Martin Clunes

This week, Reggie (Martin Clunes) is having trouble with small talk. Of course, Reggie is struggling with bigger and worse things, but it's the small talk where it breaks out. Whether chatting by the water-cooler or having a glass of wine with his mother, he can't hit the right note, and those vivid fantasy moments he has don't help. He also continues to pine for Jasmine (Lucy Liemann), the gorgeous woman at work. Liemann has practically nothing to do, but does it well. Likewise, Fay Ripley seems wasted as Reggie's wife and tonight Geoffrey Whitehead and Wendy Craig add to the roster of comic talent worthy of more and better material. Better is the occupational health "wellness woman" whose response to any ailment is a perky "Oh that's horrid! Oh you sad sausage!" But it's a brave move for the script to mock poor-quality TV - luckily it's in one of the better lines, as Reggie notes, "Quite tiring the telly, isn't it? At one point I seemed to be watching CSI: Bournemouth."

Comparisons are all but unavoidable in the case of Reggie Perrin, a remake of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, with Martin Clunes making the bold attempt to fill Leonard Rossiter's boots. I don't know if I can stress enough what a depressing idea this is on paper. A television channel should always have the ambition to create its own fond memories rather than lazily refurbish those from 30 years ago. And if you do go the recycling route you're likely to find that the fond memories of five years ago will probably get in the way. When David Nobbs's sitcom first went out, its bleak take on the purgatory of office life had very few rivals. The remake has to compete not only with memories of its own source, but also of The Office, a comedy that effectively rewrote the rules about how you could tackle the anomie of the nine-to-five.

It really is a bit surprising, then, that Reggie Perrin should work as well as it does. Martin Clunes helps a lot. He looks funny when he's glum, in a way that's sufficiently different to Leonard Rossiter. And the script - a collaboration between Simon Nye and David Nobbs - has some good lines in it. Reggie doesn't work at Sunshine Desserts anymore (though he walks past the sign on his way to the office), but at a grooming products company. CJ is younger and rather less dependent on his "I didn't get where I am today" catchphrase, and Reggie's toadying subordinates have been replaced by an unconvincing pair of marketing-types. It's not a disaster, by any means, which may be the best you can hope for from such an unimaginative commission.

The fall and rise and fall and rise and fall

Individual lines, which may have been Nobbs's, and may have been Simon Nye's, were fine, and Martin Clunes did a fair job as Reggie, also driven to fantasy by his humdrum life. But there was something wrong about the whole thing.

The debut of Reggie Perrin on Friday night was dated in both form and content. It was a sitcom shot in a studio before a live audience (you don't see them so much these days), and it was a revival of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin which between 1976 and 1979 carried some weight as a critique of the little man lost amid corporatist capitalism. I didn't think it had much original to say then and I don't think that it does now. It is, however, very funny, largely because of Martin Clunes as Perrin who lumbers through home, his daily commute and his office life, like a giant suffering the early stages of pathological disinhibition. Clunes must have been wary of stepping into Leonard Rossiter's shoes. He is funnier than Rossiter was in the part.

The nation can breathe a collective sigh of relief. The new Reggie Perrin is not an insult to the memory of a much-beloved original, in fact, it's a rather good sitcom in its own right. Simon Nye and David Nobbs' remake cranks up the misanthropy and the joke count, with Martin Clunes bringing his own brand of caustic charm to the role of the executive suffering existential angst.

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...

Martin Clunes rises to Perrin role

Martin Clunes shares his memories of the old Reggie Perrin and tells us what we can expect from the new.

Honestly, this is tantamount to a mugging. Somebody in comedy commissioning at the Beeb must have tortured logic until it screamed: "Remake classic 1970s sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin!". That's clearly the only explanation for this travesty of a show, saved marginally by the presence of Martin Clunes in the title role. But seriously, when you're stepping into shoes vacated by the late, great Leonard Rossiter, even the best fall short of the mark. Way short.

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.