Goodnight Sweetheart

Netflix eyes up Brit comedy Open All Hours

Netflix has added Open All Hours to its shopping list after fellow Brit comedy classic Only Fools And Horses became a Christmas hit. The streaming giant also has sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart on its wishlist.

When good TV goes bad: Goodnight Sweetheart

At the start the sitcom was a compelling comment on male insecurity, but it soon descended into cartoonish plotlines.

Forget Porridge, it's Goodnight Sweetheart viewers want

The return of the prison sitcom left many viewers cold - but there's another classic BBC comedy they definitely want back.

"We're bringing back all the old sitcoms your parents liked!" said the BBC. "No, don't do that, because it'll taint those shows for fans of the originals, and alienate younger viewers," replied literally everyone else. "LALALALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU," screamed the BBC - as it commissioned what to all intents and purposes looked like a CCTV feed from an unlicensed regional Are You Being Served? dinner performance. It's genuinely difficult to find anything positive to say about any of the revived sitcoms - maybe Goodnight Sweetheart didn't quite make me want to pull out my fingernails as much as I thought it would - except that at least nobody at the BBC will make such a silly decision ever again.

Which BBC sitcom revival deserves its own new series?

From Porridge to Goodnight Sweetheart and Are You Being Served? Which sitcom deserves another outing on our screens?

Back to the future

Well, what an astonishing reaction to the new one-off episode of Goodnight Sweetheart. We could never have dreamed that we would be overwhelmed by such a positive response, with hundreds of emails, text messages and tweets asking us whether we are going to continue the story of the most bizarre life of Gary Sparrow. Even the Controller of Comedy at the BBC described the reaction to the programme as "extraordinary".

TV Review: Goodnight Sweetheart

Despite all the quibbles there are some very funny gags here, including a right up to the minute Brexit nod and good use of modern pop songs.

Goodnight Sweetheart review

This episode couldn't help feeling like a series of Comic Relief sketches strung together.

Goodnight Sweetheart review

This was a pale shadow of the earlier shows. Something had been mercilessly stripped from it, leaving it as plain and pedestrian as every other BBC1 "comedy".