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For many of us - and in no particular order - Frasier Mk I, Cheers and Seinfeld were the gold standard of TV comedy in their time. I won't use the word 'sitcom' because 99% of sitcoms are very ordinary, very formulaic, their humour is just a tad forced and, frankly, too many are so-so.

But Frasier, Cheers and Seinfeld were different, though each in its own way. Forget about the writing for a minute: their success was also largely down to inspired casting and, I suppose, the luck which inspired the casting.

I shall not single out anyone from Cheers and Seinfeld, but I shall single out David Hyde-Pierce, aka Niles Crane from Frasier Mk I as so essential to the spirit of the series that I doubt it would have been such a hit without him.

All those series have something else in common - a sense of irony, a lack of the kind of sentimental guff the Yanks all too often make their own - and wit. 'Wit' is difficult to define but I can say it is a lot more than 'humour' and 'being funny'.

And all three of the gold standard had the wit always to pull the rug from under your feet: whenever you felt 'Ah, damn, now they are going to give in to some of that bloody awful sentimental guff the Yanks love', they did not just NOT provide it, they pulled the rug from under your feet and yanked you right back down to earth.

In that respect, the very last scene of the very last episode of Cheers was a comparative stroke of genius - classy to the end.

The advice often given in many situations - from hooking back up with a former flame to re-joining a former employer - is 'never go back'. I don't doubt Kelsey Grammer was reminded - warned - of that many times when it was suggested to try to remake Frasier, but sadly in the event he didn't listen. So now we get Frasier Mk II, and it has no good reason to exist.

TV has plenty of bad to mediocre to OK sitcoms already, and that is all Frasier Mk II is, just another sitcom, and sadly not all that good. I even suspect the producers even resorted to the safe standby of 'canned laughter' instead of studio audiences just in case it went pear-shaped.

What Frasier most certainly doesn't have is 'wit' in any shape or form. None at all. It is just another formulaic sitcom from the first episode of the first series which is so clunky in the set-up it should be fined for plagiarism from all other clunky set-ups. It is all done by numbers.

There is none of the finesse which marked out Frasier Mk I, though that, too, did eventually pale a little towards the end (and Cheers and Seinfeld did not). But oh well. Some will like it, some will agree with me. Best stick to the memories.

I realise the films of Guy Ritchie are not everyone's cup of tea, but I happen to like them and his style a lot. Yes, he has quite a narrow canvas but what he does, he does very well indeed and then some. That at least is my opinion.

You come to realise quite how adept Mr Ritchie is as a writer, director and producer when you come across what, to adopt the idiom of Snatch, the TV series and its world, is a cheap knock-off.

Well, as film-making is not exactly cheap, I stress I am using the word metaphorically.

But Snatch, the TV series is a very down-market knock-off. It and Snatch, the Ritchie film and its stablemates, are just not in the same league.

Ritchie's (shall I risk it, 'oeuvre' - no, I shan't, I'll go with 'films) is top-of-the-table Premier League stuff. Alex de Rakoff's series is bottom of League One regulation battle stuff.

I don't doubt many enjoy it, simply because it is the kind of lov'abl Cockney rong 'uns caper they like. But there are now quite a few of them and it does not stand out from the crowd for one second.

De Rakoff (I wonder if that name is real and he isn't, in fact, Kevin Perks from Rotherham?) does not have any of Ritchie's gifts and, as he does here, simply trying to ape Ritchie's trademark camera work, intricate, well-crafted) storylines, imaginative direction and above all wit just does't cut it. It simply doesn't work for more than five minutes once you realise there's very little else.

Snatch, the TV series, is very thin gruel indeed and pales quickly. Yes, the rip-off camera work and makes it look like Ritchie, but the attempt at intricate plotting is plain silly. That's were the wit comes in: 'wit' is far broader than just 'funny', and Ritchie has wit in speed in spades. De Rakoff does not have it at all.

Actually, there was a previous, quite similar, series spin-off from one of Ritchie's films, The Gentleman. That actually had Ritchie's input in some ways, and it showed, though it wasn't really a patch on the original film.

Here Ritchie has not input at all, and that shows, too. As I say, if you care to settle for a knock-off, go for this by all means. But it's still a cheap knock-off and did very little for me.

Sigh.

Season one of The Recruit was different and a refreshing change: the central conceit of a lawyer who didn't want to get bogged down in and a grey-life legal office so he goes to work - still as a lawyer - for the CIA was a good one.

It panned out really well. The 'plot' got ever more convoluted but held together and evolved in a way that was 'realistic', or at least 'realistic' in on its own TV streaming terms.

Best of all running through it all was a seam of witty dry humour which leavened all the 'action'. Then there was also action, but that, too, was somehow all of a piece. I even recommended it to friends as 'a bit different'. Then came season two and it all changed, and not for the better. I just hope those friends who tuned into season two on my recommendation will forgive me.

Perhaps the producers were not confident they would get a second season and so did not draft an outline for one. But whatever the reason, season two is essentially just TV streaming schlock pretty much like all the other TV streaming schlock we can tune into any day of the week.

Season two is entertaining enough but trudges through very familiar ground, in every respect. And it isn't a patch on season one. The witty dry humour has been replaced by the usual heavy-handed American kind of humour which tends only to be funny if you are 17 or need stuff to be spelled out.

In fact, there's a lot of spelling out going on and it makes the dialogue often wooden and insulting: in a few lines two characters will bring the slowest of us up to speed with an outline of what has happened so far. Yes, it can get that bad.

So there you have it. If you liked season one, give season two a miss. If you didn't see season one, give it a whirl, then still give season two a miss. It's as though they are from different series.