If you’re missing Friends now that it’s been let go by E4, and you’re craving a sort of watered-down facsimile that feels like you’re being bludgeoned with a laughter track tape, then never fear: E4 has two new American sitcoms to quench your thirst for mediocrity.

The first, Perfect Couples, is based on the fact that a relationship is an ever-changing beast, and that great, great difference between the first few months and the ensuing ten years. Oh and it stars Olivia Munn, which is nice because she’s always turning up to events and stuff, and now we finally know who she is and what she does.

Perfect Couples creates for itself a world where commitment to a relationship means never doing a poo in the house (“I have a gym membership for that sole reason”), wearing heels 24/7 and tricking your unsuspecting other half into couples therapy. Both the writing and the characterisation are cliché-heavy: the men are largely sex-obsessed retards and the women insecure bunny boilers.

The second, Happy Endings, starts with a wedding, and as soon as the groom says “I literally would not want to live without you” to his bride, she runs away with a man on rollerblades. The rest of the ‘hilarity’ is based on how their split affects their mutual friends, who have to deal with his pathetic drunken crying and her general cold-heartedness.

If possible, the characters in Happy Endings are even more predictable and tired than in Perfect Couples. You’ve got your lovable loser, wisecracking black dude, bitchy gay guy, desperate single girl, baby-crazy harpy and nasty ex-girlfriend. Oh, and if you’re wondering how the show stretches the whole ‘jilting’ premise into a whole 13-episode season, it doesn’t. In fact, it barely works to the end of the first episode.

There is, at least, some justice in the world; Perfect Couples has the dubious pleasure of getting NBC’s worst ratings and is likely to be dropped. Happy Endings, on the other hand, has been recommissioned for a new season, despite making How I Met Your Mother look like bloody Pinter. Now where’s that Friends boxset?

Perfect Couples and Happy Endings form a sort of unholy Thursday triumvirate with How I Met Your Mother, starting from 8:30 on E4.