HER name is Ally McBeal - remember where you heard it last. She is a figment of a

Hollywood scriptwriter's imagination but, if you read the Sunday newspapers at the weekend, you could be forgiven for thinking that she is not only for real, but also of some vital significance in the grand scheme of things.

How times change. Once upon a long time ago television programmes were, well, television programmes. Nothing more and nothing less. They were things you watched and (a) enjoyed or (b) didn't enjoy. You had your dramas, your comedies, your variety shows, and your documentaries. And none but a few were ever going to change your life.

For instance, off the top of my head, I can think of only two dramas which had a profound personal effect on me. One was Cathy Come Home, Ken Loach's polemic about homelessness in the sixties, and Boys From the Blackstuff, Alan Bleasdale's brilliant tirade against Thatcher's Britain. I'm sure there are more examples - bit those are the two which spring to mind as I write.

But that was then. Nowadays, if you believe what you read in the press, it appears that every two-bit programme on the telly has some kind of potentially life-altering or life-enhancing quality to it. The latest case in point is the aforementioned Ally McBeal, a mediocre American import which starts tonight on Channel 4. It's a hybrid cross between a sitcom and a drama (its author describes it - and he should be taken out and shot for doing so - as a dramedy). Unusually for a US series, there is no canned laughter. This may not be unconnected with the fact that it's about as funny as a burning orphanage.

However, acres of trees died to provide the newsprint publicity which the series has gained over the past few weeks. ''Will this woman divide Britain as she has America?'' asked one Sunday paper's headline, alongside a tasty picture of the star of the show, little-known actress Calista Flockhart. The answer, brief and to the point, is: ''No.''

In the title role, Flockhart plays a single woman who juggles her high-powered career (she's a Boston lawyer) with an almost obsessional desire to have a baby. There's an alarm on her biological clock and it's ringing loud. The message, so far as I can see after watching the first two episodes, is that not having a sprog by the time you're 30 can make even the toughest female cookie a whingeing, moaning-faced, deeply insecure, paranoid, desperate-for-a-man, micro-skirted wreck.

Which is where the ''dividing America'' remark comes in. Apparently, the programme has split the nation. Well, the female half of the nation at least. Traditional feminists hate Ally McBeal. They hate her because, in their view, the show turns back the clock to those long-gone days when men were men and women were their sexual accessories. But so-called post-feminists love Ally because she's willing to use her feminine charms to get what she wants (ie a baby) from men.

I fear I am beginning to make the series sound an awful lot more interesting than it is. I don't mean to. Despite some smart, state-of-the-art gimmicks (Ally's inner thoughts come over as cartoon-style visuals - like, when she considers the size of her breasts, they balloon to melon-proportions before your very eyes) and the fact that she drinks cappuccino coffee as if she were giving oral sex, the series is actually very dull and curiously unengaging.

But, more than that, it is self-

indulgent, too precious by half (it's touchy-feely television), and (worst of all) far too American for it to succeed over here. Watching Ally McBeal is like taking too much sugar in your tea. Forget all the nonsense about feminism and post-feminism. It's just another gooey, pass-the-sick-bag-please, American romantic comedy which, if it will appeal to anyone, will appeal to girls in their teens and women in their twenties.

True, in America the series has gained the Best Actress and Best Comedy at this year's Golden Globe Awards and it attracts a regular audience of 14 million viewers. But that just goes to show the enormous cultural gap between over here and over there.

I've got nothing against American programmes. If anything, I like them too much. I doubt if I ever missed a single episode of Cheers or MASH. I'm sold on Frasier, and daft on ER. The first series of Murder One was one of the best things I've seen on television. And NYPD Blue? I am a Sipowicz wannabee.

But just because a series has

got the made-in-America stamp, it doesn't mean it's automatically pure dead brill. Indeed, it's strange how some series never quite make it when they cross the Atlantic. The classic example, of course, is Seinfeld - massive in America, minuscule in the UK. Likewise, Larry Sanders, Ellen, and that truly awful one whose name escapes me but it stars Cybill Shepherd (you mean the one called Cybill, perhaps? - Ed). All of them utterly lost on a British audience.

And why? Well, it's partly because they're not very funny. Actually, forget the ''partly because'' bit. They're not funny period. They might slap their thighs in New York but in Glasgow we prefer a punchline.