Sitcom remakes show a lack of adventure in modern entertainment
The front cover of this week’s Radio Times has an unlikely trio of cover stars: Captain Mainwaring, Sergeant Wilson and Lance Corporal Jones. For those who believed that the heyday of Dad’s Army, the programme in which all of them first appeared, had come to an end in 1977, when the first incarnation of the series finished, there is a surprise in store.
As portrayed by Kevin McNally, Robert Bathurst and Kevin Eldon respectively, the new version of the Walmington-on-Sea platoon has gathered for a recreation of three lost episodes from the 1960s. Even if this promises to be more of a cover version than an original, it would take the most blinkered – or Mainwaring-esque – of viewers not to realise that there is the clear potential, should these be warmly received, to commission a new and original series, with a new group of writers having the formidable task of following in the footsteps of Jimmy Perry and David Croft, Dad’s Army’s creators.
It is not the first attempt over the past few years to resurrect one of Britain’s best-loved comedies; there was a so-so film of a few years ago, mainly notable for Toby Jones proving a better Mainwaring than Arthur Lowe was, and a drama-documentary about the programme’s creation, We’re Doomed, which allowed John Sessions, Julian Sands and others to essentially play two roles: Lowe, John le Mesurier et al, and the characters they so memorably essayed. Perhaps in the era of Brexit, there is a particular timeliness in the depiction of a group of proud, if middle-aged and elderly, Englishmen putting aside personal differences and eccentricities to serve their country. In any case, one can only hope that the new episodes prove amusing and diverting on their own terms, rather than pale imitations of the original.
They arrive at a strange time for scripted British television. Although there are numerous excellent sitcoms on terrestrial TV (Stath Lets Flats, Fleabag and Derry Girls, to name but three), there is a general understanding that the so-called golden era of the sitcom is over, replaced by cheaper unscripted comedy shows. Therefore, the urge to recreate the past has been a central feature of commissioning for several years now, most obviously in a series of “will this work today?” comedy pilots of a few years ago, the so-called “Landmark Sitcom Season”. In a couple of cases, there was success; Porridge, this time with Kevin Bishop in Ronnie Barker’s original role of Norman Stanley Fletcher, was made into a full series. However, there were also failures. It was horribly clear that a 21st century audience, accustomed to a world of instant gratification and the immediate, was not interested in a reboot of Are You Being Served? Mrs Slocombe’s pussy, alas, had to remain an unkempt relic of the Seventies, rather than the sleek and purring felines of today.
The obvious criticism can be levelled that there is a paucity of original ideas in comedy today, and a desire to take solace in bygone success rather than innovation. James Corden and Ruth Jones return in a one-off special of one of the bigger successes of the last decade, Gavin and Stacey, this Christmas, and there are persistent, if apparently false, rumours that the Blackadder troupe will reform for another series, featuring Blackadder as a fed-up university don, railing against the Swinging Sixties. Other sitcoms have taken to the stage, to mixed effect. Only Fools and Horses has been reincarnated as a musical, with the excellent Tom Bennett ably replacing David Jason as Del Boy, and we are eventually promised Pope Ted, with songs by Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy, although who will replace Dermot Morgan is a vexed question. (My money, and hopes, are on Conleth Hill, but we’ll see.)
This cultural conservatism is, of course, reflected in the state of much contemporary entertainment. One of the many regrettable side-effects of Disney’s takeover of so much of contemporary Hollywood is that their ideas are so rooted in the past. If one excludes the ever-growing Marvel hit machine (itself indebted to comics written decades ago), the most successful films produced these days are simply retreads of others. The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and the forthcoming Little Mermaid are aimed at an audience too young to have seen the animated versions and who, supposedly, will embrace the live-action incarnations with a fervour that will see them all earn billions at the box office. (Tellingly, the only flop of the series so far, Dumbo, was an update of a property that originated in 1941, proving that audiences are uninterested in what is seen as the truly distant past.)
There is undeniably something depressing about the lack of adventurousness in modern entertainment. At a time when we could do with a steady flow of programmes and films that have something insightful and provocative to say, we are instead inundated with pale imitations of previous generations’ entertainment, and expected to care. (Don’t even start me on Disney’s other major resurrection, the Star Wars franchise.) While I hope that the Dad’s Army episodes are a decent homage to a legendary series, and allow a new generation to appreciate the peerless wit of Perry and Croft’s writing, it would be a stylish and fitting gesture to allow them to be self-sufficient and for a dead horse to remain unflogged. Still, if there must be a vogue for 70s sitcoms to return, I’ll be first to watch a resurrected On The Buses or Love Thy Neighbour, in all their ludicrously offensive glory, before revelling in every moment of the outrage on social media. And then, at last, it might occur to some commissioning potentate that we have reached Peak Bad Idea. It cannot come soon enough.