TV review: Episodes, BBC2

It happens to be quite funny. Not that comedies have to be very funny these days...

Interview: David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik

The men behind the hit Matt LeBlanc comedy explain why they are burning bridges in Hollywood - and why comedy needs to be funny.

Episodes, series five, episode one review

The perfect encapsulation of cruel yet effective comedy.

Matt LeBlanc tiptoes towards middle age

Episodes, by Friends co-creator and writer David Crane - allows Matt LeBlanc to poke rip-roarious fun at what happens to household names like himself who, thanks to a show's stellar success, are automatically greenlit for comedy projects everywhere, whether the writers and crew want them or not.

Radio Times review

Because Jeffrey Klarik and David Crane have created such a host of fabulous supporting characters over the four series of Episodes, Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig's bemused-Brits-in-LA Sean and Beverly can take a back seat in this hilarious season finale and let the carnage unfold around them.

The Matt/Merc feud reaches an exquisitely absurd climax on the set of the LeBlanc-fronted new game show The Box (is it me or is the format for this actually quite good?). And Helen Basch's envious suspicions about her girlfriend Carol also come to a head in a rollicking 30 minutes that shows just how deftly plotted Klarik and Crane's writing is. Thank the showbiz gods there will be another series. Or as Matt might put it: "Bring on the bugs!"

'Episodes' creators embark on DIY Emmy campaign

Feeling that their show is being outmuscled big time by rivals in the Emmy campaign, David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik decided to take things into their hands with an ad they scribbled on a white sheet of paper.

Radio Times review

A lot of heads wake up from a lot of pillows in this episode, and they all groan "What have I done?" Carol (Kathleen Rose Perkins) and her boss, the wonderfully monikered Helen Basch (Andrea Savage), face the morning after the night before - as do Matt and his ex-wife. "How much tequila did I have?" wonders the erstwhile Mrs LeBlanc. "Just enough," he replies with a smirk and his usual superb timing.

Meanwhile, Sean and Beverly are having to face the consequences (legal and otherwise) of his former writing partnership in a particularly crisp and sharp episode of David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik's transatlantic caper, which is beautifully structured and uproariously funny.

Radio Times review

Matt's money worries come to a head and you don't need to be a committed LeBlanc watcher to know that he will probably live to regret his unusual solution. Sean and Beverly face problems of their own when Sean's ex-writing partner comes to town and (in a departure from David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik's usually deft plotting) delivers a somewhat implausible missile that may sink them yet.

But perhaps the biggest bombshell concerns Carol (Kathleen Rose Perkins), who discovers that her rackety love life cannot be blamed on father issues alone. As with previous series, there is mounting mayhem amid the phoniness and frivolity. And it's great fun.

Radio Times review

Matt LeBlanc has money problems and, knowing Matt as we do, he is pretty ruthless when he's in a hole. This episode sees the former Friends star's ghastly alter ego encourage his ex-wife to marry her inappropriate boyfriend (the alimony's a bit steep) and face the dreaded possibility of selling his vineyard. He may even have to let his beach cleaner go. Meanwhile, the entire LA TV industry seems to be after the new script written by Brit exiles Sean (Stephen Mangan) and Beverly (Tamsin Greig), who have somehow found their way back to La La Land.

Much of this is beautifully observed and achingly funny; and it was a good decision by writers Jeffrey Klarik and David Crane to call time on the bedhopping-fuelled rows between the three protagonists and create more moments for the sublimely talented LeBlanc, Mangan and Greig to riff off each other in the same scene. After four series it remains a pleasure, even if the usually excellent writing does strike the odd lazy, duff note.

Episodes has so much going for it. It's co-written by David Crane, the clever writer mainly responsible for Friends! It has Joey from Friends in the shape of Matt LeBlanc playing himself, Matt, as an older, greyer and slappably unwiser version of Joey from Friends! It has Tamsin Greig! And Kathleen Rose Perkins! And it's really underwhelming!

Part of the problem must be that, while we Brits relished every last drop of the earlier battles surrounding the fictional couple Tamsin and Stephen Mangan's sharp fictional script being dumbed down for America, the real US scriptwriters might now feel a touch of possibly justifiable unease at all the shrewd Briton/whalethick Statesider gags. And thus have to concentrate on affairs, and Matt/Joey's vaulting new stupidities. But it's a fresh series, and I'll let it settle in, and admittedly Mr Mangan's facial reactions to Matt's financial woes last week - turned out he'd been scammed for half his lifetime earnings, and thus had "just" $31m left - were as pricelessly and stoically old-country as old maids cycling through the morning mists on cheap and broken bikes.