I think it's about bloody time something ripped the piss out of Hollywood. Yeah, Hollywood. On its pedastal, looking down on everything and telling us that it is better than us. Yeah, screw Hollywood, we need something to make jolly good fun out of it.
It's been done before? Dammit.
How about TV? Yeah...but that's been done before as well. Hmm.
So was there any need for Episodes (BBC)? I suppose not.
However, there is always a need for substantial quality and this brought Tamsin Grieg (Green Wing, Black Books) and Stephen Mangan (Green Wing, Free Agents), two highlights of British comedy at the moment. I have laughed at these two before, so why couldn't I do the same again? There is no reason, right? Hmm.
Well, we have a quite generic look at the workings behind television. Grieg and Mangan are married and have won awards for their show, of which I cannot remember, but a Hollywood TV maker guy offers them to remake it in America. Live in LA for a while. WOW. Sounds like every person's dream. Ben Miller scowls in the background (the only funny bit of the programme). However, we get complaints before they've even left Britain about, "Oh. I'm unsure." Whiny bitch. The fact that sells it is that they get to write the US version as well, which to me sounds like a pitfall. Take the money and run, let some pretentious moron write it. That could well be my skewed moral compass there.
They arrive and look at their massive house, filled with fake columns. Hilarity ensues. Scene with a bath that is too big. Hilarity.
Then they realise that nobody has watched their show, despite people telling them that they had. There are American accents also, aren't those Americans silly?! Yeah, it's been done before as well. Go away. They get their star actor, Richard Griffiths, who is typically English and he is rejected as being too British. He comes back with an American accent and it isn't funny to them, or anyone in the viewing public. So they get Matt LeBlanc!
Yeah, the "big draw" was Matt LeBlanc (Joey from Joey), yet he appears in all of twenty seconds at the beginning. The rest of the programme is flashback. Pulp Fictiony. Yeah, cannot blame LeBlanc, he read his three lines perfectly.
The programme is so subverted, it is not funny. The process isn't funny, so why should the show? Geddit? If that was their purpose, then they should get multiple prizes, yet I doubt that was the point of this tedious and awkward show. Everything is obvious and forced, a gatekeeper who cannot remember the writers a key example. This show screams of underwhelment (word?).
It still has time to improve which I hope it does, perhaps with more LeBlanc factor.
Who would have thought anybody would have said that ever?!
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