Martin Clunes is Reggie Perrin

Wasn’t this announced yoinks back?

I’m going to go out on and limb and say this could actually be quite good. The original show is not faultless; despite some lovely dark stuff it’s pretty inconsistent (and the third series was awful). The less said about “Legacy” the better.

I like Nye’s stuff, and I like Clunes. Fingers crossed.

I’ve been to a recording of this, and it’s actually pretty good. I’m annoyed at the nay-saying about this, because it’s the same old lazy reaction. I’m a massive fan of the original, and I was really impressed with the way they updated it, because, yes, it could have been awful. I think the involvement of David Nobbs has helped, but Simon Nye is a decent writer in any case, and Clunes is really very good. After all, you could claim there were elements of Perrin in Gary from MBB; that was a man who seemed to have had his mid-life crisis early.

I don’t agree that the third series of the original was awful, but it wasn’t without its problems, and the revival in the ’90’s wasn’t very good, but probably pointed out to Nobbs where he’d need to change things if he were to try again. No doubt this version will have the odd issue (I wasn’t totally sure about the boss, for example), but I promise to review it for NTS.