The Times Reviews Reggie Perrin (2009)

From The Times
April 25, 2009

Welcome back Reggie Perrin
Purists doubted Leonard Rossiter could be improved on but Clunes makes a fine Reggie - even without the hippo
Caitlin Moran

“So that Martin Clunes remake of Reggie Perrin starts this week,” the TV editor said, in our regular Wednesday morning “What are we going to cover this week?” chat. It is the point where, between us, we weigh the whole televisual world in our hands, as if we were King Solomon, deciding Fate, and meting out critical justice. Then, after half an hour of intense debate, we just choose whichever programmes I can get the most jokes out of.

“Dunno, what you think of the original Reggie Perrin?” the editor continued. “Part of our heritage? Your Leonard Rossiter classic?”

“We got the boxed set for Christmas and I’ve watched a couple,” I said. “But I was a bit meh of it, TBH. I’m a modern lady, like Melanie Griffith in the 1988 movie Working Girl. I can’t buy into a world that thinks that showing some stock footage of a hippopotamus, accompanied by a slide-trombone, is funny.”

At this point, after a minuscule pause, both the TV editor and my husband, whom I thought was absorbed with the Lady Gaga album in the corner, burst into proper, Ha! Ha!”, thigh-slapping, red-faced, mirth-tears laughter. My husband was so taken by the memory of Reggie’s hippo that he eventually had to cast his eyes up to heaven, in a “God! Save me now, before the memories cause me to laugh myself into a grave.”

Meanwhile, at the other end of the phone, the TV editor appeared to have turned into Chairman LMAO, having some manner of Cultural ROFLution, ie, he was laughing a lot.

“Ah, that is good, though,” he said eventually, and weakly. “Reggie Perrin’s hippo. The mother-in-law. My my.”

So you can see where this leaves us. You can see how this establishes that I cannot hope to tell nervous fans of the original Reggie Perrin whether or not this modish remake will break their hearts or not. What I can tell you is that as someone who didn’t care tuppence ha’penny for the original — and so was, therefore, essentially irritated by the idea of it happening all over again — I actually like this new one. It gently warmed me. It warmed me as As Time Goes By warms me. Co-written by Perrin’s originator — David Nobbs — and Simon Nye (Men Behaving Badly), Perrin 2.0 simply appears to be a classic comedy chassis, remade with modern technology. Reggie Perrin is still a man so bored, frustrated and crushed that he has become borderline psychotic — hallucinating sight gags here, making inappropriate gags about menstruation to his wife’s Women’s Support Group — “I take my hat off to anyone who bleeds for five days a month and doesn’t die!” — there. His commuter train is still regularly late — “Wrong kind of passenger at South Norwood.” His boss — Chris, now, rather than C. J. — is still a dick.

However, because it’s the 21st century, his wife is Fay Ripley, who gets lines instead of being just a cipherous housewife. Similarly, Reggie 2009 fancies not his secretary — could be a bit oppressive, etc — but the new hot executive at his work, Jasmine. “Oh Jasmine!” he says, sitting at her desk, brushing his hair with her hairbrush. “You have opened up a wound in me called ‘Hope’!”

The biggest difference here is, of course, Martin Clunes — a man who reliably delivers slightly wonky likeability in the way that John Lewis reliably delivers affordable, quality linens. Personally, I engage with the escalating depression and insanity of Clunes’s Perrin more than I did with Rossiter’s — who, however talented an actor, couldn’t quite cover up the fact that he would have been a ferociously bitter, difficult and demanding next-door neighbour, say; or company if seated next to him at a dinner party. I can’t be doing with difficult “classic comedy” geniuses. They all seem the same to me. Indeed, I can segue Rossiter’s Rigsby saying “Oh, Miss Jones!” into a postwar, light-entertainment catchphrase mega-mix of big-chinned legends, co-starring Norman Wisdom, Michael Crawford, Tony Hancock and Bruce Forsyth: “Oh, Miss Jones! Mr Grimsdale! Bettyyyyyyy! That’s practically an armful! Didn’t they do well?”

And that’s about all I want from any of them. Oh, and, as yet, no hippo-and-slide-trombone! Who knows what the next few weeks will bring.

The original article is here.