Episodes, BBC One, review - Telegraph It is rather disconcerting for a television reviewer, when watching a programme, to discover that it contains far smarter television reviewing comments than he is likely to come up with himself. It's as if the scriptwriters have seen the poor, slow-witted critic slump into his armchair in front of the screen and they've thrown down the gauntlet. "We can do smart-ass put-downs far better than you, so don't even think about it, punk," seems to be what they are saying. And in this case we are in America, so naturally they would talk like that. This happened with the return, for a second series, of Episodes (BBC Two, Friday), the transatlantic comedy show about a transatlantic comedy show. Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig star as husband-and-wife British writing team, Sean and Beverly, who find their show - and themselves - transferred to America, where they are landed with ex-Friends star Matt LeBlanc as their totally unsuitable US star. The reviewing comments are, of course, about the show within a show. Viewers who stuck with the first series (come on, there must be some of you) will remember that at its end the pilot episode of the comedy had bombed, with Sean and Beverly about to leave LA and each other, only for there to be a last-ditch reprieve - for the show, that is, not their marriage. That was destroyed when Sean found out that Beverly and Matt had indulged in some casual sex. Well, here we are, back again, four months later, and Sean and Beverly are still separated but their series is debuting on American TV. And the critics are harsh. I was totally prepared to hate tonight's new comedy. Well, the good news is ... I was prepared," writes one. "LeBlanc shoots a LeBlank," proclaims another. "An exhausting rehash of Nineties sitcom clichés with Matt LeBlanc digging into his old bag of tricks and coming up short," says a third. In fact, this was eerily close to some of the critical reaction to the first series of Episodes. The postmodern ploy of having a show inside a show now extends to having the reviews of a show within the show itself. Have the writers spent too long playing with Russian dolls? Still, the good news is that this opening episode was a lot better than the closing episode of the last run, which had an embarrassingly hammy and overwritten fight between Sean and LeBlanc. The bad news is, that only raises it to the level of watch-it-if-there's-nothing-else-on. Which is a shame, because there are a lot of likeable things about Episodes: the performances of Mangan and Greig, and the digs at the US TV industry, for example. The idea is smart. And, of course, Matt LeBlanc is great at playing a character who has the mental agility of a soap dish. But he's done it all before, and better; at times this is like watching a former world champion boxer being wheeled out for an exhibition bout. But the main trouble with Episodes is that it will be trundling along nicely and then do something embarrassingly bad, such as the awful semen gag in this episode. It's like knowing someone who always does something really cringeworthy when you're with them; no matter how likeable they are, you are always waiting for things to go wrong.