When this show started, I thought we'd been transported back ten years - Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller were on the screen together, for a start, but the opening credits also seemed incredibly old-fashioned (very reminiscent of Mitchell and Webb's PlayUK show, The Mitchell and Webb Situation). Indeed, some would say that the very idea of a sketch show is pretty much passed its sell-by date in any case; that those sublime final Fast Show specials should have marked the genre's end.

But no, Armstrong and Miller are ploughing ahead regardless, and good on 'em. It's always hard to judge a sketch show from its first epsiode, as there'll inevitably be a few sketches which don't appeal, and some characters won't even have been introduced yet. But on the evidence we have so far, I'd give this a tentative thumbs up.

Ben Miller has been turning up on pretty much every single show on TV over the last week (he also has a film out, you see) and the clip which has accompanied him on his publicity travels has been of the posh-but-chav-speaking World War One pilots. And to be fair, it was probably one of the best sketches of the night, on the basis of performance as much as script. Having a terribly upper-class man say "that is totally disrespecting of my trousers" in clipped RP tones may seem incredibly simple, but that little twist on the well-trod Vicky Pollard/Lauren idea makes it a winner.

The Divorced Dad is another comedy staple, but here the humour doesn't so much come from the fact that he's divorced, as the fact that he's inappropriately honest. When his young son asks why he got a divorce, he simply answers "Well to be honest, Paul, it was all your fault." Eagle-eyed viewers will have noticed that little heartbroken Paul was played by the fabulously-named Tyger Drew-Honey, AKA Jake in Outnumbered.

So far, so BBC One (ie. so safe). But, just as with the equally traditional That Mitchell and Webb Look, a stranger, darker tone runs through a lot of the sketches. My favourite of the night saw a band manager congratulating a group of bright young things on being signed by his label. "Break open the champagne!" he calls, as they leave the room - then he leans into his intercom mic, and intones: "Kill them." The Russian football club owner Dimitri is also incredibly creepy...

I can't pretend that the laughs were constant throughout this episode, and there were a couple of sketches which you felt you'd seen somewhere before, but when Armstrong and Miller let their imaginations run into darker territory, you could see definite potential for a successful series.