'Episodes' Season 1

Episodes is a mildly funny comedy that succeeds partially as a sitcom but fails in its efforts at Hollywood satire.

Episodes was created by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, both veterans of the traditional network sitcom. Crane was the co-creator of Friends; Klarik wrote for Mad About You. Together they created the short-lived NBC comedy The Class. They’ve moved on to Showtime, but Episodes feels very much like an old-fashioned, somewhat hacky sitcom clumsily upgraded with sex, swearing and self-conscious edginess. Crane and Klarik may think that they’re biting the hands that fed them by skewering the process of creating a network sitcom, but their satire is so toothless that it has virtually no impact.

The vehicle for that satire is a British couple, Sean and Beverly Lincoln, who are persuaded to come to Los Angeles to adapt their popular U.K. sitcom for American television. At first thrilled to bring their vision to a new country, Sean (Stephen Mangan) and Beverly (Tamsin Greig) soon find out that Hollywood is full of vapid morons whose only goal is to pander to the lowest common denominator. Their lead actor (a wonderful and underused Richard Griffiths) is replaced by former Friends star Matt LeBlanc (playing himself), and their main character of an erudite school headmaster gets turned into a hockey coach. Crane and Klarik play the Lincolns’ journey into Hollywood hell for broad, sitcom-style laughs rather than anything really dark or cutting, and the domestic comedy is pretty formulaic.

LeBlanc is charming enough, but his portrayal of a fictionalized version of himself shies away from real self-parody (one of the recurring jokes is that the show’s LeBlanc has a really large penis), and Crane and Klarik can’t seem to decide whether the character is a shallow showbiz narcissist or a surprisingly savvy player. The Lincolns are more consistent, and Mangan and Greig, who’ve worked together in British TV, have nice chemistry. But the show strains way too hard to seem daring, like Crane and Klarik want to prove they’re not stuck in the world of old-fashioned sitcoms. One of the great things about Friends, though, was how well it worked the classic sitcom formula. By rejecting and mocking that format, Episodes only proves how inept it is at transcending it.

Disclosure: A review screener was provided by the network. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.