Lunch Monkeys is a dog's dinner

Lunch Monkeys, a new sitcom starring Nigel Havers, started on BBC3 last night. A word of warning to those considering looking it up on iPlayer: "starring Nigel Havers" is as good as it gets. While it might have been brave of the channel to commission an office-based comedy, given the precedent set by a certain similarly themed show, the first episode suggests that the gamble hasn't paid off. Given that I think You've Been Framed is hilarious (people fall over!), it doesn't take much to make me laugh. But Lunch Monkeys failed to raise a single smile. Try-hard, dull and full of clichés, it makes you wonder why BBC3 ever commissioned it.

That a new BBC3 comedy show isn't up to scratch shouldn't, however, come as a surprise. Big hits – shows such as Being Human, Gavin and Stacey, Nighty Night, Pulling, the Mighty Boosh, Little Britain – seem to happen rather less regularly than one might hope. The BBC continues to spot excellent and innovative comedy – the brilliant Getting On went to BBC4, and next week sees the start of the similarly inventive Home Time, on BBC2 – but it feels like poor old 3 is being left with the cast-offs. Given that it's supposed to be the corporation's youth channel, that seems a great shame: does it really only believe its audience can handle Freaky Eaters or Kirsten's Topless Ambition?

There is a sliver of hope for the new season. Its imports are well chosen. Family Guy always pads out the later hours of the evening nicely and the thriller Harper's Island, after a mediocre first episode, has started to feel as gruesomely claustrophobic and creepy as its neat premise suggested it should. A second series of Being Human is planned for January. It's not a lot, but it's something.