The first strange thing about The John Bishop Show, which began its eight-part run on BBC One tonight, was its scheduling.
It was on at 9.45pm, after Casualty. Not at 7.00pm, before the National Lottery.
Ten o'clock on a Saturday night on British TV is time for a chat show. Or the news. Or possibly for some stand-up comedy, in the shape of Live at the Apollo.
And that was where the wheels started to fall off Bishop's vehicle.
It bore some similarities to Live at the Apollo, in that it was filmed in a theatre, and featured comedians.
But unlike Live at the Apollo, which knows its post-pub audience inside out, the comedians were punctuated with music and variety acts. Oh dear.
The show opened with a troupe of acrobats, doing acrobatty things, such as standing on top of each other in towers, and rolling around the place in massive hula hoops.
The troupe included a small boy, who finished the turn by doing tricks while standing on Bishop's head.
And he did this – at the risk of repeating myself – at 9.45pm on BBC One.
After the watershed on Saturday night, small boys should be in bed asleep, not doing tricks on the telly.
If they are to do tricks on the telly at all – which is debatable – they should do it at 7.00pm on a Sunday. And preferably on ITV.
Bishop then pitched in with his opening comic monologue, most of which was an observational riff about his sons growing up into men. The first proper punchline was: "You're a ****head." Very manly.
Next came a song from Paul Weller, whom I hadn't seen for some considerable time, but whose hair has become no less contrived in the meanwhile.
And then Bishop, who was the continuity guy as well as the main attraction, introduced the comedians: Felicity Ward, James Acaster and Trevor Noah.
Ward is Australian, and she did a routine about Australians being racists, which relied heavily on Ward baldly stating that Australians are racists and hoping that would get a laugh.
Noah is South African, and did a rather better riff on British colonialism, including a passably ticklish impression of today's border agents at London's airports.
And, of course, he's the new host of The Daily Show, so it was instructive to get the measure of his stand-up.
Still, that was an awful lot of Commonwealth-sourced race-based humour in one show.
In between, we were treated to Beardyman, the obligatory YouTube sensation.
His shtick was to be given randomly made-up song titles, and to then make up and perform songs on the spot.
It was impressive, but I have to say, I was bored.
Indeed, I couldn't help but think that if Beardyman auditioned for Britain's Got Talent, Simon Cowell might say to him afterwards: "I've got to be honest with you, Beardyman. It was impressive, but I was bored."
The contrast between Beardyman (self-deprecating yoof act) and Weller (who could just as easily have been on Jools Holland) was what really killed this show for me.
I was sitting there trying to envision an actual viewer at home who would want to see both of them in the same show (but failing to come up with one).
Especially so late in the evening, it was all too uneven, too unengaging and – fatally – too unfunny.
A better idea, I concluded, would be for BBC One to forget the whole thing, and just bang out another series of Live at the Apollo.
