Michele Hewitson: Same old goofiness with lashings of humiliation

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Old Christine is a neurotic mum whose lies get less and less believable.

The set-up in The New Adventures of the Old Christine (TV2, 7.30pm) is that the old Christine is the ex-wife of Richard who now has a new girlfriend called Christine.

The old Christine (Julia Louis- Dreyfus) discovers this at the same time we do.

She's approached by two mix-and-match waspy ladies on her son's first day at his new private school who feel it their sisterly duty to inform old Christine that her ex is snogging his new girlfriend, also called Christine, in the school car park. "Which kind of makes you the old Christine."

Old Christine, and there are shades of that old Elaine from Seinfeld here, pretends she already knows about all of this. She's a rotten liar: all see-through bravado and mad, lying eyes.

She attempted to persuade Richard that she has her own new guy. A lumberjack called Joe. "When a lumberjack loves you, he loves you." This is agreeable enough, entertaining enough nonsense.

The joke is supposed to be that until Richard linked up with the new Christine (blonde, thick) the old Christine (dark, goofy) went around boasting about her divorce the way the happily married boast about their marriages.

Her divorce is better than most people's marriages. But now, she said to Richard, "you have to fool around with somebody so young - it doesn't help me".

Richard: "It kinda helps me."

Despite old Christine's very happy divorce she is just a bit neurotic. She calls herself from home, at home, to leave messages for herself on her voicemail telling herself not to eat so much sugar, to maybe consider Botox.

She calls herself back: "You know what? No Botox. That's gross. Learn to love yourself. Have a good night."

She hasn't really got a lumberjack, or anyone, because "I haven't even considered dating yet. I'm still wearing my maternity underwear." Two years on from the divorce, the idea of dating scares her. "Small talk and ... nudity. I have to stand on my head to make my boobs look good."

This might have worked had it not been obvious she doesn't have what most middle-aged women would consider boobs, let alone the sort you'd have to stand on your head to make, aah, perky.

It's unfair to compare the old Christine to the old Elaine - and impossible not to.

She's the same sort of character: that goofiness, that propensity for creating situations which are going to end in humiliation, the lies that get bigger and badder and less believable by the second.

There's the physical comedy which involved Christine performing lots of frantic putting on and taking off of jackets and shoes. When Kramer's not around to out-slapstick everyone else, this kind of stuff just becomes a distraction: Oh, look, we're watching a comedy.

Then there's the kid. The kid gets the sharp lines. When Christine took him to private school (she has aspirations) he said, "Where are the black kids?"

"Don't say that," she hissed, "I'm sure there was one in the brochure."

She was feeling guilty for taking the kid to a private school. It was all about her. The kid, of course, had made friends and loved the place. Aw. She's not a bad mom, after all.

It would be expecting too much to expect there could ever be another sitcom which banned hugging and learning.