unable to give a fat thumbs-up after the opening Episodes, and the problem lies with Greig and Mangan, or at least with their script. In a British context, they're both terrific comic performers. Greig was pitch-perfect as the hapless heroine in David Renwick's wonderful Love Soup. But here, trading waspish one-liners in the land of Jack Benny and George Burns, they seemed out of place. And although that's the whole point - that they are out of place - they should at least be talking like Brits, not Americans.

Still, it's early days. I have a feeling that Episodes will get better the more LeBlanc gets involved. And there have already been some lovely gags, like the friskiness that gripped Beverly and Sean when they saw that the vast bath in their rented Beverly Hills home could easily accommodate both of them, only for it to wear off while they waited for the damn thing to fill.

Brian Viner, The Independent, 11th January 2011

It was a curate's egg of a half-hour, not that a curate and his egg offer the best metaphor for a show about a loving but bickering family of east London Jews. In fact, it is a singularly ill-fitting metaphor, the expression "curate's egg" originating in the old Punch cartoon about a curate who was too timid to complain about a bad egg he had been served. There would be no such timidity at any table of Jews worth their salt beef. Even a visiting rabbi would spit out such an egg.

Enough eggs already. Grandma's House revolves around the simple idea, one that dates back almost to the birth of television comedy, of different generations of the same family arguing in a front room. Steptoe and Son did it to great effect, so did Til Death Us Do Part, so did The Royle Family. In some ways, Grandma's House is The Royle Family with chopped liver. In other ways, it is Seinfeld removed to Gants Hill. And the nod to Seinfeld is evident in the character of Simon (Simon Amstell), the presenter of a TV comedy panel show about music, which - just as Jerry Seinfeld played a stand-up comedian called Jerry, a mildly fictionalised version of himself - is precisely what Amstell, the co-writer of Grandma's House with Dan Swimer and erstwhile presenter of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, is in real life. Or was. Indeed, in last night's opening episode Simon announced to his family his intention to quit his TV show, much to their dismay. "In my kalooki group that's all we talk about," lamented his grandma (Linda Bassett).

The other obvious parallel with Seinfeld is that Jerry Seinfeld made it through nine seasons of that phenomenally successful show rarely ever being more than engagingly wooden as an actor. Good acting was the preserve of his brilliant co-stars and so it is here. Amstell barely seems to try to act, just issues his lines semi-mechanically wearing a half-smile, just as Jerry did.

Still, it didn't matter in Seinfeld and, strangely, it doesn't matter here either. Amstell, aided by the sensible decision not to run a laughter-track, somehow makes a virtue of his self-consciousness, and in any case, there are enough pitch-perfect performances, notably from Rebecca Front playing Simon's divorced mother, Tanya, and Samantha Spiro as his aunt, Liz. It helps that the writing, too, is often pitch-perfect. Tanya is being courted by Clive (James Smith), whom Simon loathes, but who is considered highly eligible largely on account of a 42-inch plasma TV on which "you can see every hair of Noel Edmonds's beard". And when Simon's grandpa (Geoffrey Hutchings) breaks the news that he has cancer (an unwittingly poignant detail, given that Hutchings died suddenly last month), it is questioned on the basis that "years ago he found a lump on his testicle and it was a raisin in his pants".

Just as a wandering raisin can be mistaken for a testicular lump, so can a promising first episode be mistaken for a good new sitcom, and I wouldn't like to commit myself too soon. Besides, there are reasons why London-Jewish humour is far less familiar to us than the kind of New York-Jewish humour exemplified by Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Seinfeld and Larry David (whose Curb Your Enthusiasm also has loud echoes in Grandma's House). It is no accident that the Jewish humour British audiences know best and love most has historically been imported, mordant and razor-sharp, from the United States. Nor is it any accident that Jewish characters in British sitcoms are, for the most part, pretty forgettable. It is more than 40 years since Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, and not even the warm glow of nostalgia does it any favours.

Brian Viner, The Independent, 10th August 2010

It could have been one of those dry, worthy, predictable tributes. Instead, comedian Jason Manford injects this lively look at the lugubrious-faced Northern comic Jimmy Jewel with tremendous verve, and a few dreadful jokes. For those who don't know, Jewel was a hero of the music hall, was one half of a double act with his cousin Ben Warriss, made Hylda Baker look good in the TV sitcom Nearest and Dearest and ended up a remarkable character actor, as his stage role in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys attests. By the end of the programme, you can't fail to agree with Manford: Jewel was one of comedy's true greats.

Frances Lass, Radio Times, 1st December 2009