Lead Balloon

quote:

Lead Balloon is a British television sitcom, similar in style and subject matter to Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. It began broadcasting on BBC Four on 4th October, 2006, and it is produced and directed by Alex Hardcastle. The show's theme tune is "One Way Road" (written by Noel Gallagher) performed by Paul Weller from his Studio 150 album.

quote:

Influences

Many people have compared Lead Balloon to the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, basically because Jack Dee plays a fictionalized version of himself - a successful middle-aged comedian - as Larry David does in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like the "Larry David" character, Rick Spleen gets into awkward situations through pride, stubbornness, petty dishonesty, and lack of agility in social situations.

There are also similarities in the camerawork, the way the jokes are structured, and the absence of a laughter track. The ugly baby situation in episode one was used in an episode of David's previous series Seinfeld, and the stealing cutlery situation in episode two occurred in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

However, Lead Balloon is more laid-back in tone than Curb Your Enthusiasm and the dialogue is more strictly scripted rather than being improvised. In an interview in late 2006, Dee said that The Office was a bigger influence than Curb Your Enthusiasm. The influence of The Office is especially apparent in episode five where Rick twice repeats words slowly under his breath, as Gareth and David Brent do in The Office. Comparisons have also been made with Extras, which was written by the writers of The Office and is closer in situation to Lead Balloon, but was written and filmed at more or less the same time as Lead Balloon.

There are also similarities to One Foot In The Grave. Rick is similar in character, attitudes and ineffectuality to Victor Meldrew, and a lot of the comedy comes from the petty frustrations of middle-class life in modern Britain.