You know you’re getting old when you see Geena Davis from Thelma & Louise cast as a granny sex symbol and Alfred Molina as a character so elderly you’re supposed to believe that he could drop at any time. This is one of the running gags of The Boroughs, a sci-fi/monster series set in an upmarket, Stepford Wives-esque desert retirement village, and clearly aimed at ageing farts like I very nearly am who imagine themselves to be much younger and groovier than they now are.

‘Don’t worry, wrinkly kids,’ the series reassures us. ‘By the time you hit your seventies you’ll be taking more drugs and having more sex – even crazy, orgy sex [note to squeamish viewers: this scene takes place off camera] – than ever before. Plus you’ll make lots of amazing new pals and form Scooby Doo-style gangs, where you get to solve mysteries involving all sorts of hairbreadth scapes and deadly intrigue, which your pesky kids just won’t understand.’

Well, it’s a charming conceit, anyway. And though the convoluted plotting doesn’t bear too much close scrutiny, and though, being American and about old age, it........

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