The following was, received from Sean Power, presumably the same Sean Power who plays Marty in BBC2′s Lead Balloon. It’s in relation to John Phillips’ review of the show, which you can read here.

John Phillips,
My agent just passed on your lame review to me. Im not going to waste my breath on you too much , because to be honest your opinion means fuck all to me. Arm chair critics are just that- fat fkn morons sittin in front of there tv screen with there laptop on their round tummy and wearin dirty clothes with questionable stains on them. But- because you ‘ put it out there’ I m gonna give it back to you. Firstly, having been in comedy scene in NYC for 7 years in the 80′s I worked with both Richard Lewis and Larry David- you muppet -and can guarantee they’d back me in telling you – to get a fkn life and ‘move on’ with all the fkn curb refs, or the office. If you didnt know, dopey, there were a whole lotta shows that came before them… and set a sort of pre-ce-dent from” whence they did take .”
Second- you really such an expert on sit coms; their structure, character development, ‘one liners’ try writing one- no better- write one now and get it produced- Then you can put your opinioins out on the web
Thirdly- watch who you insult in your ”’reviews”’ because it could come back and seriously bite you on the ass. Let ,me be more clear- if I see you walkin down the street-I will personally bite you on the ass.
Now not be unfestive- seeing as its xmas eve here in L.A.
Happy Holidays

At about the same time, a friend of mine was badgering me constantly to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. “Nah”, I thought, “doesn’t look like my cup of tea at all”. Eventually, I relented and – just to be able to say I’d given it a chance – sat myself down to an episode. Half an hour later, I found myself grudgingly using the words, “You were right”, and berating myself for resisting Larry David’s charms for so long.

Lead Balloon has come to occupy a position that bridges those two stories. Just as I had to cajole people into watching The US Office, so I struggled to enjoy Lead Balloon without subconsciously dubbing Larry David’s voice over the show. Throughout the first series, I struggled in vain to accept Jack Dee’s ongoing claims Lead Balloon was not influenced by Curb. Oh heavens forbid, no! And, to continue The Office parallel, watching Lead Balloon brought to mind Stromberg, the German workplace-based comedy, which the producers insisted was not remotely influenced by Gervais’ efforts. They relented when BBC lawyers came a-knocking.

With this second series, Lead Balloon has hit its stride. Either that or I’ve simply kicked the habit of mentally humming Curb‘s incidental music every time a new scene begins. Not that Dee has made it easy for me to abolish the comparisons – the sight of Rick Spleen stealing flowers from a memorial was astonishing for being exactly what Larry David does in the latest series, recently screened in the US. Plus I must admit in this latest episode, I flinched when the builder character introduced “My wife, Cheryl”. If Dee truly believes Lead Balloon is not remotely influenced by Curb, then writing partner Pete Sinclair must be doing one hell of a job pulling the wool over his eyes.

The thing that finally drew me into Lead Balloon was the realisation Rick Spleen is actually a great character in his own right. Not as loud or as boorish as Larry David, he reacts in a much more understated and, well, British middle-class sort of way. True, he shares many of Larry’s traits, his neuroses, his inability to conceal unhappiness or disappointment, his penchant for taking petty revenge on those who upset him. Spleen’s actions and reactions – not those of people around him – do not stray into the realms of cartoon-ish excess.

Sadly, I have little praise for the supporting cast. The character of Marty, Spleen’s American comedy writing partner, is near-irrelevant. His only function appears to be the one who goes “tut” at Spleen’s whinging, while his one-liners feel hopelessly out of place, conveying a sense someone insisted on occasional gags to ensure people realise it’s a comedy. Likewise, the regular inserts of Spleen writing jokes on a pad seem a pointless diversion from what the show does best. If Marty is meant to be Lead Balloon‘s answer to Richard Lewis, then there is a huge amount of work to do.

Magda, plus Spleen’s daughter and her boyfriend similarly serve little purpose. The East European daily help does little to assist the show, and, like Alan’s girlfriend in series two of I’m Alan Partridge, seems to exist only to allow a string of fairly cheap Borat-style gags about “backward” customs. The daughter and boyfriend, meanwhile, do little at all, other than to make Rick a bit more grumpy … which seems a shame.

