Steve Coogan

Tim Key: Deadpan poet's society

Steve Coogan is a big fan, but Tim Key doesn't do sold-out arenas and TV stand-up - and he loves it when no one laughs at his verse.

Coogan: Top Gear's offensive stereotyping went too far

Comedy can't always be safe, and sometimes entertainers need to challenge social orthodoxies. But 'saying the unsayable' is different from simply recycling offensive cliches about Mexicans.

Steve Coogan attacks Top Gear's 'ignorant' stars

Show's presenters are 'three rich, middle-aged men laughing at poor Mexicans'.

Judge backs Coogan on phone hacking plea

Police have been ordered by a High Court judge to hand over seized documents relating to the alleged hacking of comedian Steve Coogan's mobile phone.

Three episodes in, and this comedy about how American studios set about adapting British TV series isn't getting any better. Matt LeBlanc is actually rather charming as an exaggerated version of himself, although unlike Steve Coogan in The Trip or the brilliantly excruciating guest cameos in Extras, he hasn't been asked to venture very near the knuckle when sending himself up. However, the main problem is that Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig, who play the two British scriptwriters out of their depth in Hollywood, are just plain annoying. All their jokes at the expense of the vain, insincere Americans fall flat because their smug reserve is equally unlikeable. Tonight, LeBlanc and Sean (Mangan) try to bond in Las Vegas.

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.

There are only two legitimate excuses for not watching The Trip over Christmas. The first is that you've already seen it, and the second is that you spent Christmas Day eating to such a relentless degree that the sight of food completely repulses you. If you don't fall into either of those categories, then a viewing is mandatory. The promos might have made this BBC series look like one long self-indulgent Michael Caine-off, but there's so much more to it than that. Steve Coogan gives a layered, pathos-drenched career-best performance - as himself, admittedly - and Rob Brydon proves to be his perfect foil. And Michael Winterbottom manages to make the Lake District look more beautiful than ever. It's extremely funny, too. Quite possibly the best TV series of the year.

Radio Times review

Even more brutally self-lacerating than Simon Amstell's portrayal of himself in Grandma's House was this extraordinary confessional from Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.

A shapeless, talky, part-improvised thing with the will-this-do premise of the pair touring the north of England to review restaurants, The Trip saw Coogan play a needy, competitive egotist, terrified of career stagnation and depressed by his wrecked personal life.

Brydon, equally bravely, presented a comedian who's addicted to easy laughs, constantly doing impressions to avoid being himself. Yes, it was incredibly funny - a whole half-hour could be dedicated to Coogan and Brydon trading impersonations and improvisations, and many episodes weren't far off doing just that. But The Trip stood out as one of the most uncompromising celebs-as-themselves comedies ever.

Never take a TV hit for granted. I'd raved about The Trip and for five weeks it was brilliant, but am I allowed to say I thought the final episode was the weakest, that it teetered on the edge of sentimentality much like Steve Coogan teetered on those stepping stones over the river at Bolton Abbey?

No show is absolutely note-perfect and it's only because Coogan and Rob Brydon set such a high standard for themselves that I raise this minor grump. Real or pretend, Coogan went into The Trip mildly haunted by Alan Partridge, then laid down his best post-Partridge work. Who won the battle of the impressions? I loved Coogan's submarine noises and his Liam Neeson ("I WILL hunt you down"). The Michael Caine, Roger Moore and Woody Allen face-offs probably ended in draws but I think I'd have to give it to Brydon for his Al Pacino, his Ronnie Corbett and his generic Bond villain.

Come, come, Mr Bond, you like food-based comedy love-in travelogues just as much as I do.

The Trip gives tourists a taste for the Lakes

The Trip, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, has given a huge boost to visitor numbers in the Lake District, Lancashire and the Dales.