Reggie Perrin

Martin Clunes stars as the latest in the BBC's long line of comedy curmudgeons in this 're-imagining' of the 70's sit-com 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin'. He plays Reggie Perrin, a man on the brink of a nervous break down, laughing yet? Now I don't know the old series very well, I probably saw one or two repeats a long time ago, so I can't do the whole 'not as good as the original' bollocks. I'm judging it as a separate entity, and I'm judging it as pretty crap.

It's not necessarily Clunes that is the problem. I happen to find him quite inoffensive despite having a head that resembles a particularly unhappy plate of fried breakfast. I liked Men Behaving Badly because of his performance and...well..that's the only thing I can remember watching him in apart from a likable interview on Jonathan Ross's show recently. I'm still sure it's not really him that makes this bad.

For starters there is the incredibly irritating 70's style chirping theme music which keeps popping up like a budgie with tourettes every 5 minutes. If you are going to update an old show and want to avoid the inevitable 'remake' tag (I'll stop putting things in ' 's now) then don't give it the same bloody music!

Then there is the fantasy/daydream bits, another leftover from the original series. I understand the point of them but to me they are as useful as the ones found in 'Diary of a Stick Figure' or Ally McBeal as it was actually called. They are mainly acts of violence such as shooting the wife's friend in the head, or sexual aggression like repeatedly kissing a sexy co-worker. This led to a HILARIOUS scene wherein old Reg accidentally acted on one of these impulses and forced his weird mouth on said co-worker with disastrous results.

Maybe it's just me but I'm a bit bored with the 'Grumpy Old Man' syndrome being mined for sit-com plots. The yanks give us 'Arrested Development' and the like and we trot out more 'Adventures of Young Victor Meldrew'. It's just not bloody good enough! Oh christ, I actually sound like Perrin now. Right I'm off to walk into the sea...