Reinventing Reggie? You can't beat the original

Reggie Perrin, TV One, Sundays, 9.30pm. Reviewed by Victoria Guild.

Perhaps the biggest impression left on me by The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin when I was a youngster was the image of him stripping naked and walking into the sea in an apparent suicide attempt.

Perrin was sick of his job and his boring, monotonous life, so he faked his death in order to reinvent himself, only to end up just as dissatisfied.

The late Leonard Rossiter will always be Reggie Perrin for me, but I was interested to see how Martin Clunes would tackle one of British television's best antiheroes.

Unfortunately for Clunes, and inexplicably in terms of programming, Reggie Perrin, as the remake is called, screens straight after his appearance in Doc Martin (Sunday nights on TV One).

I deliberately didn't watch Doc Martin to avoid character confusion, but for those who find switching channels on the remote a stretch too far, it must have been a trying time. The programmers have also decided to cram two episodes together into an hour-long show, which with a 9.30pm start time will attract ardent fans only.

There have been a few changes in the remake. Perrin works for Groomtech Industries, but passes by Sunshine Desserts on his way to work.

The annoying brother-in-law popping in for food and talking in short, army-type statements has been replaced by a doddery father-in-law, and the new Perrins have no children, making the removal of their son to Africa in the original series unnecessary.

The core remains the same, though. Perrin is always late for work (27 minutes every day) due to various inventive excuses, mostly revolving around British Rail.

He still lusts after a work colleague, often picturing her in imaginary clinches. In fact, the original show's imagination sequences (every time his mother-in-law was mentioned, he would picture a hippopotamus on the rampage) were a precursor of what we now see on the likes of Scrubs.

His boss, once CJ, is now Chris Jackson, and he still has the two annoying office juniors, Anthony and Steve. There is the obvious attempt to reinvent popular catchphrases from the original (CJ's "I didn't get where I am today by ...") to now (Steve's "I'm getting physically excited just thinking about it!"), but it does smack a little of trying too hard.

Clunes does an admirable turn as Perrin, and Neil Stuke (Between the Lines, At Home With the Braithwaites) has the all-business, no-fun attitude of CJ down to a T, but the other characters appear as flat as wallpaper.

It's not bad – it still has clever lines (the original author helped to co-write this series as well), but it's been done so well before, it can't ever recapture that magic. It's a little like the Americans doing their own version of British shows. It's just not the same.

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