A week that called to mind television times past, some happy, others that beg to be hurled into the nearest vault and the key thrown away.

With affection for the original still strong, Frasier (Paramount+, Friday) had the toughest of acts to follow. Fans were horrified when the idea of a reboot was first mooted, but the suits went ahead anyway. Now Frasier 2023 was here, but without Niles, Martin, Daphne, and Eddie (Mr Spaghetti to you). How bad was it going to be?

Well, I survived the first three episodes and may even have smiled a couple of times. The show opened with Frasier (the irreplaceable Kelsey Grammer) arriving back in Boston, his old stomping ground. It was a smart choice of setting, reminding viewers that Frasier was once a spin-off from Cheers, and look how that turned out.

Waiting to greet Frasier was his old pal Rodney Trotter from Only Fools and Horses. Or so viewers in the UK would have thought. Nicholas Lyndhurst was in fact playing Alan, a Harvard professor/central casting Brit. From there the episode turned into exposition central. “Weren’t you travelling with your nephew, Niles and Daphne’s son?” was one of the clunkier introductions to the new characters. What, no phone number and blood type?

READ MORE Scotland's Home of the Year finale

Eventually, everyone sorted themselves out and the set up became clear. Frasier and his firefighter son Freddy were oil and water, beer and fine wine. Niles’s son was a fusspot, and some wisecracking head of department was keeping everyone on their toes just like Roz used to do. It was all terribly familiar yet at the same time strange.

Naughty Channel 4 chose this week to begin running the original Frasier from the start, giving viewers a chance to compare then and now. It was no contest. In the first minutes of old Frasier, our hero remarked that Maris was “like the sun - without the warmth”, and Niles was suggesting a slogan for the kind of retirement home their dad Martin might have to enter: “The Golden Arches: we care so you don’t have to.”

And yet, and yet. Frasier 2023 has a career hinterland as a TV shrink that looks promising. Every now and then the new Frasier would get the wrong end of the stick, or overreact to something, or be impossibly snooty, and it was almost as if the old Frasier was in the building again, not quite as funny as before but he will do.

After much delay, The Reckoning (BBC1, Monday-Tuesday) arrived, with Steve Coogan playing Jimmy Savile. A strong stomach was required to wade through this one.

The drama had been carefully done, with the abuse suggested rather than shown, and some of his victims had their say at the start and close of the four episodes (two this week, two next, or all on iPlayer). Coogan’s performance was brilliant, as you knew it would be. The mundanity of evil personified.

READ MORE Edinburgh take on Bangor on University Challenge

Yet it added nothing to our knowledge of Savile. He was a toerag at the start and after four hours he was still a toerag. Perhaps that was the point, but it took a long time to make.

Besides Frasier, the week’s other reboot was Interview with the Vampire (BBC2, Thursday). The updating of Anne Rice’s tale moves the action from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth, with the interview taking place in modern-day Dubai between grizzled reporter Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) and Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson). Confused? I was.

Louis has invited Molloy to the UAE to resume the chat they had in 1973. That encounter did not end well for the hack, which partly explains his epic grumpiness. Back we spool through time as Louis recalls Lestat de Lioncourt, (Sam Reid), the mysterious and gifted stranger who can seemingly pause time and communicate telepathically.

Interview has its charms and rattles along nicely at the start, with Anderson particularly good as the dandy about town. Then comes a sharp turn into bonkers territory that’s “out there” even for a vampire drama. A pity. Forced myself to ration Boiling Point (BBC1, Sunday) to one episode a week rather than binge all four at one sitting. It is that good. This week we met Jamie (Stephen McMillan), the young Scot in the kitchen as opposed to the slightly older one, Dean (Gary Lamont), who is in charge front of house.

There was not a millimetre of fat in the script as the story jumped back and forth from a pair of obnoxious diners to Jamie getting in a flap about the desserts he was doing solo. You could feel the tension rising like heat. Something had to give and what a shock it was.

For more TV reviews please subscribe

With just two episodes to go, ex-head chef Andy (Stephen Graham) is still not back at work, though his replacement, Carly (Vinette Robinson) is seen looking up his contact details. Better get a move on, lad. If Boiling Point continues on this form you might not be missed at all.