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.

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.

Radio Times review

Sean and Beverly's terrible Pucks!, which stars Matt LeBlanc's ghastly alter-ego, has risen from the dead - "like Jesus if Jesus was a s****y sitcom" says one character. Some people might think Episodes itself should have been put out of its misery a while back. But Friends stalwart and co-writer David Crane has managed to breathe more life into a comedy that is as much a wry look at transatlantic foibles as Crane's satire/revenge on the industry he (and co-scribe and real-life partner Jeffrey Klarik) know all too well.

Some of the lines feel a little ponderous in places but many are brilliant. And the chemistry between Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig's exasperated Brits and LeBlanc's desperately shallow but oddly likeable leading man keep this singing.

TV preview, Episodes, BBC2

If the fictional Pucks! script is dodgy, the Episodes script by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik is well up to scratch, littered with screwball banter and anti-PC jokes.

Three episodes in and the third series of Episodes has settled in comfortably. Which is rather the problem. The main charm of Episodes was always its awkwardness.

Initially, Sean and Bev were the outsiders bringing their English reserve and idiom to the sledgehammer of the Hollywood TV industry; now, though, their accents apart, they are both native LA. They've long since ceased to care about the show they are writing and are jaundiced insiders in the dream-factory, churning out second-rate scripts in exchange for first-rate money. In short, a key part of the sit has gone out of the sitcom: Episodes has become exactly the type of show it used to have a pop at.

It is, at least, still a com. Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan and Matt LeBlanc are all wonderfully good actors with near-perfect comic timing, so there are still plenty of laughs to be had. Just not as many as there used to be. It's become routine. The scripts feel a bit saggier, though it's possible that's part of a meta gag in which writers David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik are mimicking the trajectory of Sean and Bev's own writing. If so, it's a dangerous game.

The key faultline is that Episodes has written itself into a cul-de-sac. There's nothing left to it apart from a series of relationships and most of the interesting things that can happen have already happened. Sean and Bev have split up, slept with other people and are now back together-ish, while Matt is just Matt. There's some fun to be had in the ongoing "Will Sean, Won't Sean, ever get a stiffy again?" saga, but you feel that Greig and Mangan are working overtime trying to make it funny. They know each other so well that they can finish each other's sentences and gags; more worryingly, so can I. I'm not even sure I'm that bothered whether Sean does get a stiffy or not any more.

Towards the end of this episode, Bev told Carol that she and Sean wanted to get Pucks! canned so they could go back to England. I couldn't help agreeing. Except we know that's almost certainly not going to happen as the BBC has already commissioned a fourth series. Like Sean and Bev, Episodes has become a victim of its own success.