Porridge (2016)

After last year's special, the reboot from Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais gets a full series. Kevin Bishop, eerily channelling Ronnie Barker's mannerisms, stars as hacker Nigel Fletcher, Norman Stanley's grandson. In an episode that makes you cautiously optimistic this may just work, we find Fletch, for a price, dispensing legal advice and writing letters on behalf of fellow inmates - which gets complicated when Fletch agrees to mediate in person with naive Barry's girlfriend.

Porridge: The Go-Between preview

The new Porridge certainly feels comfortable and familiar, but also does enough not to be a shameless counterfeit, even if it clearly exists in the shadow of its forebear.

Kevin Bishop's Porridge savaged by fans of the original

"Goldilocks would be havin' none of it."

Porridge reboot has none of the original's flavour

I barely broke into a titter through the whole thirty minutes.

Porridge reboot shows that past is best left alone

Watching the new Porridge is like visiting a favourite old café only to find that its best bits have been jettisoned: the tomato-shaped ketchup bottles have been replaced by sachets, the Formica tables by stripped pine. Sometimes the past is best left alone.

TV review: Porridge, BBC1

Over the weekend I posted a small preview of this new series on Facebook and very quickly got an unusually large number of comments. Let's put it this way. The only person who said something nice about the reboot of the regularly repeated classic prison sitcom was a mate of one of the cast.

Porridge - an interview with Clement & La Frenais

Porridge is back with a new series - commissioned off the back of last year's sitcom season special - and sees Kevin Bishop return as Nigel 'Fletch' Fletcher.

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?

And so, with a sigh but not quite the desuetude expected, to the BBC's retro week. Both Are You Being Served?, wrongly described everywhere as "one of Britain's best-loved sitcoms", and Porridge were better than anticipated. Jason Watkins in particular as Mr Humphries turned in a searing performance, but doesn't he always? And Porridge was almost a delight, if only to feel the warm ghost of Ronnie Barker. Till Death Us Do Part, never funny in the first place, was execrable. Don't get me at all wrong, but what's even the point of Alf Garnett without the racism?

A good and faithful stab, BBC, at exhumation, but please now stop. Because Britain, and the world, can do better comedy now. I offer sample lines, from The Simpsons and from last week's revamped Served.

Editor (seeking a restaurant critic): "You know, Homer, we need someone like you... someone who doesn't immediately pooh-pooh everything he eats." Homer: "Nah, usually takes me a few hours."

Young, updated Mr Grace: "I've just had a cappuccino, followed by a massive brownie." Mr Rumbold: "Well, I hope you flushed it twice; that cistern has a mind of its own." These are both jokes about human faeces. Only one is funny.