"Episodes": TV's Funniest Show?

Tasmin Greig and Stephen Mangan  (tv equals)

I flat out forgot how darn funny Showtime's "Episodes" was until it resumed last week with its second season. 

Season one was technically a mini-season, as the show ran a teasingly brief seven episodes. Season two has been mercifully extended to nine half-hours of acutely observed, tartly clever satire. It's target? The cultural Anglo-American gulf as experienced by a pair of screenwriters lured out to Hollywood to adapt their hit British TV series for the US market.

One the sharpest, most incisive comedies currently on telly, it is hugely funny, yet not necessarily for those American patriots too thin-skinned to appreciate the immensely focused, trenchant observations of the often shallow, narcissistic tendencies of the network television industry.

The Brits, played with incisive finesse by Stephen Mangan and the show's centerpiece, Tasmin Greig, are evidently talented writers who are thus most interested in overseeing the successful adaptation of their series for an American audience. To say the couple get more than they bargained for is the devastating understatement that fuels much of the show's fish-out-of-water humor.

In addition to the British leads is the quiet revelation of a newly mature Matt LeBlanc, late of that network juggernaut "Friends". Not only does he play himself with a healthy dose of levity, but he is the butt of an ongoing series of mishaps that posit him as the personification of the vain Hollywood star too self-absorbed to be either a good friend or, for that matter, a decent actor, purportedly the reason for his wealth and fame.

The show is so unflinching in its unflattering observations that one is grateful that the writing is so nuanced and able to skirt either caricature or unlikable character portrayals. The one character who skirts annoyance is John Pankow's Merc Lapidus, the studio exec whose inane approximations of a British accent and overall lack of sensitivity or insight make him the jester in this tale. Not only is his long-suffering wife blind and ardently philanthropic, but he is humping his pretty, young assistant, a sight the audience must witness at least once a season. Suffice to say these scenes are suitably unsexy.

I am curious to see where this season will take us, as the main couple have separated since last season's love triangle with LeBlanc. I look forward to more satire, snark, and refreshing humor on what may be the funniest show on telly.