This latest episode is triggered by Spleen saving a man from suicide, which leads him to try and milk the story of his heroism – a scenario which nicely shows the vanity of the character. In a rather odd move, the end of the episode reveals the saved man to have been a convicted paedophile, but squanders the opportunity for a backlash against Spleen’s for saving someone so vilified. The ending is doubly strange as it yet again recalls an episode of Curb, in which Larry befriends a man who turns out to be a sex offender, and feels obliged to invite him to a dinner party.

However, the strongest scene in the episode comes when Speen is told the man he has invited to dinner is not the head of drama at ITV – as he thought – but a builder. How he could have made such an error is glossed over, but it does allow a superb sequence showing Spleen’s pretensions, as he tries to hide anything he considers too good for a workman. When capable of attaining such heights, I am able to forgive Lead Balloon its flaws, and this for me was the moment when the show stepped out of the shadows and emerged as a truly enjoyable comedy in its own right.

Shorn of the excesses of Curb (am I the only one who finds that show’s references to Seinfeld hideously clunky?), Lead Balloon reveals traces of true brilliance. Perhaps it would be more palatable to many if they actually did admit the link instead of constantly denying the obvious. After all, it’s infinitely easier to accept Rick Spleen as a British Larry David than to accept Michael Scott as an American David Brent.

“It reminded me of Ken Campbell’s word, Jokoid – something which has all the trappings of being a joke without being funny. The performances were all perfectly fine, great in the case of Raquel Cassidy (one of the few survivors from the equally disappointing According to Bex) and in places the tragedy and desperation worked very well. But this had the appearance of being a sitcom without raising a laugh. Which is a shame because the (apparently) specially prepared trailers were very good indeed. Maybe I’ve missed something – that the title is supposed to be ironic, for example.”

And I stand by that. It seemed overly derivative without transcending its influences – I’m yet to see the second episode, although I’m not sure it will change my opinion. As to why the programme is initially on BBC4 – despite my reservations I think it’s part of the process that BBC TV appear to be spearheading of attempting to spread the view the public have of digital and multi-channel television. That in the digital broadcasting world, there aren’t “main” channels just lots of choice, and after the big switch off I don’t see a reason why these things would transfer to those main channels because by then the originating station will be available to everyone.

If anything this might actually a good thing for the consumer, since it will allow each channel to have its own flavour ala the BBC Radio stations rather than the unfocused mish-mash that BBC1 and 2 have become.

Jack Dee might be playing Jack Dee with a sillier name, but his performance in a programme scripted with beauty and precision makes you forgive any element of typecasting or taking the easy option which the unduly churlish could launch his way. After all, the best writers write about what they know best. It’s logical.

The character of Rick Spleen, a deadpan comic who is getting too reliant on highly-paid but lowbrow corporate and commercial events, draws on all the modern annoyances of your average grumpy man who is deeply dissatisfied with his working life. Despite the support of a partner who grafts very hard as a publicity dogsbody to the C-list, a matter-of-fact European au pair and American co-writer, Spleen manages to show as little appreciation for them as possible due to his own deep self-loathing.

Episode one showed him demeaning himself by dressing as the globe for an environmental awareness ad campaign, for which he was recompensed too handsomely for the sniping press, who proceeded to rummage through his dustbins (should have done an ad about identity theft instead, like that nice Mr McGowan) and expose all Spleen’s own environmental shortcomings (paper, cans) as well as digging up other items of waste which he had thrown out to protect the feelings of family and friends.

And a week on, we saw the character trying to avoid buying a new toaster, stealing teaspoons from his local eaterie and whingeing about the noise his walnut-brained paper boy makes of a morning, all while trying to script a new DVD called People do the Dumbest Things: 3. There is nothing but joy in Spleen’s perennial despair and apathy about all around him, not least in an outstanding scene in which he goes to the newsagent to complain about the lad, only to be greeted with a wholly disinterested woman who didn’t look up from a copy of a magazine throughout their conversation, during which she tried to anticipate – wrongly and profligately each time – what he wanted.

I’m glad the critics I have read have reacted warmly to the programme. It’s like all the best comedy – the right characterisation will take you through the right plot, not vice versa, and Lead Balloon works on this level. The writing is superb; the performances are suitably understated; the absence of a studio audience, the shooting on film rather than video, the adoption of swinging camerawork and the regular use of locations rather than sets all add gravitas to the project. It’s a complete hit.

