More Episodes Please! Actually, No...

Episodes has finished and it seems to have collected a bit of a cult fan-base. Even some my most trusted friends (when it comes to television) found it unfunny and undramatic - the two things I thought it absolutely wasn't. Episodes is not a laugh-out-loud comedy, although it looks as though it should be. It's not particularly clever or exciting, either. But it has something - I think it's called "heart" but I don't want to say so at the risk of sounding like a wally. It is also over.

It flipped between cringe-comedy, romantic drama and slapstick The Matt Le Blanc show regularly, but tied itself up just nicely in its seventh episode.

As comedy goes, it's not the best we've had lately, but it seems to almost not matter since the characters in this show are - sorry, were - enough to keep me watching. Matt Le Blanc should be seen in this as he is great! The performances from all three stars - Matt, Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig - in the last episode of this series were just tonally perfect, capturing brilliantly just the right balance of heartbreaking relationship drama and absurd comic happenings. The "fight scene" is one of the most appealing three minutes of television I've watched this year. It's funny because it's silly, but the passion in both characters' actions are heartbreaking, especially if you've shared either (or both) of their positions within the situation.

Many people want more. They want to see how our trodden-on Brits will manage while promoting a hit show that they hate on the US Networks. They want to see whether everything will be okay between them after the events of episode six. They want to know just where this show can go from here. The answer is anywhere, really - and that's why I hope they don't make any more. Leave this as seven lovely little episodes of funny fish-out-of-water situation comedy and retain the audience its managed to hold so far, including me. This, one day, will be on most people's list of 'forgotten gems', you mark my words!

Episodes (BBC)

It's a strange old beast, is Episodes. It has a "feel" to it that sets it apart from most other comedies on the box at the moment. It's very funny, pretty interesting and filled to the brim with excellent performances, not least by Matt LeBlanc - but it seems to be slipping below many people's radar. 

Telling the tale of the compromises that need to be made when adapting a smash-hit British TV series for American network television - from the inside (something that many screenwriters have cited as being scarily accurate) -  Episodes stars Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig as a British screen-writer couple forced to bend over for the yanks. 

Matt LeBlanc plays himself as the new star of the adapted series - replacing Richard Griffiths as the lead in the American version - and really it's Matt's performance that goes a long, long way to making this show so much fun. Stacked storeys high with bad language and sarcastic 'Brits in America' situations, Episodes really bridges the gap between British sit-com and American studio-com in a way that no other show has before - in my opinion. Fusing together the cringe-humour of the likes of The Office and Extras with the glossy laugh-inducers of Friends and Seinfeld, the show makes for often uncomfortable, but never unpleasant viewing.

It takes an episode to kick in properly. The opener is - again, in my opinion - the weakest of the four episodes we've been given so far. But since there's an arc set in place even before the credits roll on episode one (indeed, the ending is more or less laid out for the series in advance, with the rest of the shows taking place in a sort of flashback) there's a real sense of journey to this piece. Even when some of the jokes hit a little lower than Network Telly usually would in the States, or the bad language shocks you into realising you're not watching a glossy laugh-on-cue clone that so many American comedies are these days, the show never feels like "a British sit-com set in America", which it isn't really, anyway. It has gigantic charm and the episodes fly by fast enough to leave you wanting more. For my money, this is well worth digging out if you haven't already seen it.