Leonard Rossiter

The Times Review

Personally, I engage with the escalating depression and insanity of Clunes's Perrin more than I did with Rossiter's - who, however talented an actor, couldn't quite cover up the fact that he would have been a ferociously bitter, difficult and demanding next-door neighbour, say; or company if seated next to him at a dinner party.

Episode 1 Review

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let's hope the late Leonard Rossiter agreed with that sentiment. Reggie Perrin can't hold a candle to its 1976-79 predecessor, but it wasn't anywhere near as awful as I was expecting it to be. Most of this is down to Clunes' performance, although I'm not sure even he's good enough to keep us watching once the novelty wears off.

Martin Clunes is the best thing about this ambitious revival of a great sitcom. What made Leonard Rossiter's suburban middle-manager so loveable in the 1970s original was the way he combined hangdog disillusion with a sense of mischief, and Clunes hits the same notes. But he's a bigger, taller actor: where Rossiter was the little man caught up in the system, Clunes seems to have outgrown it.

Today's Reggie works not at Sunshine Desserts but next door at Groomtech, where he's in charge of developing a ten-blade disposable razor. He has a gormless secretary, two breathless (and unfunny) underlings and an overbearing, CJ-ish boss called Chris, who at one point does say, "I didn't get where I am today..." The trouble is, office egomania has evolved since the days of CJ, in ways that Peep Show and The Office have mocked brilliantly.

Against the likes of them, this seems like a blunt instrument. It has good moments (Reggie's suggestion for a playground: "Put in a rifle range - kid's love that"). But like Reggie's commuter trains, it's faltering, unreliable and a bit behind the times.

You'd have to be very brave or very foolish to tackle a remake of classic 1970s sitcom The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. As this was written by the novel's author David Nobbs together with Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, it's definitely a gamble worth taking.

It helps that Martin Clunes, who has the unenviable task of stepping into Leonard Rossiter's shoes as the downtrodden office man, looks nothing like the 70s star. Viewers who remember the original will be preoccupied with making comparisons. So what else is different?

Modernisation means that even Reggie's fantasy life must be politically correct - so no more hippo fantasies. And as his boss Chris Jackson, Neil Stuke has a the difficult job of measuring up to John Barron's masterful CJ.

What is strange is the fanciful excuses Reggie used to give each morning for why he was late now sound exactly like announcements commuters hear every day. "Wrong kind of passenger at South Norwood?" Why not?

Martin Clunes is a first-rate comedy actor, but also a very courageous one if he's willing to tackle a character created by comic genius Leonard Rossiter. Yet although Clunes lacks Rossiter's manic edge, nobody does grumpy curmudgeon better and there are other differences in the series that augur well, not least that Perrin creator David Nobbs has co-written this series with Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, who understands Clunes' talent well.

Characters like Wendy Craig's Marion, Reggie's disapproving mum, are refreshingly new and there's promise in the casting of Fay Ripley as Perrin's wife and Geoffrey Whitehead as her father.

Oh, crumbs - they've only gone and done it. One of the BBC's finest ever comedies - originally featuring a stellar performance from the peerless Leonard Rossiter - has been pulled from retirement and given rejuvenating injections of Botox. Still, the story of an everyman who jacks in his job to start from scratch is just as resonant these days, so hopefully Martin Clunes as Reggie, plus Faye Ripley and Wendy Craig, won't go too far wrong...

Oh dear. This won't be the worst thing you'll see this year. But, with its canned laughter, wobbly sets and dated jokes, it might just make your top five. 'Reimagining' (darh-ling!) a hallowed TV classic is probably never wise, even when you have the original writer, plus Simon Nye, plus a great cast on board. Martin Clunes isn't horrendous as mid-life crisis-struck Reggie, but hey, he's no Leonard Rossiter. And he has to make the best out of ancient gags such as 'Anything that bleeds for five days without dying deserves a bunch of flowers'. Which we're sure was recycled from his Men Behaving Badly days.

We probably didn't need a remake of Leonard Rossiter's The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, given that middle-class/workplace alienation has now been parodied so effectively in the likes of Men Behaving Badly, The Office and Peep Show. Still, the first episode of this latest airing - which now sees Reggie as a bored razor blade guru - is thoroughly watchable thanks mostly to a cutting script and a sterling performance by Martin Clunes.

It does not say much about broadcasters' confidence in new writing when they fall back on reviving something tried and tested. There seems to be a lot of this about at the moment. It has just been confirmed by the BBC that Martin Clunes is going to recreate the classic lead role made famous in the seventies by Leonard Rossiter, in a remake of The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. It will now be called simply Perrin and no doubt there will be lots of headlines about Reggie behaving very badly.

Clunes is always good value and quality writer Simon Nye is working on it with Reggie's creator David Nobbs, which sounds good. The only thing that worries me is that we have slightly been here before with The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, the 1996 series that, unlike the forthcoming version gathered together original cast members, but like the forthcoming version, lacked the real star, Leonard Rossiter, due to Rossiter being dead. Which is a bit like Hamlet without Hamlet.

The strange afterlife of Reginald Perrin

A character whose initials spell RIP was always destined more for death than resurrection but Reginald Iolanthe Perrin is to rise again, with Martin Clunes stepping into the shoes that Leonard Rossiter left on the beach when he faked his own demise in the David Nobbs comedy that ran on BBC1 from 1976-1979.