So it now begs the question as to why the BBC have aired it on BBC4. Comedy on all levels has taken a battering of late – especially sitcom – and there seems to be little in the way of instinct or “feel” for a show when it comes to a scheduling question. Some new comedies might be garbage, some certainly are; but it seems jolly indecent of the Corporation to use the raising of the comedy bar as a reason to keep quality projects like Lead Balloon away from the masses. Yet there have been trailers for it everywhere – BBC1, BBC2, News 24, Radio 5 Live – so the contradiction is clear: watch this, watch this, oh do watch this, but as it’s on BBC4, if it’s rubbish it won’t matter. Okay?

Lead Balloon is anything but rubbish. If the BBC has any sense, it’ll let the series end, then immediately bang it on BBC1 at 9.30pm one night a week. It’s so obviously good, why wait?

With the restricted, experimental format of both channel and programme giving him a whole 60 minutes to question his guest, it’s a hark back to “proper” televisual interviewing and has proved for the first time in a generation that famous folk can happily and freely talk about themselves without having to gratuitously plug some project or other.

My argument there may wane a tad as I’m writing this on the back of Lawson’s talk with Jack Dee, as part of “Jack Dee Night” (yes) on BBC4 as the channel sets itself to launch its new audienceless comedy, Lead Balloon, which Dee co-writes, as well as appears in. There have been numerous trailers right through the Corporation – the audio from BBC1 and 2′s promos have also been heard on Radio 1 and 5 Live – with BBC4 pinning much on Dee’s national comic popularity and growing reputation as a decent actor to make their network just that bit more of a choice for the channel-hoppers.

So, naturally, the first 10 minutes of Lawson’s polite gossip with Dee was about the making of the series and Dee’s own feelings as an actor and the writer of a semi-autobiographical sitcom (he stars as a deadpan comic whose career has become too reliant on corporates). But this was only 10 minutes of a one-hour chat on a commercial-free network. Whether Lawson’s guests have had anything to plug or not – and in the main, they haven’t – is only incidental, as proved by the case of Dee, through whom we got a fascinating, candid 50-minute insight into a complicated life and career.

I chuckled and listened intently as Dee – always a favourite comic of mine in any event since I heard his jokes about water supply conservation leaflets on The Mary Whitehouse Experience in 1990 – told of conning his way into sixth form, telling careers advisors he wanted to change the Church of England and being the only career waiter in Covent Garden who wasn’t a RADA undergraduate (but was a dipsomaniac who wrote chronic poetry). Some of it was stuff I dimly recalled from Deadpan magazine a decade ago, but it was still intriguing nonetheless.

Then there was the successful side, and the revelation that Dee only developed his winning dour delivery when he’d decided to give it all up and therefore went into his pre-booked, final gigs with a couldn’t-care-less attitude, and got the biggest laughs he’d ever had. From here we got clips of Paramount City (“A man back by popular demand”, I remember Arthur Smith saying introducing him at the time, and I can believe it when I consider some of the other guff which went on that show) and The Jack Dee Show and the higher ground he gained from winning a British Comedy award for Best Newcomer and then, of course, advertising John Smith’s beer and overpowering the egos of Madames Feltz and Turner to win the inaugural Celebrity Big Brother.

Lawson is a lucky interviewer in that he has a lot of time to fill so he can ask numerous supplementary questions dependant on the initial answer, but as a proper journalist should, he is doing so in the right way. He is respectful to his guests, doesn’t miss anything out, reacts to discomfort in a subject (when Dee said he refused to allow any of his Celebrity Big Brother clips to be re-shown, Lawson moved on) and, most of all, he listens, and listens properly. As a consequence, Dee – not known at all as a difficult interviewee, but certainly a man with a persona which could prompt assumptions – was able to project himself as an articulate and decent chap who isn’t afraid to graft, but also not afraid to reveal the more embarrassing traits of his life and work.

The guest must obviously know that they’re going to be asked about everything, but just maybe they agree to it – even with nothing to plug, like Jilly Cooper, David Baddiel, Terry Gilliam – because they know Lawson will ask them everything in the right way.