Wendy Craig

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...

Outnumbered is the great, definitive family sitcom, so I have no idea why anybody would bother with Life of Riley, which, apart from its nods to modern family life, could have been made 40 years ago with Wendy Craig in the Caroline Quentin role. Quentin is Maddy Riley (her name is Riley and the title of the series is Life of Riley - do you get it?), a mother who marries and finds herself head of a new brood - her husband's (Neil Dudgeon) children, her own son and a new baby. It's very broad and pantomime-y, with everyone mugging, shrugging and sighing, and it's packed with 'comic' misunderstandings and farce - Quentin even hides under a bed at one point. Life of Riley is innocuous, inoffensive and is just the kind of sitcom that will appeal to ten-year-olds who'll probably enjoy the way the family's knowing kids always get the better of their hapless parents.

Yet another woeful sitcom from ITV. This was the ill-fated 1993 Brit version of US smash The Golden Girls starring Sheila Hancock, Wendy Craig and Jean Boht. A ratings disaster, only six of the original 10 episodes were shown in the premier run.

Yet another woeful sitcom from ITV. This was the ill-fated 1993 Brit version of US smash The Golden Girls starring Sheila Hancock, Wendy Craig and Jean Boht. A ratings disaster, only six of the original 10 episodes were shown in the premier run.