Jerry Seinfeld

I don't understand why American critics took so vehemently against The Marriage Ref, created by Jerry Seinfeld. On the strength of this ITV remake, it looks like harmless fluff.

Or maybe the harmlessness was the reason for the critics' harshness. Maybe the Americans expected Seinfeld to come up with something edgier and more substantial than a comedy panel game in which three celebrities pass jokey judgements on minor marital spats.

The US version, despite savage reviews, has limped to a second series. The only reason for its survival seems to be Seinfeld's ability to fill the panel with heavyweight celebrity pals like Madonna, Alec Baldwin and Ricky Gervais.

Their counterparts for this version were considerably less starry: comedians Sarah Millican and Jimmy Carr (clearly we don't see enough of him on television), and, as host Dermot O'Leary described her, "British pop and yoga royalty" Geri Halliwell.

I can't see this version making it beyond a single series. The domestic disputes are barely disputes at all and there's nothing at stake, not even a cash prize.

Saturday's participants were a middle-aged Tom Jones impersonator who's fed up with his wife leaving him "to do" lists; a young woman who wants her 31-year-old clown of a husband to grow up and stop hanging out with teenage skateboarders; and a lovely, octogenarian couple, married for 53 years, who are having a genteel disagreement over the husband's habit of making endless jars of pickles (cue some patronising "oohing" and "aahing" from the studio audience).

Hardly the stuff of Relate counselling. In a TV landscape coarsened beyond belief by the likes of Jeremy Kyle, The Marriage Ref doesn't stand a chance.

This quirky new panel show is based on a format originally created by Jerry Seinfeld, who apparently came up with the idea after persuading a friend to referee during a row with his wife. Unfortunately for him the show initially got withering reviews in America, although it attracted enough viewers to be filed under "cult viewing". Maybe it'll do better on this side of the pond. The idea is that the opinionated panellists (among them Jonathan Ross, James Corden and Sarah Millican) listen to the marital tiffs of real couples, then offer their hopefully amusing opinions before judging who's in the right. The sort of spats they'll pronounce on are whether a wife loves her cat more than her husband (probably) and whether a woman's demand that her hubbie give up skateboarding and grow up is fair (definitely). Ever-amiable host Dermot O'Leary has already tweeted: "Jeremy Kyle punters need not apply."

Dermot O'Leary hosts this noisy new entertainment show, which sees real-life couples air their marital tiffs in front of a three-strong celebrity panel. It's a format devised by US comedian Jerry Seinfeld; the American version, which aired Stateside last year, featured such guests as Madonna and Tina Fey. ITV will be hoping its feisty arguments prove palatable to British audiences: they've ordered a seven-week series and booked guests including Jimmy Carr, Geri Halliwell and Jonathan Ross (him again).

It was a curate's egg of a half-hour, not that a curate and his egg offer the best metaphor for a show about a loving but bickering family of east London Jews. In fact, it is a singularly ill-fitting metaphor, the expression "curate's egg" originating in the old Punch cartoon about a curate who was too timid to complain about a bad egg he had been served. There would be no such timidity at any table of Jews worth their salt beef. Even a visiting rabbi would spit out such an egg.

Enough eggs already. Grandma's House revolves around the simple idea, one that dates back almost to the birth of television comedy, of different generations of the same family arguing in a front room. Steptoe and Son did it to great effect, so did Til Death Us Do Part, so did The Royle Family. In some ways, Grandma's House is The Royle Family with chopped liver. In other ways, it is Seinfeld removed to Gants Hill. And the nod to Seinfeld is evident in the character of Simon (Simon Amstell), the presenter of a TV comedy panel show about music, which - just as Jerry Seinfeld played a stand-up comedian called Jerry, a mildly fictionalised version of himself - is precisely what Amstell, the co-writer of Grandma's House with Dan Swimer and erstwhile presenter of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, is in real life. Or was. Indeed, in last night's opening episode Simon announced to his family his intention to quit his TV show, much to their dismay. "In my kalooki group that's all we talk about," lamented his grandma (Linda Bassett).

The other obvious parallel with Seinfeld is that Jerry Seinfeld made it through nine seasons of that phenomenally successful show rarely ever being more than engagingly wooden as an actor. Good acting was the preserve of his brilliant co-stars and so it is here. Amstell barely seems to try to act, just issues his lines semi-mechanically wearing a half-smile, just as Jerry did.

Still, it didn't matter in Seinfeld and, strangely, it doesn't matter here either. Amstell, aided by the sensible decision not to run a laughter-track, somehow makes a virtue of his self-consciousness, and in any case, there are enough pitch-perfect performances, notably from Rebecca Front playing Simon's divorced mother, Tanya, and Samantha Spiro as his aunt, Liz. It helps that the writing, too, is often pitch-perfect. Tanya is being courted by Clive (James Smith), whom Simon loathes, but who is considered highly eligible largely on account of a 42-inch plasma TV on which "you can see every hair of Noel Edmonds's beard". And when Simon's grandpa (Geoffrey Hutchings) breaks the news that he has cancer (an unwittingly poignant detail, given that Hutchings died suddenly last month), it is questioned on the basis that "years ago he found a lump on his testicle and it was a raisin in his pants".

Just as a wandering raisin can be mistaken for a testicular lump, so can a promising first episode be mistaken for a good new sitcom, and I wouldn't like to commit myself too soon. Besides, there are reasons why London-Jewish humour is far less familiar to us than the kind of New York-Jewish humour exemplified by Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Seinfeld and Larry David (whose Curb Your Enthusiasm also has loud echoes in Grandma's House). It is no accident that the Jewish humour British audiences know best and love most has historically been imported, mordant and razor-sharp, from the United States. Nor is it any accident that Jewish characters in British sitcoms are, for the most part, pretty forgettable. It is more than 40 years since Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, and not even the warm glow of nostalgia does it any favours.

When Simon Amstell stepped down as host of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, it was a black day for the noble art of taking the mickey out of pop stars - and guests. What, we all wondered, would he do next?

This is it - a sitcom in which Simon plays a character named Simon who is about to break the news to his family that he has decided to give up his TV job of taking the mickey out of pop stars.

Except nobody says mickey, of course: they're allowed to use much, much stronger language on BBC2 than I ever could in a family newspaper.

If this format sounds like it's in serious danger of disappearing up its own backside, don't forget that two of the greatest sitcoms ever made, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, also featured Jewish comedians - Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David - playing versions of themselves. And it didn't exactly do them any harm.

Rebecca Front plays his mum, Linda Bassett his grandma and Geoffrey Hutchings is his grandad. And the fly in the ointment of this happy family is mum's new boyfriend Clive (James Smith) - an easy target for Amstell's barbed humour.

How closely this set-up mirror's Simon's own family is something we can only guess at as we admire his grandma's comfortable living room which is all G Plan furniture and ironic splashes of kitsch.

It's not as caustic as Buzzcocks but it's a grower.