Take two – TV can't stop plundering its own past for ideas

The same goes for television remakes. I'm old enough to remember watching The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, starring the irreplaceable and much-missed Leonard Rossiter, and repeats of 60s cult drama The Prisoner, both of which have had recent TV makeovers.

The new Reggie Perrin saw Martin Clunes reprise the role of the depressed executive suffering a midlife crisis who fakes his own death. Despite receiving mixed reviews when it hit our screens last year it pulled in big enough audiences to warrant a second series. However, ITV1's remake of The Prisoner hasn't fared quite so well, despite boasting the considerable talents of Sir Ian McKellen.

The original Prisoner revolved around Number Six, an agent, who, after resigning from the Secret Service, is gassed and spirited away to a replica of his London flat that has mysteriously been transplanted to the Village. But the remake received a lukewarm response attracting little over three million viewers for its first episode in April this year, suggesting that perhaps it was simply a product of its times. Certainly it's questionable whether The Prisoner would get made if it was pitched as a new idea today.

With any remake there's always the risk it will be compared unfavourably to the original. Brookside creator Phil Redmond said the original 1970s series Survivors "was one of the things that drew me to the power of television", but he dismissed the remake of the post-apocalyptic drama claiming it "proved that not many remakes work".

Despite such criticism, new adaptations of old favourites continue to be brought to the small screen. The ITV drama Bouquet of Barbed Wire was well received this year and a glossy new BBC version of Upstairs, Downstairs, starring Ed Stoppard and Keeley Hawes, is likely to be a hit with viewers this Christmas. Many will remember the original award-winning drama which followed the lives of the Bellamys, a well-heeled Belgravia family, and their servants below stairs.

It's not just period dramas that have been reinvented for modern audiences. Doctor Who, which seemed to have reached the end of its shelf life when it was pulled in 1989, has become one of the BBC's most popular series in recent years. Similarly, the contemporary "reimagining" of Sherlock Holmes, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, has been one of the TV highlights of 2010, proof that new versions of classic tales don't have to be money for old rope. Kate Dunn, curatorial assistant of TV Heaven at the National Media Museum in Bradford, says there is no substitute for a good story. "This year's Christmas Doctor Who is based on A Christmas Carol, a story that has been done again and again, but the reason it keeps being repeated is down to the quality of the writing of the original story."

Dunn says one of the attractions about remakes for TV bosses is the fact they come with a ready-made audience. "Because there's so much competition now, and so many channels, there is perhaps a reliance on ideas that have been tried and tested and the attitude might be that it's done well in the past it will do well again."

Tom Bromley, author of All in the Best Possible Taste: Growing Up Watching Telly in the Eighties, believes this taps into our collective sense of nostalgia. "It's not just TV, the same thing has been happening in film as well. It taps into people's childhood memories and a lot of the people who commission programmes now look back to what they watched when they were growing up."

However, there are still excellent programmes being made today such as Downton Abbey, Spooks and Merlin, and Bromley disagrees with the idea that TV has gone downhill. "There are some very good programmes being made. Something like Downton Abbey was one the most successful programmes this year and that's new, and in comedy, too, there are some excellent new shows. I would far rather watch The Trip than the remake of Reggie Perrin because you know what you are going to get with that."

He describes a lot of remakes as "cultural comfort food" and claims it's not always the best programmes that are given a makeover.

"Russell Brand is apparently starring in a Hollywood remake of Rentaghost, that wacky TV show from the 80s, so if Hollywood can remake Rentaghost then you can remake anything."