Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

That Stewart Lee, off Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (BBC2), is an angry man. He's an angry man, that Stewart Lee, off Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. On BBC2. And he says thing over and over again, getting angrier and angrier, shouting louder and louder. He says them over again, getting angrier and angrier. Stewart Lee, off Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. On BBC2. He is clever and funny, but everything else and everyone else (especially people who are more successful than him) is stupid and silly. And that makes him very angry. Stewart Lee, off Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. On BBC2.

Episode 2 Review

It's abundantly clear why so many fellow comedians adore Stewart Lee. Everything about his work is acutely observed and taken to places that outreach your average comedian. Even when you don't necessarily agree with his targets, it's great to follow him down.

Who are we to scoff at other cultures, when there is so much to scoff at in our own? In Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, our host turned his gimlet eye on British television, and had riotous fun with the notion that Del Boy falling through the open bar on Only Fools and Horses is repeatedly voted The Funniest Moment Ever on Television, and will be shown again and again "until the rocks melt and the sea burns".

Stewart Lee takes a discursive romp through television, taking swipes at everything from BBC1's The One Show and its host Adrian Chiles ("like being trapped in the buffet car of a slow-moving express train with a Toby jug") to TV audiences ("What do you want?"). The latter is an extended rant against anyone who's ever taken part in a "top TV funny moment" poll and cast their vote for "Del Boy falling through the bar". Lee obviously isn't a fan and he's quietly furious. He goes on too long, but you can see his point. But Lee is at his best when he's firing pellets of wit at everything from BBC founder Lord Reith's supposed "jazz racism" to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Any Dream Will Do.

This week the subject of Lee's intelligently amusing invective is television. The message is pin sharp. Bewailing the decline of Channel 4 programmes he observes: "The head of Channel 4, when he looks at the old schedules, must feel like an elderly ladies' man leafing through a photograph album of all the society beauties he used to romance, all of them now dead."

A good pun is hard to find. So well done Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle for its opening credits, which feature the comic driving an enormous multicoloured clown car.

The show that follows is basically a half-hour stand-up routine on a given theme, punctuated by the occasional pertinent sketch.

Lee's comedy is something of an acquired taste ranging from the esoteric, through the inventive to the positively bizarre, but he is never less than original and frequently inspired.