Not so easy, is it? Aside from your odd Pink Panther instalment, there is a serious paucity of quality out there when it comes to revisiting characters and scenarios from a comedy hit.

Seriously, try to name one. Clerks II, perhaps at a pinch. Addams Family Values was an improvement on the original. But outside of revisiting the same gags (The Spy Who Shagged Me) or the exact same plot (The Hangover II), it took a Google search to find a list of them, and that was on a dubious clickbait website which included a link to an article called ‘30 Amazing Moustaches from Film & TV’.

So we have here the sequel to Bad Santa, a 2003 out-of-left-field black comedy from Terry Zwigoff, who went (kinda) mainstream with this comedy after being knee-deep in indi-American sensibilities (Ghost World, Crumb). It was a crime caper, but underpinning it was Billy Bob Thornton’s mall Santa, Willie Soke; unfiltered, broken, disgusting and hilarious. The theatrical version had the distinction of being a tamer, more sentimental thing. The DVD director’s cut managed to remove the ‘happy ending’ aspects of the plot which were out of character and forced.

The thing about the sequel is that Willie spends a great chunk of the film on the road to some level of personal redemption, which would be fine in a different context, but part of the charm and appeal of the character is the fact that Willie is a piece of shit; ‘redemption’ is not commensurate with being said piece of shit. He ends up caring for the (now-adult) Merman Thurman, who in the original was a downy-eyed innocent; in the sequel he’s just a gormless idiot. Willie having compassion – or any emotion outside of lust and greed – for another human seems a stretch at best.

There are moments of gold; the character’s delivery of vulgar insults and come-ons is still beyond compare. Thornton has some great moments in this, and Kathy Bates gets to revel in bad behaviour as Willie’s equally despicable mother (Bates, 68 is all of seven years older than Thornton; a disparity which is explained – essentially – well enough in the film), and if your idea of a good time is seeing an Oscar winner drink beer and watch TV while on the toilet, this is your Woodstock. Christina Hendricks steps into what is basically the same role as was played by Lauren Graham in the original, but has less to do and whose character makes even less sense. It’s an encapsulation of the film’s main flaw: at the end of the day, none of it is necessary. The original found dark, bitterly comic ways to find humour in ‘going there’, breaking taboos; the sequel seems more content to just find the shortest route to the gag.

Thirteen years between outings would suggest something new and fresh to be found in what’s going on. But the plot points are signposted, the new supporting characters are cut from a very familiar cloth. The problem with Bad Santa 2, like most comedy sequels, is that we’ve seen it all before, and it was been done better the first time around.