Lead Balloon is a British television series produced by Open Mike Productions for BBC Four. The series was created and is co-written by comedian Jack Dee and Pete Sinclair. Starring Dee as Rick Spleen, a cynical and misanthropic comedian whose life is plagued by petty annoyances, disappointments and embarrassments. Raquel Cassidy, Sean Power and Tony Gardner also star. The first series of six episodes was broadcast on BBC Four in 2006, with the first episode achieving the highest ratings for a comedy on the channel. Repeats of the series were run on BBC Two and BBC HD, bringing it to a larger audience. A second series of eight episodes began on BBC Two in November 2007.

Comparisons were made by critics to the successful American comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, though positive comments were made about Lead Balloon's characters, particularly Magda, the Eastern European housekeeper. The first series was released on DVD in November 2007. The show's theme tune is a cover of "One Way Road" by Oasis, performed by Paul Weller.

Production

Development

The genesis of the series came towards the end of recording the 2005 series of Jack Dee Live at the Apollo, when Dee speculated as to whether his experiences of "witless" interviews could be turned into a television programme. Following a meeting with his agent, in which he turned down the lead role in a series, Dee began writing the character that would become Rick Spleen. He focused the writing on Spleen's domestic life, rather than his professional, but did highlight the clash between the two. A pilot was commissioned by BBC Four and recorded in December 2005, which received positive feedback, leading to a full series of six 30-minute episodes being ordered in January 2006 for broadcast later in the year.

Writing

Dee's frequent collaborator Pete Sinclair joined him to write the pilot script. The two worked for two weeks developing the characters and forming storylines from them, which prepared them for writing the series proper when it was commissioned. The two were strongly influenced in their writing by the "paradigm shift" of The Office that made "natural conversation" funny without a studio audience being present. Dee cites the early films of Woody Allen, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm as other "cultural influences"; works that set the tone of the piece. Controller of BBC Four Janice Hadlow stated the series was in the "same ballpark" as Curb, though it is not quite as autobiographical. The name Lead Balloon comes from the expression "To go down like a lead balloon", meaning to be received badly by an audience.

Filming

The non-broadcast pilot features a scene with Omid Djalili as a dry cleaner, which was reused in the fifth episode, "Pistachio". Location filming, particularly Rick and Mel's house, was done in Willesden. Scenes are separated by the insertion of a person writing ideas for comedy material on a writing pad.

Characters

Dee's character Rick Spleen is a stand-up comedian living in London who struggles to get decent gigs and makes ends meet by hosting corporate events such as the Frozen Goods Awards Evening. Dee and Sinclair based the character on the "comedians who hated being comedians" who performed alongside Dee in his early years of stand-up. Rick is a habitual and incompetent liar who often attempts practical tasks himself in an attempt to avoid paying professionals. His partner Mel (Raquel Cassidy) is a talent agent whose clientele of everyday people getting their 15 minutes of fame serves to highlight Rick's failing career. Her calm, perceptive and considerate personality contrasts strongly with Rick's. Rick's American co-writer, Marty (Sean Power), writes the majority of Rick's material, often working with Rick at Rick's home or Michael's café. Though he tries to moderate Rick's desperate behaviour, he is quietly frustrated with him, as well as with Britain and his own career. Michael (Tony Gardner) owns and runs the café that Rick and Marty frequently visit to escape the chaos of Rick's home. The café mainly sells organic food and drinks. He lives with his father and he is socially awkward to the extent of seeming slightly simple although he was actually a high flying city banker who suffered from burn out.

Rick's daughter Sam (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) attends sixth form college and serves to extract money from Rick, often by expressing sympathy at his misfortunes. Her boyfriend Ben (Rasmus Hardiker) goes through numerous jobs and interests in the first series, such as taking a circus skills course, and a short-lived shelf-stacking job. Magda (Anna Crilly) is the Spleen's Eastern European housekeeper, who is often puzzled by British attitudes, language and, in her view, softness. She is a willing worker and generally suffers Rick's selfish eccentricities in sullen silence.

Episodes

Reception

Immediately following the commission of the series, reviewers compared it to Curb Your Enthusiasm; a story in The Independent ran with the headline "Dee writes BBC's answer to 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'". The Stage's Mark Wright called it "a curious oddity" and called comparisons to Curb "inevitable". Ian Johns of The Times "obsessed" over the similarities to Curb, though singled out Crilly and Gardner for their performances, and described Dee's characterisation of Rick as "turning childish pettiness into something almost endearing".

A. A. Gill, in The Sunday Times, wryly praised the style of humour and the reaction it provokes in viewers. Hermione Eyre of The Independent on Sunday called it "a delectable comedy of everyday embarrassment" but "unfortunately, Lead Balloon shows awkward joints where Curb Your Enthusiasm has invisible seams"; the reviewer cited Larry David as being a good man driven to obnoxious behaviour, whereas Spleen is just obnoxious. Thomas Sutcliffe of The Independent named the series the best new comedy of 2006.

When appearing on a panel of comedy judges at the 2007 Edinburgh International Television Festival, Frank Skinner, in response to The Vicar of Dibley and The Catherine Tate Show being voted the best comedies in a public poll, called it "the best sitcom that anyone from the comedy circuit has done [...] Obviously I was hoping it would be shit" (Skinner starred in his own failed sitcom, Shane in 2004).

The first episode broke BBC Four's audience record for a comedy series, with 383,000 viewers. However, it had dropped to 199,000 by the third episode, though still won its multichannel slot. "Rubbish"'s BBC Two repeat received 2.1 million viewers, with 122,000 seeing "Allergic" afterwards on BBC Four. The final episode of the first series, "Fatty", received 2.3 million for its BBC Two repeat.

The first series was nominated for a British Comedy Award in 2007 while Dee was nominated for the best comedy actor gong.

Series information

Broadcast history

The first series aired on BBC Four between 4 October and 8 November 2006 in the 10.30 p.m. timeslot. The ratings success of the first episodes lead to the series having a repeat run on BBC Two, starting on 26 October. A second series of eight episodes was commissioned by the controller of BBC Two following the conclusion of the first series. A third series has recently been confirmed and is most likely to air in late 2008.

Lead Balloon was the first comedy series to be broadcast on the BBC's high-definition service, BBC HD, with another repeat run beginning on 21 December 2006. Episodes were also made available as streaming downloads on bbc.co.uk during the first series run.

DVD release

The first series was released on 12 November 2007 and the second will be released on 24 November 2008

References

External links

• Lead Balloon at bbc.co.uk
• Lead Balloon at The British Comedy Guide