While Pixar has dipped its toes into the TV spin-off world with standalone Toy Story shorts and straight-to-video affairs, Monsters At Work is the first proper attempt at breaking out from the big screen and into streaming. A whole generation of Monsters, Inc fans will recall the finale twist where it turned out that laughs rather than screams were a more efficient power source to fuel the city of Monstropolis. Monsters At Work propels the action forward from that exact moment. Though 'propels' may suggest more excitement than is evident in the opening pair of episodes. The whipcrackery and action could have done with a little more injection of energy themselves.

One-eyed Mike Wazowski and furry giant James P 'Sulley' Sullivan are back for this new era, thankfully still voiced by Billy Crystal and John Goodman. But their roles are very much of the elevated-cameo variety, with the story being driven (again, this overstates the case somewhat) by Tyler Tuskmon (Ben Feldman). A weirdly behorned mechanic, his natural excitement over gaining entry into the Monsters, Inc factory is somewhat extinguished by this fundamental policy shift. Cue endless attempts to rebrand the facility's tagline from 'we scare because we care' to something related to laughter ('what you're after' and so on).

Tylor is joined by the chatty Val (Mindy Kaling) and scatty Fritz (Henry Winkler) with them all largely left to burrow away in a dank basement (recalling Star Trek: Lower Decks as well as the conservative lawyers sent to work in the clanging bowels of the White House in The West Wing). Initially resistant to a new position that is the exact opposite of what he had anticipated, it's all too obvious that Tylor will soon be fully on board and locating the funny bones of kids who are more used to being petrified at his presence. Meanwhile, all and sundry have to plough away with a script that is as far as you could imagine from the golden days of Pixar's computer-animated domination. Not terrifyingly bad, just deeply disappointing.

Disney+, episodes 1 & 2 available now; new episodes every Wednesday.