Talking of cold feet, ever since Cold Feet walked off into deep storage, its sharp comedy-drama footprint has left a conspicuous hole in ITV's schedules. With its clutch of thirtysomething friends and couples, Married Single Other is an obvious attempt to step into that gap. Disappointingly, it's also obvious in less welcome ways. Clint (Ralf Little) is a bit of a womaniser and rather one dimensional in his view of the opposite sex. How do we know? Well, there were clues in the dialogue, which couldn't be accused of excessive subtlety, but the giveaway was the giant poster of a naked woman on all fours that hung over his batch-pad bed.

The poster worked as a symbol of the drama's main shortcoming, an unwillingness to let the audience do any of its own thinking. There were one or two neat exchanges - when Clint mentioned to a failed conquest that he didn't have her number, she replied: "No, but I've got yours." Mostly, though, the story lurched from one scene to the next, hurriedly trying on a weird range of ill-fitting tones, from the mawkish to the melodramatic.

Let's hope the clunking mood shifts are impatient early efforts to establish the characters. In Little, Dean Lennox Kelly and Lucy Davis, the series features actors with plenty of charm. They need to be allowed to slow down and breathe. If it wants to be the next Cold Feet, it has to cool its heels.

The premise is hardly a new one centering around a group of friends dealing with love, lust and something else beginning with L that I can't quite think of at the moment. I had hoped the series would be similar to ITV's drama jewel Cold Feet which will remain one of my favourite series of all time...

Married, Single, Other isn't the new Cold Feet but it manages to be interesting enough to keep me interested. Perhaps the characters aren't quite as likeable if I were to compare the two side by side but there are good levels of drama and humour to make it an easy watch.

It takes its role as a romantic comedy very seriously often turning a little twee and sickly in places where the romance is sometimes shoved down your throat. The opening sequence was a hair away from having hearts and puppies running through a field full of buttercups and that was a little off putting.

The cast is strong with perhaps Amanda Abbington and Dean Lennox Kelly's characters being the most interesting as I feel I can predict where Lucy Davis' character is going to end up and Ralf Little as "Clint" (an attempt at humour that fell flat) seems to be playing himself.

The series isn't quite the jewel I was hoping for but saying that its unfair the judge something based soley on a first episode where the characters need to be introduced and stories laid down but it shows enough promise to become a success.

Married, Single, Other is more obsessed with matrimony than even Iain Duncan Smith. ITV's new six-part comedy drama asks us to consider which is the most natural state for a grown-up - marriage, being single or living together. It is already hurtling towards the conclusion "none of the above". We refer first to Lillie and Eddie, not only because the actors Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley make them the far most compelling characters, but because they appear to be content, and have been, so we are told several times, for 16 happily unmarried years.

The only tension in the relationship is Eddie's determination to marry Lillie, a desire that manifests itself in ludicrous romantic gestures on her birthdays, on one of which we join them. "May I refer you to the window?" asks Eddie, opening the curtain on a collage of post-it notes that spell "Will You Marry Me?" Eddie, a blameless paramedic and all round good sort, is a sentimentalist, so soppy you hardly realise that towards the end of the episode he has entered the euthanasia debate on the side of do-not-revive.

He is further goaded toward the altar by the neuroses of his 11-year-old son, who in an embellishment the writer Peter Souter should have thought better of, is a child prodigy and speaks in sitcom clever-clever. Joe (Jack Scanlon) is so anxious that his parents do the proper thing he scripts his father's proposal speeches in a scrapbook. Lillie is having none of it, not merely because she is happily in love as she is (which would have done for me) but because she works at a refuge for battered wives. By the end of last night's opener, rather than book Joe into therapy with her mate Babs, she has relented, however. In the Richard Curtis moment we all feared, she proposes to Eddie at her birthday party.

