So Channel 4 have unleashed yet another American sit-com upon us, in the shape of newsroom-based Back to You. With Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer and Everybody Loves Raymond’s Patricia Heaton teaming up to form something of a US comedy dream team, this one should really have laugh-a-minute written all over it. Sadly, though, even a lab-created hybrid of Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and the entire cast of Cheers wouldn’t be able to prevent this labouring show from feeling incredibly dated.

In these days of The Office: An American Workplace and Curb Your Enthusiasm, it’s hard to believe that these fake-laughter-filled, predictably punchlined, uber-generic shit-coms are still coming out of the States. Once upon a time Back to You might have worked, but in the context of today’s comedy scene this show’s entire format is the equivalent of a dodo operating a Betamax.

What’s far more depressing than this show’s very existence, though, is that the main channels here in the UK are happier to invest money and schedule time into played-out guff like this and Big Bang Theory, than they are to show the afore-mentioned Office and Curb. Why is The Office buried away on ITV 37 and Curb doomed to an eternity on More4, while this tripe is somehow deemed worthy of the wider audience?

It’s BBC’s scandalous treatment of Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show all over again.