My guess is people weren't willing to have someone new in the role. As it goes, I preferred this to Still Open All Hours, but because the original Porridge is especially beloved, and it didn't have someone from the original in the main role, people didn't respond as well.
If this was a new sitcom and Porridge had never existed I still couldn't see this one working, from the eps I saw. It would never have become a classic like the original. Lame and going through the motions with actors of zero charisma, the opposite of Porridge.
Bishop was too tied to his Fletcher tribute and irritating as a result. It might have run for a while longer but it would never've been a hit. The great writers were clearly no longer as sharp as they once were either.
Remakes are always in the shadows of the great original and can't shake off the respectful deference thing, they just don't work.
I didn't watch this when it first came out, mainly because it was absolutely guaranteed to be a very poor copy of the original series.
Last night, I decided to have a look at it and I'm happy (or unhappy, depending how you look at it) to say that I wasn't wrong.
Episode one seemed to have a gale of audience laughter following every single line, which is absolutely ridiculous given that even the funniest sitcom must include several lines which simply aren't funny (usually because they were never intended to be funny). It was so inappropriate that I thought it must be "canned" laughter added to the soundtrack by an idiot. If anybody on BCG tells me the laughter was genuine (i.e. recorded in real-time following the dialogue and not tacked on at a later time), I would ask him/her to explain how there can be such genuine audience laughter at remarks made on film in outdoor locations such as the prison yard. The inappropriate laughter was, in any event, annoying almost beyond endurance.
Another annoying feature was young Fletcher's impersonation of Ronnie Barker. He did a very good job actually if we look at it purely as an impersonation and ignore the fact that he's supposed to be an entirely different person but, for the most part, he seemed to be impersonating Ronnie Barker sitting in the pub chatting with Ronnie Corbett in "The Two Ronnies" rather than Ronnie Barker in "Porridge". Mercifully, however, after a time he gave up impersonating Ronnie Barker but that does lead me to question the purpose of his sometimes doing the impersonation and sometimes not.
I've just started watching episode two but have had to restrain myself from throwing something at the TV after possibly the most annoying example of "explaining the joke to the audience" I've ever seen.
One of the inmates describes the prison food as "illegible" and that is a good joke. Surely it requires no explanation but, as soon as he said it, alarm bells started ringing in my head. I was actually praying that they wouldn't go on to explain the joke but, clearly, the scriptwriters felt it needed to be explained:
PRISONER: . . . and the illegible food.
PRISON OFFICER: The what?
PRISONER: This food, it's illegible.
FLETCHER: I think he means "inedible".
I think I might safely speak for millions of TV viewers when I say that I've never been so insulted in all my life.
I shall not be watching any more of this dross.
