TV Preview, Episodes, BBC2

Episodes

The first episode of the new series of Episodes makes me think of gangsters. The phone ringing at the start reminded me of the phone ringing at the start of Once Upon A Time In America, while there’s an air of The Godfather in the way that Beverly (Tamsin Greig) and Sean (Stephen Mangan) get dragged back just as they thought they had escaped the horrors of the American TV industry.

The last series ended with everyone delighted that the fictional Matt LeBlanc series Pucks! had been cancelled, but now it has suddenly been recommissioned by the new boss to settle old studio scores. Sean and Beverly deliver a reluctant, scribbled-on-the-plane script, while LeBlanc turns up for filming with a cup full of Jack Daniels. He has good reason to drink though – his accountant has embezzled him out of $32 million.

If the fictional Pucks! script is dodgy, the Episodes script by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik is well up to snuff, littered with screwball banter and anti-PC jokes – there is also a sitcom in development with a Chinese-American theme called Wright & Wong. It is also good to see Nigel Planer with plenty of lines as LeBlanc’s hard-bitten lawyer. In a neat running gag everyone LeBlanc meets seems to have avoided losing their money except for him.

Mangan and Greig are, of course, brilliant as the Brits caught in the cross-Atlantic crossfire but rapidly learning how to dodge the bullets and maybe make a few bucks in return for their principles along the way. I don’t know how much was actually filmed in Hollywood and how much was filmed in a warehouse near the M25, but they do get the look and feel of America right. And, I guess, it helps that smart, cynical humour rtanscends international borders.

Episodes, Mondays, 10pm, BBC2.

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