Lead Balloon

Even those of us who once loved this sitcom have had to admit that the fourth series has felt tired, leaning on a formula we know too well: Rick Spleen's lies and hypocrisy lead, via some gentle farce, to humiliation - a social embarrassment, a public shaming, a further slide down the ranks of washed-up celebs. Tonight, though, is very different. Last week's episode, where Rick took his comedy class to Belford Prison, ended in a moment of real jeopardy: a prisoner took Rick hostage with a razor blade. The inmate was played by Robbie Coltrane and tonight he and Jack Dee share a two-hander that is radically different from your average Lead Balloon, and all the better for it. It's not bursting with belly laughs, but Coltrane is superb as the touchy drug dealer desperate for a chess set. And the light he casts on Rick's hopeless inability to tell the truth is strangely satisfying.

I was a bit down (appropriately) on Lead Balloon when this final series started, and there hasn't been much since to make me change my mind. It's felt tired. Until this one, in which Rick is taken hostage by a dangerous criminal at Belford jail. It's just the two of them in the prison library for the whole half-hour. Well, one really: Jack Dee does a lot of his squirmy, crumpled-forehead thing but the episode belongs to Robbie Coltrane, who is excellent as Rick's volatile but sensitive captor. A cracker then, again appropriately.

Tonight's slice of this winningly acerbic sitcom is a two-hander. After the comedy workshop Rick (Jack Dee) holds at Belford Prison, Donald (Robbie Coltrane), a jovial, knife-wielding prisoner, takes him hostage. An increasingly nervy Rick is forced to bond with Donald over pizza, red wine and a dissection of Rick's lacklustre career. "If you were any good, you'd have made it by now," scoffs Donald. It's a treat to see these two seasoned performers play off each other with such aplomb.

A quick chat with Robbie Coltrane

Robbie Coltrane makes a rare TV appearance in Jack Dee's acerbic BBC2 sitcom, Lead Balloon...

Lead Balloon series 4 review

A couple of episodes down of the mildly anticipated forth run of Jack Dee's Lead Balloon. I guess it is time to let you know what you have missed so far. Lead Balloon is the creation of Jack and Pete Sinclair. It is a sitcom which focuses on the career of Rick Spleen (Jack Dee) a nearly big time comedian ambling from failed TV audition to advert voiceover work.

Rick gets a job presenting on the Bargain Channel but only Magda is genuinely impressed at the news. Meanwhile, daughter Sam and her hang-dog boyfriend are looking for work, but no job offers are forthcoming from their position on the sofa. It pushes the suspension of disbelief a bit that Rick hasn't had a breakdown yet, but maybe that's coming before the end of the series. The performances continue to be flawlessly executed.

Washed-up comic Rick Spleen has more reason than usual to look sour. One of his wife Mel's clients is nominated for three comedy awards, while Rick remains stuck in the steerage class of showbiz, scrabbling for scraps of work. Tonight he auditions for a car wax advert - and doesn't get it. "This is a global thing I'm up against," he blusters unconvincingly. "I'm just laying low until China kick-starts the whole thing, then I'll be up and away." But fate has another plan, and Rick is offered a wonderfully low-rent gig presenting on a shopping channel, a chance he seizes with both hands. Jack Dee gets across Rick's slightly desperate excitement about his new job brilliantly and delivers another slow-build, touchingly absurd episode.

I can remember the great Irish stand-up comic Dylan Moran once saying that whenever you are having a discussion with a German, all that you are thinking about when they talk is: "Yeah, yeah, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler..."

In the same way, I suspect that many people watch Jack Dee's Lead Balloon while for most of the time they are thinking: "Yeah, yeah, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Curb, Curb, Curb Your Enthusiasm," and perhaps throwing in the occasional, "Larry David" for a bit of variety.

I myself have never been the biggest Lead Balloon fan, but it was funny in parts. One subplot of the opening episode was of failed stand-up Rick Spleen (Dee) trying to write a book, a scenario which did make me chuckle when Dee asked if, "They sell books in Lidl?"

The actual main plot was Spleen preparing, or rather hijacking, a Sunday Times interview featuring his wife, and trying to make himself more interesting by getting a pet pig. The main scene near the end featured Spleen trying to get the pig out from underneath a table which was amusing... at first... and then the pig shat on him.

Now I don't mind toilet humour, but I am of the view that excrement is a much funnier when it is talked about rather than appearing on screen. The scene was too disgustingly graphic to be funny for me.

Another desperate bid to salvage his career sees Rick (Jack Dee) take a presenting job on a downmarket shopping channel - much to his wife Mel's (Raquel Cassidy) bemusement, and writing-partner Marty's (Sean Power) unconcealed disdain. On the other hand, housekeeper Magda (Anna Crilly) is seriously impressed by Rick for the first time ever... Beautifully observed, this sitcom is full of quiet exasperation.

Back for a new series, BBC2's excellent Lead Balloon continues to be what most sitcoms aren't... funny. ­Supported by a fine cast, Jack Dee delivered a timely reminder that incontinent pigs can mess up your showbiz career. We need more Lead Balloons... and fewer Life Of Rileys.