Any hopes for this revival were all but extinguished within 5 minutes of actually watching it. You can bring back the actors, the sets, the producers, the whatever, but if you’re not going to set the same standards the original had for the writing, what the hell is the point?!

I persevered and watched every episode of both seasons, feeling increasingly like a masochist every time I watched. Constant weak, lowest common denominator gags which grabbed the easiest lowest hanging fruit punchlines available. Loathsome new characters - worst amongst them Freddie’s love interest who was gifted a rent free apartment in episode 1, the sort of insanely generous gesture most folks can only dream of receiving, and spent the remainder of both seasons mooching off Frasier for more freebies, outright stealing his wine and food on several occasions.

Hailing from the UK myself I’ve been a fan of Nicholas Lyndhurst for a long while so the fact that he was able to imbue Alan with some charm was no surprise. But Alan was not a great character, nor even a good one. He was as shallow and one dimensional as the rest of them, a lazy cliché of the drunk Brit, and someone who blatantly disregarded the educational needs of his students with zero care.

The original show was filled with flawed characters too, but almost all of them strove to be better and indeed became better, and none were out and out horrible people. I don’t laugh when a horrible person says something funny. I just wait for an anvil to fall on their head.

Shame on everyone involved in this show.