Episodes: Series 2, episodes 1 & 2 review

BBC sitcom Episodes is back for a second series, but has it ironed out the wrinkles of its first outing? Read this review of Episodes 1 and 2.

Episodes continues bittersweet trawl through Hollywood

The second instalment of the latest series of Episodes trod a fine line between broad comedy and pathos as Matt LeBlanc dug himself into an even deeper hole.

Video - Tamsin Greig: 'Matt LeBlanc gets even darker'

Tamsin Greig has promised that series two of Episodes will become an even "darker" comedy.

Sean has slept with Morning, the sexy actress in his sitcom. That birthday kiss in the car park has led to a night of passion that leaves Sean walking on air and gives Stephen Mangan the chance to smile as widely as only he knows how. It's very much Mangan's episode, as his character tries to fend off all attempts by Matt to reignite their friendship.

The banter between Mangan and LeBlanc is a treat but this instalment veers towards the gentle end of the laughter scale, with the plot paddling in the shallows and no head of comic steam. The characters gel, the chemistry works, the setting is fun: it's time Episodes stopped being so episodic.

Contrition is all well and good, but why bother when you can bribe someone with a sports car instead? Such is Matt LeBlanc's approach to appeasing Sean after sleeping with his wife: offering him a pimp-mobile, while demonstrating his failure to really learn his lesson by escalating his dalliance with his boss's spouse. Meanwhile, Pucks! suffers a ratings slide between the first and second episodes, prompting a mini panic behind the scenes. There are some nice, understated comic touches tonight: the camera sweeps over the collection of Friends figurines that LeBlanc keeps by his bed, and an argument about the comic value of pauses in dialogue is shot through with chucklesome reaction shots. Is this show finally on track to become more than the sum of its parts?

Sean (Stephen Mangan) and Bev's show-within-a-show suffers a ratings drop in episode two. However, star Matt LeBlanc is more concerned about providing some recompense for splitting up their marriage.

In fact, the scenes in which he tries to buy back Sean's friendship suggest this would have been funnier pared back into a simpler LeBlanc/Mangan chalk-and-cheese comedy.

Bev and Sean are having more rich people's problems as Matt LeBlanc tries to sweeten them with gifts of expensive cars. Sean, still angry with LeBlanc for wrecking his marriage, is reluctant to be bought off. Meanwhile the ratings are taking a dive thanks to Pucks! being scheduled against a talking dog show. This leads to some of the best jokes as the executives swarm in with helpful suggestions on how to make the show better: "What other animals can talk?"

There are some good gags in tonight's episode of this smart sitcom about the travails of a British husband and wife comedy-writing team working in Los Angeles. As ever, the smooth-talking Matt LeBlanc delivers most of them. Tonight, he attempts to buy back Sean's (Stephen Mangan) affections with a new sports car and a wisecrack that cannot be reproduced in the pages of a family newspaper. Sean, doing his best to summon a stiff upper lip, refuses the car, only to discover that Bev (Tamsin Greig) has an automotive surprise of her own.

A dramedy about a British couple writing a TV show in the States, the first episode of the second series of Episodes suffered from a paucity of both drama and laughs. It's all very meta-meta, and while it just about got away with it before, now they're throwing TV criticism of the show-within-a-show at the screen, the self-referencing joke is wearing thin.

At one point one of the writers says of the critics, "So much rage. Why? Why? It's just a little TV show", and he might as well be talking about Episodes as his own series. It's hard to get worked up about it, and when they give you the line that it's "an uninspired placeholder until something actually funny comes along", the script is pretty much summing itself up.

I feel pathetic for thinking how nice it is that Matt LeBlanc has deigned to star in the British sitcom Episodes (BBC Two, Friday). I suppose he's not exactly slumming it, giving that it is a big-budget, joint British and American production, written by David Crane, the co-creator of Friends. And the first series won LeBlanc a Golden Globe. But still.

LeBlanc plays an insensitive, sexually rampant, self-absorbed version of himself, who comes between a British husband and wife (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) by sleeping with the wife. It's play-within-a-play stuff, or rather sitcom-within-a-sitcom, a bit like Extras. It also represents something of a mini-genre in which stars play versions of themselves, such as Larry David in the glorious Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The first episode of this second series of Episodes got off to a slightly wobbly start with a gratuitous scene in which LeBlanc was given hand relief by a blind woman in a screening room. Sub-American Pie that, I thought. But it had its moments. I even laughed out loud at one point when LeBlanc began smiling during a telling off from his former mate Mangan. "I miss this," he said... Perhaps you had to be there. My favourite line though was this from a TV executive: "No one cares about TV reviews. They hate most of the crap we've got on the air and people still watch it."