Stephen Mangan

Stephen Mangan talks about his parents dying of cancer

Stephen Mangan, 39, has appeared in TV comedies Green Wing, Dirk Gently and now Episodes. He talks openly about his experiences of losing first his mother and then his father to cancer.

Stephen Mangan: Motherhood is no laughing matter

Stephen Mangan tells Dominic Cavendish of the 'exhausting' business of giving birth in his new play Birthday at the Royal Court.

In a nice reversal of standard Hollywood sexism, tonight's slice of this enjoyable, postmodern sitcom, sees leading-man Matt (Matt LeBlanc) under pressure for piling on the pounds. The network bosses want writers Beverly (Tamsin Greig) and Sean (Stephen Mangan) to have a quiet word ("we need hot Matt, not fat Matt"). Matt takes it predictably poorly. Beverly meanwhile has issues of her own. She's off on her first date in a decade and needs some reassurance. Carol (Kathleen Rose Perkins) steps in. "They're going to give you alcohol. They're going to give you food. In two hours you're done. It's like a flight to Omaha."

Oh dear, it's really not a good day for Matt LeBlanc in tonight's episode of the critically acclaimed comedy, in which he plays an exaggerated version of his real-life self. His role in sitcom Pucks! is drastically reduced to make way for some younger, hotter, more popular talent. How will writers Sean (Stephen Mangan) and Beverly (Tamsin Grieg) break the news to him?

Pucks! takes a time out tonight when news breaks that Merc's father has died, furnishing the writers of Episodes with all the tragicomic potential of a funeral. As with so much of this series, it's a qualified success, as a procession of competitive mourning techniques (muffin basket? charity donation?) open up further faultlines in Sean and Bev's moribund relationship. Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig and Matt LeBlanc are now displaying the sort of relaxed chemistry that only comes with time, and the latter struts off with most of the best lines (the less politically correct, the better). But the attempts at pathos fall flat - these characters haven't done enough to earn our sympathy yet. And why sideline Daisy Haggard, whose formidable arsenal of disgusted expressions was such a pleasure in Series 1?

Blessed with a rich basic idea, Episodes (BBC Two) forges on. The basic idea is that the Americans are copying a British hit comedy show and, of course, changing everything. The British writers, played by Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan, are on the spot in LA to help with the task of butchering their own creation. Matt LeBlanc, always the funniest of the men in Friends, plays the randy American star. There is nothing and nobody I have so far mentioned that I can't laugh at, not even Stephen Mangan, who, after Dirk Gently, had moved, I thought, irretrievably into the category of Not Funny. The trick with Episodes is that it satirises the Yanks while accurately borrowing all their best precision. Television about television is hard to do. Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a sprawling mess compared to Episodes. There is an advantage to keeping the premise simple.

The satire isn't always subtle, but there's still much to enjoy in this British-led LA-based sitcom. It's the Americans who provide most of the laughs. Tonight, network head Merc Lapidus's (John Pankow) father dies, prompting a flurry of competitive condolence gifts ("a turkey the size of a Prius") that leave Brits Beverly (Tamsin Greig) and Sean (Stephen Mangan) utterly bewildered. Matt (Matt LeBlanc), meanwhile, is nervous about attending the funeral. He's having an affair with Merc's blind wife ("it's good, you don't have to suck in your gut").

There can be a lot of fun for a comedy actor, offering a space where the performer isn't obliged to share the credit for a laugh with the writer. There were two good examples in this week's Episodes, in which Stephen Mangan plays one half of a sitcom-writing team. The first was one of his specialities as an actor - the facial expression of a wrestling match between baser instincts and finer ones, played out here when he's offered a free sports car by the Hollywood star who broke up his marriage. The second came from Daisy Haggard, who played an irretrievably dim American executive giving notes after a script run-through. The line wasn't bad - "Page 18?... will anyone know who Rudyard Kipling is?" - but it was the long pause as she tried to work out how to respond to a counter-argument that was really funny. As Episodes can be, incidentally, when it doesn't get carried away with self-reference.

Sean (Stephen Mangan) and Bev's show-within-a-show suffers a ratings drop in episode two. However, star Matt LeBlanc is more concerned about providing some recompense for splitting up their marriage.

In fact, the scenes in which he tries to buy back Sean's friendship suggest this would have been funnier pared back into a simpler LeBlanc/Mangan chalk-and-cheese comedy.