“Never go back” is not a mantra that today’s TV executives seem to have pinned to their whiteboards. Frasier, Roseanne, Will & Grace and, perhaps most egregious of all, Sex and the City have been recently subjected to the television defibrillator, and they mostly returned to life with all the appeal and charm of Frankenstein’s monster.

Next it’s the turn of the hit Noughties comedy Scrubs, which closed its doors in 2010 after nearly 200 episodes, countless catheter insertions and a dizzying amount of supply-closet sex. A brilliant season eight finale was soured by a ninth series — the ill-fated Scrubs: Med School — which attempted to transplant a fresh cast of youngsters into a new setting. It was a creative flatline that most fans have spent the past decade, er, scrubbing from their memories but the showrunner Bill Lawrence and his team apparently feel that we may be ready for more.

Narrated as always by Zach Braff’s JD, it has his Walter Mitty flights of whimsy, silly humour and gooey homilies (you know it is coming at the end of an episode when the piano incidentals tinkle into life). It’s effectively the same show, with the gang reuniting when JD’s old mentor Dr Cox (John C McGinley) lures him back from comfy suburbia to his old stomping ground of Sacred Heart to replace him as the new chief of medicine. Although an obvious thorn is that JD’s relationship with Sarah Chalke’s neurotic Elliot Reid has failed and she is still working there. As is his best pal Chris Turk (Donald Faison), who may be a senior surgeon but is burnt-out and miserable, despite still being married to the lovely Carla (Judy Reyes).

JD’s elevation means Cox has to take a back seat, effectively sidelining one of the best characters in the show (along with Neil Flynn’s psychotic janitor, at least in early episodes). It also means the young ingenu is now a mentor to a fresh batch of recruits, which introduces worrying series nine vibes. One is a TikTok influencer and there’s a kindly English intern who, surprisingly for someone from these shores, isn’t an unscrupulous, unpleasant skinflint, but instead has the problem of being too kind.

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It doesn’t always feel narratively coherent. In attempting to revive JD’s adolescent bromance with Turk, a key component of old Scrubs, we get the bizarre sight of a middle-aged man and a married father of four acting like fratboy imbeciles. It’s also interesting to note that JD seems reluctant to call his black friend “Chocolate Bear” (Turk called him “Vanilla Bear”); it’s now become “C Bear”. And while Cox may still call Elliot “Barbie”, there’s a stern HR person, Sibby (Vanessa Bayer), stalking the wards who has her work cut out, especially when it comes to “the Todd”, the unreconstructed high-fiving surgeon who turns everything into a sexual boast.

So it feels odd, the pleasure of watching the same old Scrubs tempered by the slight feeling that we’re getting reheated leftovers. A lot of the humour is still sharp and it has its old moral compass — there is an affecting storyline involving a man who cannot afford his heart medication. But what, you slightly wonder, is the point? Unless it’s to allow us to slip into comfortable slippers. It feels nice, sure. But deep down you know they’re a bit old and tatty and you should really buy a fresh pair.
★★★☆☆
Available on Disney+

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