How I met Neil Patrick Harris

According to E4's promos the reason you should watch How I Met Your Mother is because it's "like Friends but without the boring Ross bits". I agree with the fact it's worth watching – but that's about it. To say the two are otherwise almost the same does a disservice to both. For a start, the Stage rightly said there are positive and negative implications to comparing the "new" sitcom with one that's 15 years old and has been repeated so often that surely the tape on the VHS box-set E4 got for Christmas all those years ago must be wearing thin.

How I Met Your Mother is clever. (It is also, by the way, not completely new, in that BBC2 originally picked it up.) It is willing to play with structure and formats in a way that Friends wasn't. Even the basic premise – that it's told as an extended, multi-series flashback narrated from 20 years in the future – is more interesting. The tale of how Ted (The "I" of the title) ended up with (or "Met") his future wife (the "Mother"), gently unwinds as he tells the story to his kids (the "Your"). Sorry, that title probably needed less explaining. The format means that jokes can be set up long before they happen, the story can skip back and forth in time, and if things get a bit too settled, a mention of a future event – such as, say, a goat in a bathroom – can be thrown in.

I'm not saying Friends wasn't good: it was funny enough. But it was a very conventional sitcom with a large number of jokes, made less amusing by the umpteenth repeat of Season 4 episode 13: That One You've Seen So Many Times Even the Characters on Screen Hate It. I had, in fact, discounted HIMYM as being too Friendsy, until someone lent it to me on DVD when I was sick a few months ago. By the time I was better, I was a big fan.

Of course, there are similarities between the programmes. Does the action all take place in Manhattan? Yes. Is it concerned with a group of white twenty-to-thirtysomethings with mostly well-paid jobs? Yes. Does it take the "on-again off-again" premise to an extreme? Yes. Is it a bit smug? Oh goodness me, yes. But don't let that put you off HIMYM. It is funny – and there are good reasons for watching it.

First, the main character is not only the weakest, he's extremely similar to Ross from Friends – to put it in E4 speak. He's dull, academic, smug, annoying and by far the least likable of the characters on the show. Secondly, none of this matters, because HIMYM also has Neil Patrick Harris. If you haven't seen NPH since he was Doogie Howser MD, then you should. He's older and funnier. And – as anyone who has seen Joss Whedon's web series Doctor Horrible's Singalong Blog can tell you – he has developed comedy timing that he just wasn't given room to demonstrate as a pre-adolescent medic.

So, in case E4 are thinking of making a new set of promos (or you need a reason to watch HIMYM some other way that won't ruin it for you by repeating every episode 900 times and shouting at you during the advert breaks) – here are the actual reasons you should watch it:

a) It's not Friends.
b) Neil Patrick Harris.
c) It's filling a space where Friends could otherwise be shown again but isn't because it is on instead.
d) Neil Patrick Harris.
e) It's actually quite good.
f) And Neil Patrick Harris is lovely.