Among the guests are, of course, Babs who is married to a loser called Dickie, although you might want to abbreviate the name. Dickie, an all-night online gambler, get-rich-quick fantasist and biker, is so broadly written that Dean Lennox Kelly does well to make any sense of him at all in his performance. If only Amanda Abbington could have made us see what he sees in the dreary child shrink she plays. Meanwhile, the inveterate Lothario Clint, played by Ralf Little, has fallen for a blonde model called Abbey, played by Miranda Raison who, natch, is not a bimbo after all but well on to him. Clint: "You have only just met me" Abbey: "I have met you a thousand times before."

Where Souter and his executive producer Andy Harries are going dramatically rather than thematically with all this, I am not sure, and maybe that is a good thing. Souter has mentioned Richard Curtis's name and Andy Harries made Cold Feet, still the gold standard for this kind of post-watershed soap. The programme's titles carry the words "married", "single", "other" with boxes next to them and there is more than an element of box ticking in both the piece's premise and execution. The dialogue needs to unclench and the story needs to be given time to grow organically as the characters, one prays, deepen.

Married Single Other is what you might call a box-ticker. Feisty women - check. Feckless blokes - check. Clever kid who outsmarts parents - check. The trouble is, there wasn't a single character I could relate to - and when it comes to bonding with a drama, that's a pretty important box to miss.

That's not to say Peter Souter's romantic comedy drama, a stub-toed version of the over-rated Cold Feet, is not without its diverting moments. Souter used to work in advertising and that shines through in the script. Foxy and intelligent model Abbey tells mildly sleazy Clint: 'I'll be running a credit check - to see if anyone gives you any,' when she agrees to give him the benefit of the doubt and meet his female mates. A smart line for sure but about as believable as Abbey giving Clint the time of day. She wasn't just out of his league, they weren't even playing the same game.

So in Married Single Other we're in a strange kind of down-at-heel fantasy land, where all the women are sorted and strong and all the men are suffering varying degrees of arrested development. They're either doormats or dopes or an irksome combination of the two. Pick your male role model from bed-hopping ad lad Clint, randy dotcom dreamer Dickie and sweet-but-needs-to-grow-abackbone paramedic Eddie. Not exactly spoilt for choice there.

Which left no other option but to cheer for Lillie (a suitably spiky Lucy Davis), Eddie's long-term partner, mother of two kids and a strong character firmly opposed to the notion of marriage. Then she went and spoilt it all by caving in to the pressure to get hitched, but not because of partner Eddie, who'd been proposing every year on her birthday for 15 years. No, it was a proposal speech written by her young son which melted her mean, stony heart and saw her chuck her principles out of the window. It had the strong whiff of male wish-fulfilment about it, a box that gets ticked far too much on TV as it is.

This excruciating six-part "romantic comedy drama" lurches from the self-consciously contrived to the hideously mawkish. It revolves around three couples of the sort who only ever appear in bad television dramas. One couple (Amanda Abbington and Dean Lennox Kelly) is unhappily married because the husband is loveable but feckless. Another pair (Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley) have been in love for ever, but she won't marry him because of what she sees every day at her work in a women's refuge. And the third couple is a smooth advertising type and his model girlfriend (Ralf Little and Miranda Raison). The actors have all been chosen because of their abundance of charm, but nothing they can do will redeem this facile rubbish.

The fey music and cutesy title sequence are irresistible reminders of Cold Feet, the fondly remembered and influential series centred on the turbulent lives of a group of 30-something friends. Married Single Other is similar, but with softer edges that belie its gritty, northern housing estate setting. So it's a lightish drama with dark corners; the friends are fast-talking and there are shafts of humour; the designated funny guy is Ralf Little as Clint, a boozing, birding lad-about-town who falls for a comely, leather-clad motorbike-demo model (Spooks's Miranda Raison). Just when you think Married Single Other is a bit of froth, it goes all serious when Lillie (Lucy Davis) gets on the wrong side of an angry husband at the women's refuge where she works. And just to wrong-foot you once more, it then reveals a sentimental streak about 15 miles wide. So it's an odd mix, but likeable, even though Peter Souter's script doesn't offer many surprises and you may think you've seen it all before.

