There isn't much time for television when you spend up to eight hours a day watching films. Consequently, this critic has missed out on many of the programmes that have provided the great watercooler moments of the last decade. But, of late, I have been catching up on the likes of The Simpsons, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, and have rather enjoyed watching them without the tabloid hype that surrounded their original transmission. Maybe one of these days, I'll get round to The Sopranos, The West Wing and Frasier, too.

At the moment, however, my guiltiest pleasure is Friends and I have not only grown uncustomarily fond of Chandler, Joey, Ross, Phoebe, Rachel and Monica, but also of the performances of those previously unknown actors who so grew into their roles that they became second nature. The only trouble is, I now share the rest of the public's misgivings when I see Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox attempting to adopt anything other than their Central Perk personae.

It wasn't too difficult to accept Matthew Perry as a cynical, but insecure scriptwriter in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, as he wasn't too far removed from his wise-cracking, but insecure character in Friends. But, on viewing Harris Goldberg's offbeat dramedy Numb, it's pretty clear that Perry has still to exorcise the spirit of Chandler, as the confused, but insecure screenwriter he plays here has more than a ring of Bing.

Feeling the pressure of a deadline and getting little help from omni-snacking writing partner Kevin Pollak, Perry speed-smokes an entire joint and plunges himself into the depths of acute depersonalisation disorder. None of the shrinks he consults can assuage his disphonic anxiety, with Bob Gunton and Brian George respectively pumping him full of half-baked Harvard theories and patented pills. But what chance do they have when not even the prospect of being loved by perky studio executive Lynn Collins can bring Perry back from the brink?

Despite the novelty of the premise, there are few surprises in this fitfully amusing saga. Perry naturally comes to regret losing Collins after she catches him shoplifting and even more inevitably rues tumbling into bed with needy and sexually repressed psychiatrist Mary Steenburgen, despite her protestations that she never becomes emotionally involved with her patients.

Yet there is something acridly likeable about both Goldberg's quirky script and the efforts of his hard-working cast. Steenburgen eventually overdoes the hair-trigger loopiness, although her restaurant outburst is squirmingly effective, and Collins is an utter delight as the ditz who convinces the morose Perry that there's more to life than the golf channel.

As for Perry himself, he effortlessly retains our sympathy in the face of some self-destructive shortcomings. But while he's obviously still more comfortable with witty one-liners than intense introspection, he's far more persuasive here than he was in the likes of The Whole Nine Yards and is clearly heading in the right direction finally to sever his sitcom roots.

Besides Numb, it's a pretty quiet week for those looking to venture somewhere other than Narnia. You could always head to London, as the BFI Southbank's David Lean and Jeanne Moreau retrospectives are still running, while The Barbican is paying tribute to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The pick of the capital's current crop of festivals and seasons is the Contemporary Croatia selection at the Riverside Studios, which includes 100 Minutes of Glory, Dalibor Matanic's biopic of the pioneering female artist Slava Raskaj, and the Curzon Mayfair's Hungarian Film Showcase, whose standout offering is Csaba Bollók's Iska's Journey, which contains a heartbreaking display of abused innocence by Mária Varga, as the young girl who absconds from both her mother's cruelty and the indifference of social services, only to be shanghai'd by white slavers.