Beeb to resurrect Reggie Perrin The BBC is planning to resurrect The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, with Martin Clunes in the frame to take the lead role made famous by the late Leonard Rossiter, the Guardian reports. Speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival, new BBC1 supremo Jay Hunt professed her love of the original show - …
Why do people like this need to remake things? The original show could just be repeated. Yes, there are a few things that date the show - dictating letters to a secretary has sadly long stopped - but the mind-numbing tedium of his daily commute and repetitive day is a reality for most of us. CJ and his garbled cliches, the twerps with their "Great! Super!" double-act, Doc Morrissey, etc. It's all still valid and doesn't need an also-ran comic actor like Clunes who can't hold a candle to Leonard Rossiter.
Bah! Whatever could they mean. Are they suggesting that the last 29 years has somehow not had people working at pointless jobs and wondering what it's all about?
And as for encouraging younger viewers, you only appreciate Reggie's employment-related angst once you have a few more years yourself.
Mine's the one next to the briefcase with several Grot! catalogues in the pockets.
Sponsored by the Department of Panic (Formerly the Home Office), it will offer such features as,
How to mine and burn coal, for when Russia cuts off the gas.
Knitting for fun and survival from hypothermia.
The making of bows and arrows for our hard pressed military units currently defending Devon from the latest Cornish Uprising.
Head Lice farming, a valuable new source of protein.
And an ongoing series about how to convert popular makes of car to run on pedal power.
(Please feel free to add you own interesting, important and life saving ideas.)
It's about time that the IQs of TV viewers were raised - not dropped.
TV for the lowest common denominator has been going on for years - and it probably explains why people happily put with so much other crap in their lives, when their expectations have been lowered...
>she "hoped to slightly lower the average age of BBC1 viewers"
Oh good, more dumbing down of TV. Why do we have a nationalised broadcaster anyway - is that really the state's job? Imagine if we had to pay a poll tax every year so the state could publish a newspaper.
(Paris because she's the new target audience.)
I remember when they discovered the top quark in 1995 that woman (judith something) stood around 6 boxes representing the quarks with a giant box for the top quark.
If she's the one to blame for me doing a phd on the subject 13 years later she's got a lot to answer for!!
Mine's the one with the Higgs in the pocket
they can lower iq's below 0? It must be the future! I thought most tv only relates to people who are already braindead. Note I don't own a tv, couldn't see the point since there's nothing decent on anyway.
Here's a thought: Tomorrows world was great when you saw all that could be in the future, be some of it unrealistic. What if they did something like 'Tomorrows world Today' where they went over all the things in tomorrows world, showed where that was today (since most of it appeared in some form or other), then show where it's going in the future (with real science). If it doesn't fit the govt agenda of brainwashing, they could show how each item could be used either in the war against terror or by terrorists....
yer maybe not
Ian Emery,
The Insult to Intelligence is further Compounded and Confounded by the Fact that Selected Committees and Joint Intelligence Chiefs have been made aware of AIdDigital Technology which "is a global Applications Program and is designed specifically to regenerate Economies and Societies" ..... and for whatever very dodgy reason, they have been sat upon it, scratching the proverbials, already for far too long.
Typical Reggie Perrin Mid-Life Crisis Ditherer types with Erectile Dysfunctions or its Stablemate, Frigid Dispositions .... Blots on the Landscape.
And all of that is Documented Fact and not Conjecture.
Now IT will cost them a Small Fortune Investment whereas before IT was for a Song. Ah Well, Every Cloud has a Silver Lining, they say. :-) And in the Cloud, there are Mines for Mining Everywhere .... once you have the Key Triggers which Access Special Protocols, of course.
Expect to see more and more of these remakes and reimaginings.
The BBC's back-catalogue is huge, but it's almost entirely in 4:3-aspect SD format. This is going to be harder and harder to sell to other countries (and niche channels like Dave and UK Gold) as HD and widescreen TVs become the norm.
Building up a stock of HD-format content will give BBC Worldwide -- the BBC's profit-making commercial arm -- more to sell. BBC Worldwide pumps money back into the BBC, topping up income from the TV License, so the more they can shift, the better the BBC can be. (Well, that's the theory anyway.)
The BBC barely got the TV License renewed during the last round of negotiations. I suspect they know its future is uncertain, so it makes sense to take the initiative and stock up on decent content. By the time the next TV License negotiations come around, it's a fair bet that very little of the BBC's SD back-catalogue will be acceptable to export markets.
"Doctor Who" is an obvious example: The DVD release of the Troughton-era Cybermen story "The Invasion" has two entire episodes recreated in animation form and it works surprisingly well. I can see the BBC commissioning remakes of entire seasons of classic episodes in HD-format animation.
Leave "Reggie Perrin" as it is and rerun it.
Spend the money you were going to waste on a remake and make some original programming. It might fail, but equally, you might end up with something as good (or even better). Either way, you'd have tried something original rather than a tired rehash.
