Episodes

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?

With ratings plummeting on the show-within-the-show Pucks!, market research is called in to save the day. Matt LeBlanc, from bitter experience, is no fan: "Yeah, research said Joey was gonna be a hit!" He's even less happy when the results come in showing that another cast member's hair is testing better with the audience than he is, leading to an episode where he's practically written out of his own show. Elsewhere, Beverly is missing hanging out with Sean, and discovering he has a Facebook page nearly sends her over the edge.

The TV stars who are just being themselves

A little self-parody can go a long way. Just ask Matt LeBlanc...

Episodes series 2 episode 3 review

Overall, some good moments but an unnecessary story that would have done better as a subplot rather than the focus of whole episode.

Oh, the frustrations of Episodes: so much talent, so much waste. Again tonight, it's like a fire that never quite catches. There are sparks of comedy, but as usual the writers have laid on wood that's too damp and flimsy. The plot revolves around amoral studio exec Merc, whose beloved father has died. There's some nice stuff about the competitive condolence gifting that (apparently) happens in Hollywood, as Sean and Beverly try to work out what to send by way of an offering ("It's like dealing with cave-people," groans Matt). Everyone acts their socks off, adding layers to the underwritten script, but there's only so much they can do.

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.

"It's like dealing with cave people," says an exasperated Matt LeBlanc. The reason for his ire? Muffins. More specifically, the complete inability of Sean and Beverly to negotiate the complexities of Hollywood-style death and catering etiquette when network chief Merc's father breathes his last. Episodes is a series that's at its best when it's most excruciating. Witness the funeral scene when Merc shares memories of his dad with Pucks! star Morning Randolph: "Didn't he grab your ass?" "He was so full of life."

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.