Sure, the TV companies would like us to believe that every new sitcom is the next Fawlty Towers or that every murder mystery is the best thing since Cracker.
But in the character of Gene Hunt, who returned to our screens last night in Ashes to Ashes, we have one of the great TV figures of the modern era.
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A spin off from the marvellous Life On Mars, Ashes to Ashes has got an awful lot to live up to - and the early indications are that it's more than up to the task.
We've moved on from Seventies' Manchester to London in 1981. Sam Tyler has been replaced by a bird' from the future and poor old Gene Hunt is feeling a fish out of water as modern policing' is replacing his more direct methods.
I suspect a lot of Life On Mars fans were wondering how the writers could pull off the time-slip trick effectively second time round.
Partly they've done it by the same attention to detail which made Life On Mars such essential viewing - although being pedantic Gene Hunt couldn't have been driving a right hand drive Audi Quattro in 1981.
Then there's the clever twist of introducing Keeley Hawes as a psychologist from today who studied the Sam Tyler case.
By having a female foil, the whole dynamic of the show has shifted, but it's still great fun.
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