Neil McNicholas: Are we being well served by the BBC?

And that’s the thing really, such well-beloved comedies were down to the actors involved and then, of course, David Croft and Jimmy Perry, the writers. Once you remove either of those elements, you are going to be struggling to recreate what it was that made them so well-beloved.

And so, for example, we recently had Dad’s Army recreated for the big screen. I have to admit that I wasn’t sufficiently motivated to go and see it, but I think I could bet next month’s ration cards on the fact that the new incarnation didn’t come anywhere close to being as good as the television version simply because it was sans Arthur Lowe, John le Mesurier, Clive Dunn, John Laurie, et al.

I also imagine I would have been somewhat distracted, at least for the first 10 minutes, with the process of seeing how well – or otherwise – the new actors fitted the mental picture we all have of the original cast. And if they didn’t, then what was the point? The writers and producer might just as well have applied their talents to something completely different and not even called it Dad’s Army because what everyone expected was the Dad’s Army they loved.

And that was precisely the problem with Sunday’s offering of Are You Being Served? The original became a well-loved comedy because of contributions of the likes of John Inman, Mollie Sugden, and Frank Thornton, and the writing of David Croft (again) this time paired with Jeremy Lloyd.

They had obviously tried very hard to find actors who bore a passing resemblance to the originals and in recreating the set, but that’s where 
any similarities ended. Jason Watkins and Roy Barraclough made valiant efforts, but they were flogging a dead horse.

The original clearly had legs, as they say (mostly John Inman’s), and so it ran and ran; this one was lucky to reach the end of its 30 minute air time.

And, oh joys, we are in for more of the same in the days ahead in the form of Till Death Us Do Part and Keeping Up Appearances. Goodnight Sweetheart will be cheating because it will actually have Nicholas Lyndhurst in it. But the bottom line is: is it really going to be worth all the effort? I suspect not.

Sunday’s helping of Porridge (no pun intended, well maybe a little bit) was only marginally more successful, but only because there was no effort at all to recreate the old characters. There was a slight echo of Mr (Fulton) Mackay in the new character of Officer Meekie (and a similar name), and there were some definite reminders of some of Ronnie Barker’s inflections (or should that be in-Fletch-ions)?) from Kevin Bishop. Otherwise it was basically a brand new programme, albeit built on old foundations, and any similarities with persons living or dead were purely intentional.

More worrying is the current trend in Hollywood, Broadway, and on the West End, to keep digging up old corpses and trying to breathe new life into them. Is there no one around anymore who can come up with brand new ideas to give the likes of Les Mis and Phantom of the Opera a run for their money? Is the best they can do these days to rehash old productions, some of which were past their best-by date when they last saw the light of day and will probably not have improved any with time?

The thought occurs that if instead of having to fork out for a totally unjustified one-off television licence, we were connected to Broadcasting House by some sort of pay-as-you-go system 
like the cable and satellite channels 
use, and every time the Beeb screened repeats (or rehashes in this case) they had to refund a percentage of the money we had paid, I wonder how long either of those policies and practices would last? At the moment they are often being paid money for old rope, but sadly never enough of the latter with which to hang themselves.

This latest effort by the Beeb is being referred to in the media (and by the Beeb itself of course) as a “landmark sitcom season”. Landmark? I’d have said closer to landfill. A landmark is something that can be easily seen and recognised from a distance – probably the further away the better if Sunday’s offerings were anything to go by.

The Beeb would have been far better advised to have closed the doors to Grace Brothers for good.

Neil McNicholas is a parish priest in Yarm.