GET A GRIP (ITV1, Wednesday 11th April, 10pm)

Why is it that so many comedians these days are happy to shit out work that they must know is beneath them? Is it simply that once they reach a certain point in their careers their good ideas dry up and they don't realise (or care), or is it that, once successful, they no longer feel the urge to even try? Did Vic and Bob really think that any of Monkey Trousers was worthy of them? Do you think Armando is proud of Time Trumpet? Does Harry Enfield think he's produced anything of worth in the last decade? Yet, despite their past indiscretions, were any of the aforementioned comedians to announce a new project I'd be counting down the days to transmission, under the naively optimistic delusion that it could be a return to form.

The much-maligned Ben Elton is another comedian whose work I (and, almost certainly, you) have enjoyed immensely in the past – The Young Ones, Blackadder, Filthy Rich & Catflap and Happy Families were all at least partially from his pen, and that's before we take into consideration his stand-up routines and corresponding BBC series. True, it is irritating it is to see him work with the likes of Lloyd-Webber, and last year's BBC sitcom Blessed was spirit-crushingly awful, but even so there's still the hope that he still has it in him somewhere, which is why I tuned into Get a Grip with my fingers well and truly crossed.

The premise of Get a Grip is thus: Ben Elton and Alexa 'Popworld' Chung sit at a desk and partake in cross-generational banter, with Ben as the grumpy, cynical curmudgeon and Alexa as the hip, sassy young 'thing'. Due to the difference in their ages they have very different outlooks on life and different opinions, and from hence humour arises. Their discussions are broken up with sketches to illustrate certain points, similar to those in Ben's BBC series in the 90s. Sadly, it doesn't quite work.

Compared to what we know he is capable of, this is clearly B-grade material – indeed, some of it is so outdated that it could be material he rejected from 1998's The Ben Elton Show. Last week we had jokes about Tinky Winky's sexuality; this week about the size of Lara Croft's breasts. Topical! The theme of the show was ostensibly "the Man crisis", with observations about the differences between men and women – men can fold maps, men can't find anything, women can multitask... you know the score. Nothing groundbreaking, though admittedly there were a few amusing gags.

Another problem is Alexa herself: she's just not good enough. See, I quite like the concept of the show, and even though it could be argued that it would work just as well as a solo Elton stand-up series, giving him a straight (wo)man to bounce off isn't such a bad idea, but Alexa can't pull it off (insert your own 'knob gag' reference here, if you want). Her delivery is too stilted, too obviously read off an autocue, and she breaks out of character by laughing at Ben's jokes all too often. For the show to work, the sidekick must be straight-faced and must sound like she is engaging in a natural conversation – Alexa fails on both counts. The shoehorned-in phrases she uses to emphasise how "down wid da kidz" she is are also laughable – continually calling Ben "babes", telling him to "get with the programme" etc, though to be fair to Alexa she's only (badly) reading the script she's been given.

Yet. despite these flaws, there's still the occasional frustrating glimpse of how great the show could have been. Ben Elton is still a superb comedy performer, and still clearly capable of writing some genuinely amusing stuff. The line "could you kindly send your child to school tomorrow dressed as an Elizabethan" came out of nowhere at the end of a fairly mundane routine about parenting, and almost floored me, and when his material has a bit of anger and passion to it the old Ben we used to know still shines through, like the bits on crap Channel 4 list shows and Iraq. Unfortunately, these highlights are few and far between, and the rest is just middle-aged, middle-class tedium.

It could have been good. It should have been good. Heck, occasionally it is good. But not good enough, often enough. With a strict script editor and a better co-host this could have been Ben Elton's return to form, but unfortunately it's just a not-very-near miss. I almost hope this gets a second series, as if Ben's scripts are tightened up and Alexa's delivery improves then perhaps... see, there's that naïve optimism again.