I didn't get where I am today without taking risks in programme commissioning.
O
PS, Don't use a committee to do the commissioning. Employ someone who knows what they are doing and is prepared to back their judgment. (Sorry, I seemed to have spun off into a world of fantasy there.)
the whole purpose of the licence was to fund original shows that other, comercial, networks would view as too much of a risk. Thinks like the original reggie perrin, blackadder, etc would never have been made if it wasn't for the licence.
Unfortunately, since people still think of blackadder, red dwarf, and reggie perrin when someone mentions a bbc comedy. It clearly hasn't been used for this in a while.
The BBC shouldn't be about showing the dross it usually pumps out, it should be about giving niche programs a chance. Either do that and keep the licence, or give it up, and continue to produce the majority of dross that it does today. The BBC is big enough to seperate itself, it already has several channels, into mainstream, and public service.
When I first watched this, I used to rush home from scouts to see it. It was pretty funny.
They repeated it when I was in my late 20s and it was seriously funny.
Now I'm 45 and I recently watched it on DVD. Now it's not funny, it's just a reflection on the tragedy of the life I currently lead.
O
My maths teacher was Judith Hanns brother.
TW Used to be quite informative, and educational in an entertaining way, but towards the end it got more into entertainment and less into science and gadgetry.
Luckily I caught the earlier shows, and I do miss them. That along with a number of Johnny Ball shows (There was a man that could inspire a desire to do science in ANYONE!) certainly helped put me on the path I've now followed.
Flame, as everyone knows the best science involves or creates some form of fire.
"Spend the money you were going to waste on a remake and make some original programming. It might fail, but equally, you might end up with something as good (or even better). Either way, you'd have tried something original rather than a tired rehash."
yer I have got this wander full Idar for a show you see there are these...
w8 what you doing...
why are you press ing that button...
at least let me get my coat....
***thud***
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And it is Seriously Practical too.
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And in the Process, Virtually dDeliver AI Futures and their Earthly Derivatives, with HyperRadioProActive Media Presenting the Evidence of AI Research & dDevelopment as a NeuReality to Follow in a Sublime ProgramMIng. ...... which would UltiMately Lead to the BetaMetaDataMorphosis of Man into Virtual Machinery with NIRobotIQs Control Parametry for NEUKlearer Intellectual Property Drive.
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My late father introduced me to Reggie Perrin, a real comedy gem.
It was ruined by the "Legacy of Reggie Perrin" (get all the surviving cast back together years later for a barrel scraping 4th series), a remake sounds ghastly, especially if Martin Clunes is involved.
We also used to watch Tomorrows World in the days of Raymond Baxter, Michael (Screen Test) Rodd, Judith Hann and Maggie Philbin. I don't think that the show can ever be successfully brought back after "Look Around You" though. Times change - those of us who are actually interested in Science and Technology can use technology to find out for ourselves using something called the Internet.
...is if it is somehow a continuation of the original (and not the awful Legacy of RP). Clunes plays a character who is inspired by the story of Perrin and decides that he is going to do the same thing. This would allow the series to draw parallels between the two eras. Clunes is a half decent actor though nowhere near the calibre of Leonard Rossiter.
And to those who call for the return of Raymond Baxter (sadly departed) and Johnny Ball (now shilling Nintendo DS's with his daughter) I'd like to see the return of James Burke.
I'm glad somebody mentioned him. Where's he been lately, if the BBC has money to burn can't they at least spend it on something half decent which the commercial channels couldn't possibly do, "because of the unique way the BBC is funded" ?
Mind you Burke has a website which talks about the "Knowledge Web", which sounds awfully like the kind of thing a well known spammer in this Parish often spams about.
ps
did anybody see the Weather Show (?) interview a few days ago on News 24 with a BBC Weather producer and Carol thingummy... talk about producer-led "dumbing down" on TV...
I saw Martin Clunes on stage in Tartuffe, and he is quite decent actor. However, the point about Leonard Rossiter is that he wasn't a comedian first, he was a serious character actor, with a long career behind him. Only after Perrin did he get more comedy roles (Rising damp, Martini ads...)
It would be better to remake FaRoRP with someone like Robert Carlisle or Christopher Eccleston and let the comedy come from the writing rather than a mugging comedian.
I wonder if Audrey (Sue Nichols) will leave Coro to be Reggie's secretary, Joan, again.
If you live next to Martin Clunes can you go and knock on his door and say that you know that the BBC has probably offered you a heap load of cash, but for once can you turn it down, it won't do your career any good and stepping into Rossiter's shoes is like stepping into Ronnie Barker's in Porridge, or trying to be Bernard Cribbins in the Railway children, perfection comes in few forms and for once face facts - your not upto it.
By running repeats and plagiarising old programmes........... Oh wait a minute, it did!
I find Martin Clunes quite funny but having seen the original Perrin and remembering it quite well, I don't think he is quite right for the role.How about going for broke and using Eddie Izzard? He would have to be a completely different character.
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