David Jason

I love comedy. You muck around for a few hours...

HE'S the man who will do for winkle-pickers and leather jackets what David Jason did for camel-haired coats and cocktail umbrellas.

Up-and-coming actor James Buckley has scooped a dream role playing a young Derek "Del Boy" Trotter.

Many will be just as keen to see how the 22-year-old fares as the London wheeler dealer originally played by David Jason.

But James is no stranger to playing a cheeky chappy. He said: "I've always watched comedy, and being a comedic actor is what I'm quite good at. It's simply a lot of fun.

"I've previously done heavier parts where you really have to get into character.

"But I prefer a job where you can turn up and work with a group of people you really get along with, muck around for a couple of hours, film it and go home."

How do we feel about this? Personally, the idea behind it doesn't sound too bad, but I have little faith in John Sullivan these days. Only Fools & Horses was a classic that was unwisely brought back for specials after the perfect ending of the 1996 special (where the Trotters finally became millionaires), but a lot of its early success was down to David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst and the rest of the cast.

I'm not sure how a prequel could ever duplicate the original cast's chemistry. Really, it feels like Sullivan is all out of ideas. He's already spent the past few years writing Only Fools spin-off The Green Green Grass (focusing on supporting character Boycie moving his family to a rural mansion), and that's arguably one of the worst sitcoms around today. The fact it enjoys fairly healthy ratings just beggars belief, but I guess there aren't many sitcoms catering for the over-50s today.

Oh well. I'm at least interested, because the idea doesn't sound too terrible on paper. If John Sullivan can somehow find his spark and they cast great actors in these roles, it stands a chance. In particular, they need to find someone who can do a passable Del Boy impression as the teenage Trotter, and it would be nice to imagine Jason himself agreeing to play his own screen father Reg. Or is he clever enough to keep his distance?

ITV pulls plug on Micawber

At ITV David Jason's name is as good as gold. He guarantees ratings, brings in the gongs and crucially coins in the advertising revenue. But today ITV bosses have been forced to admit he has temporarily lost his sheen as they axe Micawber, the drama series based on the character from Dickens' classic, David Copperfield.

This series is a four-part prequel to David Copperfield. The first told how Micawber's misfortunes were engineered by a malevolent father-in-law though, frankly, Dickens's Micawber was more than capable of contriving his own misfortunes. Sullivan and Jason seem to be concentrating on the poignancy of poverty. And that's a different story.

John Sullivan: The spirit of Christmas present

The pious folk of Dickensian England would be reassured to know that one man still looms large over the nation's Christmas, but mystified to find that his name is not Jesus, but Jason. On Christmas Day, the return of Only Fools and Horses, starring David Jason, is all but guaranteed to deliver BBC1 its highest viewing figures of the holiday period. On Boxing Day, Micawber, starring David Jason, should do the same for ITV.

ITV creates a Dickens of a problem for the BBC

There was a chilly welcome on the shores of Lake Geneva for the BBC at the Golden Rose of Montreux TV Comedy Festival yesterday when ITV announced it had captured two of the corporation's prime assets. David Jason, the star of Only Fools and Horses, is to play Mr Micawber in a four-part comedy-drama series scripted by John Sullivan, who wrote Only Fools and Horses.

ITV recruits Jason for Dickens drama

ITV has signed up David Jason to star in Micawber, Yorkshire Television's forthcoming drama based on the character from Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. David Jason, star of The Darling Buds of May and A Touch of Frost, will play the title role in the 4 x 60-minute drama. It is understood to have a budget of £800,000 to£1 million per episode.

The idea of March in Windy City (ITV) was to launch David Jason as a sort of mini-Bond, 003½ with a telescopic umbrella. And someone should have stopped right there.

The Bullion Boys was a lollipop for finishing the Screen One series nicely. There is, it seems to me, something specific about Liverpool humour. It is the place where the Irish, Welsh and Scots, trying to get in, meet the English trying to get out and kick up a fine, creative froth. David Jason, playing the dockers' leader, was not like this at all. It was a sombre, strong performance like the stout below. Brenda Blethyn gave a ticklingly funny performance as a letter censor, rather like an exceptionally clever hen.

The cast is as rich as the menu: Ian Richardson, Charles Gray, Griff Rhys Jones and David Jason, whose galvanic twitches of the head look like an attempt to screw his bowler hat on firmly without using his hands.