Tamsin Greig

Episodes episode 1 review: series premiere

Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig star in the new comedy series Episodes. Here's Ryan's review of its debut show...

Matt LeBlanc curbs his enthusiasm, playing himself alongside Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig in this comedy about two British TV writers whose award-winning show about a charming, erudite English headmaster is picked up for a US remake by a boorish US producer who immediately inserts LeBlanc into the lead role. It lacks big laughs, but has a similar charm to another Mangan vehicle, Free Agents.

You really have to admire BBC2 for being so single-minded and indeed innovative in its quest for comedies without laughs. After Roger and Val Have Just Got In and The Trip comes Episodes, a cautionary tale of English scriptwriters who uproot and move to Hollywood. Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan are excellent as creators of the award-winning comedy series Lyman's Boys, who fall for the blandishments of a US TV executive and agree to re-create their successful show in the States. But on their arrival in LA things go wrong as they are subjected to fake smiles and doublespeak as the network corrupts their beloved creation. Episodes has everything going for it, including scripts co-written by Friends' David Crane, yet it never catches light. Situations are laboured and - where's the wit?

Green Wing fans will be overjoyed to see Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig back on screen together. In this new series they are scriptwriting husband and wife Beverly and Sean Lincoln who get an irresistible offer to transfer their hit British series - Lyman's Boys - to the US.

The scene set in their new producer's office in Hollywood is a brilliantly crafted exchange of double-talk and flim-flam and you can bet it's based on bitter experience, tales of woe and the frustrations of talented Brits who've had to deal with knuckle-headed American TV bosses. The star of Lincoln's show - set in a boys' school - is venerable British actor Julian Bullard played by the stout and silver-haired Richard Griffiths. By next week, he'll have been recast as his polar opposite.

This first episode is enjoyable if not quite as laden with zingers like Glee. But if it's a hit, it makes you wonder how the US version of Episodes might turn out.

An Anglo-American coproduction between stalwart British comedy outlet Hat Trick and acclaimed US writers David Crane (co-creator of Friends) and Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You), Episodes is something of a curate's egg.

The inherent problems of transposing British comedy to an American setting are directly confronted within the premise of the series itself: terribly postmodern.

Former Green Wing co-stars Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig play successful married screenwriters whose award-winning sitcom is picked up by a powerful American network.

Whisked over to LA, they're shocked to discover that their quintessentially British series starring Richard Griffiths (who cameos as a version of himself) as an "erudite, verbally dextrous headmaster of an elite boy's academy" has been recast as a vehicle for wholly unsuitable Friends/Joey star Matt LeBlanc (also playing himself, inevitably as an egotistical buffoon).

Evidently aware of the ignoble tradition of point-missing American adaptations of great British comedies (Fawlty Towers without Basil? Why not!), Crane and Klarik have devised a sporadically amusing if rather obvious satire encompassing all the usual targets and stereotypes.

The Brits-out-of-water are cute and witty, the Americans shallow and crass. TV executives are liars.

Actors are self-absorbed. And despite protestations to the contrary, Hollywood just doesn't "get" British humour: the clever irony being that Episodes is written by a pair of witty American Anglophiles cocking a snook at the culture that made them millionaires.

The hollowness of the entertainment industry has been satirised so often, the curiously muted Episodes doesn't offer anything new. It feels like a missed opportunity, despite the odd bright spot and the natural chemistry between Mangan and the underrated Greig.

This rather tasty new cynical-outsiders-in-LA sitcom is a very transatlantic affair; it's from British powerhouse company Hat Trick (Father Ted, Outnumbered) and Friends producer David Crane.

Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig are an English husband-and-wife writing team who cautiously move to Tinseltown to remake their hit TV show, while Matt LeBlanc plays the star they must cast who is primed to wreak havoc on their careers and marriage.

Video: High expectations for new BBC show

New BBC Two series Episodes is being tipped as the most anticipated comedy of the year.

Friends creator David Crane is behind the show and it features Matt LeBlanc from Friends in his TV comeback, playing a version of himself.

Green Wing stars Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig play British TV producers who take their hit UK show to the States to remake it.

But for Mangan and Greig things go wrong from the start when they arrive in LA.

If a British sitcom gets better-than-average ratings, wins a couple of awards and isn't too downright weird to get lost in translation, it's not unusual for an American TV network to approach its creators with a mind to a Stateside remake. Probably the best known example of this is the American version of The Office, now in its seventh season, but the practice has been going on since at least the 1970s, when Steptoe and Son, rather surreally, was remade in Los Angeles as Sanford and Son.

What's little discussed, though, is how a behind-the-scenes collaboration between cynical British writers and hard-nosed US executives plays out - which is where this new sitcom, written by David Crane (Friends) and Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You), comes in.

It stars Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig as a British husband-and-wife team who produce a successful show called Lyman's Boys, which is duly scooped up by a US network. They jet out to California and start working with their new colleagues, all of whom seem intent on stamping out any hint of fusty Britishness, starting with the show's corpulent lead, Julian (Richard Griffiths), whom they decide to replace with the wonderfully unsuitable Matt LeBlanc (Joey from Friends). The first episode is high on plot development and low on gags, but the series does improve and is worth sticking with.

Episodes: BBC Explores Differences between UK & USA TV

Matt LeBlanc plays himself in Episodes, a new BBC Two comedy drama due to start on Monday 10 January 2011 and also starring Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig.

Episodes cast interview

An interview with Matt LeBlanc, Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig.