To American viewers, Bateman's role as the show's responsible eldest son was an ironic comment on his teen TV persona, but it was the sitcom's dry, underplayed sense of humour that made it a cult hit.
At the time I didn't really pick up on the late-80s sitcom's perfectly conjured sense of claustrophobia, but we all used to chuckle at a running gag involving the hallway telephone – an old-fashioned corded sort, with a handset that rested sideways in a cradle.
Technical, crude and, vitally, funny, Silicon Valley has all its bases covered, and unlike many other sitcoms has a tangible sense of forward momentum.
After The Office, there's a sense that sitcoms without laughter are deeper, cleverer, more meaningful, rather than an excuse for getting away with scripts that don't have enough jokes.
I haven't actually seen The Wright Way, Ben Elton's latest sitcom, but I've sensed the waves of negative feedback it's generated, in much the same way Obi Wan Kenobi felt a great disturbance in the Force when the Death Star destroyed the planet Alderaan, except rather than sensing a million voices crying out in terror, I've merely seen it trend on Twitter accompanied by a swarm of Anti-LOLs.
Bull, a new sitcom in the old-fashioned sense of the genre, had all three.
Abed, who has Asperger's syndrome and dreams of making documentaries, is in one sense a familiar sitcom character, the gentle alien observer — like Latka, in "Taxi".
"I think once you do something different and step away from a big project like the sitcom then I get a sense of what I want to do creatively with it and how much I miss it and all that.
What makes live audience radio sitcom truly addictive is the sense of tradition you get when you stand in front of the audience with a BBC microphone knowing that people such as Kenneth Williams, June Whitfield and Steve Coogan have stood there too.
