In case your telly was turned off for the 1990s, Matt LeBlanc played Joey Tribbiani in a long-running show called Friends which was very successful, and in a spin-off series called Joey which wasn't.
He was also in 1998 film Lost In Space, from which vastness he would probably still be seeking an off-ramp were it not for Friends co-creator David Crane, who teleported him on to British screens last year to star in Episodes (BBC Two, Friday, 10pm).
This is a sitcom about a sitcom in which LeBlanc plays himself – sort of. Nowadays there's a well-populated subsection of TV comedy in which famous actors play themselves, or slightly fictionalised versions of themselves as viewed through the prism of their most celebrated on-screen characters. If you've seen The Trip or Curb Your Enthusiasm, you'll know how it works. This is more of the same, with a bit of 30 Rock thrown in.
Episodes follows the attempt by British husband-and-wife writing team Sean and Beverly Lincoln (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) to rework their hit sitcom Lyman's Boys for the Yanks. This involves replacing august British actor Julian Bullard (Richard Griffiths) with American actor Matt LeBlanc (Matt LeBlanc). In no universe – not even the one where Lost In Space still plays to packed audiences – is this a like-for-like trade.
More than that, it means the Lincolns swapping a British TV channel, where failure is almost expected, for a rapacious American broadcaster which thinks nothing of cancelling a show after two episodes if "the numbers" aren't good enough. And it means dealing with people like crass network executive Merc Lapidus (John Pankow), who cheats on his gorgeous blind wife with his joint-toting PA, Carol (Kathleen Rose Perkins), and who admits he's never seen Lyman's Boys despite being the one who persuaded Sean and Beverly to move to LA in the first place. Lapidus has also re-christened the show Pucks! and dumped the dowdy lesbian librarian character from the original for a demonstrably non-lesbian hottie whose twin charms are best described as pneumatic.
Series one ended in calamity, lukewarm reviews and the strong likelihood the series wouldn't be re-commissioned. And that's Episodes itself I'm talking about.
Re-commissioned it has been, however, and series two opened last night with Sean and Beverly still driving to separate luxury homes after work as a result of her season one fling with Matt. Merc, meanwhile, is still acting the boor, and Carol is still pouring her heart out to Beverly over a glass of wine and a spliff. We also (briefly) glimpsed Daisy Haggard, like Mangan and Greig a graduate of Channel 4 comedy Green Wing. She plays Myra, the head of comedy who has no sense of humour.
With a cast like that, Episodes should sing. It doesn't. Despite their manifold talents and that Green Wing pedigree, Mangan and Greig don't work here as a couple, even an estranged one. Worse, neither character is particularly likeable, which brings instant disengagement. Sure, there were moments of humour in last night's opening episode, but the loudest laugh from this viewer was when Greig spilled her coffee. The guffaws should come from the patter, not the pratfalls.
In fact, Matt LeBlanc's the best thing in it. He plays Matt LeBlanc as venal, amoral and likeable, which isn't an easy balance to strike even for him. But while the Friends actor still has star cache, Episodes itself is starting to feel a little like a Joey.
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