Television - A special episode proves guest stars should be kept in check The Simpsons (Sky 1)

Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife was, incredibly, the 370th Simpsons. Even at a mere 22 minutes an episode, that is an awful lot of gags: verbal, visual, character-led, plot-led (and you'll normally get at least one of each per minute). Yet the standards in this, the cartoon's 17th season, have not fallen. A recent episode, for example, delighted me with both its political satire and erudition: an e-mail server announced, "You've got mail, unlike the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay - keep informed". Later, when Homer screamed that his son had been "ape-napped" by a monkey, Lisa calmly corrected him: "No, it's still 'kidnapped'. The prefix applies to the victim." And yet I plonked two young boys in front of this show the other evening and it kept them amused for three hours (or at least until they fell asleep; we really should have checked).

But episode 370 (23 April, 6.30pm, to be repeated, as Sky pointed out, on Channel 4 in four years' time or on Sky 1 on 28 April at 7pm) will not, I think, prove to be one of their favourites: too verbal, too adult, not enough of Bart and Lisa. Never mind: for children, who hoover up Simpsons reruns, there is always next week; indeed, there is always tomorrow. For the rest of us, however, the episode mattered, because it both guest-starred and was written by Ricky Gervais, writer-star of this nation's finest comic achievement - The Office. We would have been excited in any case, but the episode won the cover of the Radio Times (a first for a non- terrestrial transmission), street ads and a week's worth of previews by Sky, involving Gervais sitting in a replica of the Simpsons' living room, explaining how in awe he was, how he could only make the programme worse, and how all he wanted to do was survive. Expectations were being raised and lowered all over the place, hyperbole and litotes working in perfect harmony. Come the night, Sky celebrated by replacing the usual titles with its own bloody clever, British-filmed translation of the opening sequence, which until then had been used only promotionally.

It went fine for about ten minutes. Homer's drinking pal Lenny was hold- ing a party to announce not his marriage ("that blessed sacrament that has made my life so rich", as Homer put it in his stupid-sarcastic voice) but his new, high- definition, flat-screen TV. Sky, which is about to offer HDTV to its viewers, must have been delighted. Homer is entranced. He can see the "soulless emptiness" in the shark's eyes on the Natural History channel and, when he switches over to Two and a Half Men, the soulless emptiness in Charlie Sheen's.

Finally expelled from his friend's sofa, Homer returns home, where Marge has entered a competition to win such a tele-vision. The prize for runners-up is a no-expenses-paid tour of Fox Studios, home of Dwarf or Midget: America decides, Million Dollar Fart-off and, you will remember, The Simpsons. At the studios, Homer is persuaded, in a Mayor of Casterbridge moment, to trade Marge in for a month on the strangely familiar-sounding Fox show Mother-Flipper (yet another in-joke: in real life, Fox was sued by the makers of Wife Swap for copying their format on Trading Spouses).

He gets to live with Verity, a frosty academic, not at all the "money-hungry semi-stripper who's usually on Fox". She is so strict that she makes him write reports on what he has watched. He gets as far as remembering that on CSI: Miami there was a murder, in Miami. Next thing, he has woken up and "Letterman is interviewing Alias".

Meanwhile, Marge and the rest of the Simpsons have to endure Verity's hirsute husband, Charles, voiced by and looking like Ricky Gervais. At this point - and as I say, it is halfway into the show - the programme ceases to be about the Simpsons and tries to interest us in Charles Heathbar who, being an office manager but also a husband, is and is not David Brent from The Office. Worse, Charles is and is not Homer Simpson. At moments the only distinction seems to be that Charles is a Brit and, therefore, likes "scones". For perhaps the first time in his life, Gervais cannot make his lines sing. Like Helen Baxendale in Friends, Jane Leeves in Frasier, Roger Rees in The West Wing and, indeed, Tony Blair on The Simpsons, Gervais in Hollywood seems to forget how to do an English accent.

Charles falls in love with Marge, but the romance plot is static. Even the comic climax, in which he serenades her with a terrible love song (based on a bad pun about dyed hair, Lady Diana, and her dying) lacks the mortifying embarrassment of Brent's dance solo in The Office, the comedy coup it is surely intended to recall.

Yet when Homer ends the show by singing a love song to his plasma screen - "For the rest of my life you will be a fixture/Now let me enjoy the picture" - comic order is resumed and the programme is suddenly as funny as ever. The lesson is not to attempt to upstage the regulars. Until now, Simpsons guest stars have had cameos to perform or have voiced other characters. Here, the guest came to star. I don't blame Gervais, and his episode was no disgrace, but, in retrospect, the saintly Matt Groening should perhaps regret extending the invitation.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website