Greg Dixon: The One with the Stupid Guy

Joey (Matt LeBlanc) is as vacant in Hollywood as in Manhattan.

Well, it wasn't as if I was expecting a biting drawing room farce, a post-modern deconstructionist satire or a social dialectic on the acting classes of modern Los Angeles.

But it wasn't too much to venture, you'd figure, that Friends spinoff Joey would be as good as its easygoing, too cute and outrageously successful predecessor, a show I never much cared for.

However, it didn't take more than five minutes to deduce that Matt LeBlanc's Joey is nothing more than last night's leftovers, and no amount of new ingredients is going to stretch it to a full meal.

It was something like watching one of the small cogs that previously made the machine work smoothly, failing, though lack of size or capacity, to do the whole job itself.

But then Joey seemed the least likely of the Friends characters to make the substantial jump to his own standalone show. He was, after all, the really, really stupid one. And for 10 years, in that most assiduous of grow-and-learn comedies, he never seemed to grow or learn.

So the stupid guy who bid farewell to Chandler, Ross, Monica and all on our screens late last year in Manhattan, is now simply the stupid guy out in Hollywood.

Last week's premiere, as first shows must, got busy introducing us to the new cast as expeditiously as it could by having Joey's slutty sister Gina (The Sopranos 'Drea de Matteo) meet him at an LA airport before quickly introducing him and us to her son, Michael, just as soon as she'd shown Joey his new apartment.

We also quickly met the neighbour, a married blonde who Joey will clearly fancy to no good effect, and his agent, a mad woman who looks likely to be the funniest of the bit players.

It also got very broad very early with its comedy. No sooner had Joey hugged Gina for the first time (there was a high hug count) in the opening minutes, we had this exchange:

"Wait a second, you look different," said Joey.

"Oh I forgot, you haven't seen them," shrieked Gina, before ripping opening her jacket to reveal a low-cut top containing her new breasts.

"Come on touch them,' she coaxed.

"I've got to get my bag," said Joey. "I'll feel you up in the car, I promise."

Cue the most canned of canned laughter.

The situation in this situation comedy was always going to be something similar to Friends. Every Joey needs his Chandler. So last week it was about providing Joey with a new, smarter sidekick.

Michael, a 20-year-old rocket scientist living with his mum, is desperate to move out on his own. What about it, Uncle Joey?

It was as predictable as any episode of Friends. LeBlanc and his new cast overworked every line, just like on his old show. There was, as you'd expect, a hug-and-learn ending. But even so it was just a hollow echo of something now gone.

I'm sure Friends fans, after an adjustment period, will hold it to their hearts.

Yet I couldn't help feeling that the funniest gag of the night, which came when Joey told Gina that he had the lead role in a cop show, made clear just how old and out-of-date this show's formula is in the post-Sex and the City world.

The cop show, Joey beamed, was on cable. "So there is a combination of nudity and swearing that I find quite intriguing."

Broad as Joey's comedy is, a little nudity, a little swearing, not to mention trying something new, might make it a little more intriguing too.

* Joey, TV2, 7.30pm