Forsytes reboot is the limp lettuce in a 70s prawn cocktail

Channel 5 has long since shed its reputation as the home of football, films and another f-word. In fact, it now seems to be aiming to recreate the BBC of the 1960s and 70s.

- Philip Cunnington on The Forsytes

A revival of All Creatures Great and Small has been a big hit, while the channel recently announced it was resuscitating Play for Today, and even ran a 1970s season earlier this year.

And now here's The Forsytes (Channel 5, Mon, 9pm) a third TV reboot for John Galsworthy's sweeping saga of Victorian poshos and their tangled love lives, which was a huge hit for the Beeb in the late 60s.

But this is a far cry from the stolid, middle-aged stiff upper lipness of Kenneth More and Eric Porter as feuding Forsytes Jolyon and Soames.

Here, Jolyon (Danny Griffin) is a virile young men with a Princess Diana-style bouffant hairdo and neatly-trimmed beard - maybe another nod to the Beeb of the 1970s, as he channels Top of the Pops-era Noel Edmonds rather than a dashing blade of Victorian high society.

He's also prone to taking his top off in the boxing gym and positioning himself just so in the golden light flooding in through the gym's windows - all the better to catch the glint reflecting off his sweat-sheened pecs.

It's a scene so gratuitous and unnecessary - less than 30 seconds long and with no dialogue - it makes you laugh out loud.