Jack Dee's new sitcom Lead Balloon has gone down like anything but. It is so successful it has grown too big for BBC4. It will now be broadcast on BBC2 as well.

Whatever channel it's on, Lead Balloon is well worth watching. It is a delectable comedy of everyday embarrassment, and as such feels exquisitely British. But in fact America did it first, with Larry David's sublime Curb Your Enthusiasm. Lead Balloon is such a good rip-off of Curb Your Enthusiasm that you sometimes forget it's a fake: the set piece in each episode where Jack Dee, aka Rick Spleen, retreats into a private fantasy, such as shooting the postman, or hand carving missing letters on a christening mug, is a superb innovation.

But more often, unfortunately, Lead Balloon shows awkward joints where Curb Your Enthusiasm has invisible seams. Larry David is a fundamentally good man, driven to obnoxious behaviour; Rick Spleen is just an obnoxious man. The same goes for the guest actors in each episode of Lead Balloon: they tend to go looking for confrontation, rather than finding it creep inexplicably upon them. Lead Balloon is a more callow creation than CYE. I don't feel bad about saying so. To make a show as derivative as Lead Balloon is to invite comparisons.

Reflections on his Spleen

Jack Dee is interviewed by The Guardian about why he wrote the comedy and what his key influences were.

A programme called Lead Balloon is a hostage to critical misfortune, but then I expect Jack Dee knows that. This miserabilist sitcom about the Pooterish home life of a stand-up comic, written and performed by a stand-up comic, is better than it sounds. Observational humour is as funny as the observer, not necessarily what's observed. This series is part of a new trend of comedy shows that don't make you laugh; you just nod your head and mutter, That's really funny. It's a Darwinian improvement on the tyranny of the set-up-gag guffaw, and I approve of it. Laughter is ugly and common.

Jack Dee: A touch of Spleen

Another interview with Jack Dee about the first series of Lead Balloon.

So what's the big idea?

Jack Dee explains how he took a vague idea for a sitcom and turned it into Lead Balloon