The next Cold Feet they're calling this. No new show wants to wither in the shadow of a giant but there are plenty of worse series to be filed alongside.

As another couple-based ensemble, comparisons are unavoidable. But although this is touted as a comedy-drama there's surprisingly little to laugh at in an otherwise promising opener.

Of the three couples we meet tonight, one pair are on the brink of splitting up, another have just met and the third, Lillie (The Office's Lucy Davis) and Eddie (Shaun Dooley), have been together for 16 years without marrying. He keeps proposing, she keeps saying no. Lillie works in a women's shelter and thinks marriage can tear people apart. But if she thinks domestic violence only happens once you've got a ring on your finger, I'm surprised nobody has put her straight by now.

Dean Lennox Kelly plays Dickie, whose laziness and gambling have finally got too much for his partner Babs (Amanda Abbington). And Spooks fans might struggle to recognise Miranda Raison, who played Jo, with new long hair and brown contact lenses. She's a model called Abbey whose job involves wearing jumpsuits and draping herself over motorbikes at car shows.

Clint (Ralf Little) is smitten and decides to prove he's worthy of her. Perhaps he should try Jimmy Nesbitt's stunt of shoving a rose up his backside and walking the streets naked. It certainly did the trick for Cold Feet.

It's high time we had a decent comedy-drama to get our teeth into, and this new Monday night six-parter looks like being just the job. With a fine cast of instantly recognisable faces, including Ralf Little, Lucy Davis and ex-Spooks star Miranda Raison, it centres on three decidedly different couples, each with their own distinctive hang-ups. Babs (Amanda Abbington) looks set to dump her loveable but hopeless husband Dickie (Dean Lennox Kelly), while Clint (Little) seems incapable of more than a one-night stand - until gorgeous model Abbey (Raison) walks into his life.

As for Eddie (Shaun Dooley), he still can't persuade partner Lillie (Lucy Davis) to marry him, even after 16 years - but can the couple's youngest son seal the deal for him?

If the provenance of its talent is anything to go by, 'Married Single Other' could be on to a winner. Lucy Davis, Miranda Raison and Ralf Little, from The Office, Spooks and The Royle Family respectively (just forget Two and a Half Pints, OK?), star in ITV's new drama, which follows the ups and downs of three couples at different points in their relationships. With an executive producer (Andy Harries) who was the brains behind Cold Feet, and two hot directors in tow (one of whom, Charles Martin, helmed three Being Human episodes), the signs are promising. The truth - witty ensemble or another soapy dud - will be revealed at 9pm on ITV1 tomorrow.

There are strong echoes of Cold Feet in this sharply observed six-part romantic comedy - not least because you'd have to look back at least that far to think of an ITV1 comedy that had a more assured, satisfying and generally winning opening episode. The story follows the Cold Feet formula of tracking three couples in and out of their relationships. Tonight's main focus is on childhood sweethearts Lillie and Eddie (Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley), who despite having two kids and a 16-year relationship, haven't yet done marriage. Not for want of trying by sensitive paramedic Eddie, who proposes every year on Lillie's birthday, only to get just as regularly knocked back. It's a cycle that their doe-eyed 11-year-old Joe (Jack Scanlon) is determined to do something about. If that sounds sweeter than a sugar sandwich, it certainly is in parts, but like much of Married Single Other, it's saved by a good cast. Amanda Abbington is particularly good as Babs, whose frustration with her feckless husband Dickie (Dean Lennox Kelly) threatens to kill a loving marriage, while Ralf Little makes a convincing serial love-rat turned monogamous puppy-dog when he falls for model Abbey (Miranda Raison). It's no mean achievement to flesh out so many characters in a single episode, while also provoking occasional belly laughs and plenty of smiles. Let's hope the quality is sustainable; as it is, this could run and run.