WHEN Auf Wiedersehen Pet was firstbroadcast in 1983, the series about Geordie building labourers working in Germany was a novelty.

Viewers hadn't seen or heard anything like it before - a British series that wasn't a copycat version of a US police or hospital drama.

It featured unknown actors playing working class heroes with accents far removed from the BBC English spoken in most TV dramas.

Auf Wiedersehen Pet proved one of ITV's biggest hits, with repeats gaining good ratings and showing the antics of Oz, Dennis, Neville and the gang had not dated at all.

But the possibility of reassembling the same cast and writers for a fresh series seemed remote until now.

The appeal for the BBC is obvious - a series with a built-in recognition factor.

For the actors, most at a stage in their career where they can afford to pick and choose, the thought of getting together with old chums must seem enticing.

"We had such a laugh making it," Tim Healy once said.

Jimmy Nail, a performer noted for being difficult, has emerged as an unlikely leader of the revival, but the signs were there when he promoted the movie Still Crazy two years ago.

The film - coincidentally about a 1970s band reforming 20 years later - also starred Pet colleague Timothy Spall in a script by Pet writers Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement.

Nail admitted part of the appeal was the chance to reunite with his old working mates.

Last year Nail, Healy and Kevin Whately returned to their Pet characters for one night only, when they performed a sketch written by Clement and La Frenais at a Newcastle charity concert in memory of North-East actor Sammy Johnson.

No doubt, backstage talk triggered happy memories, making it all the more tempting when Norton-born Franc Roddam, who created the series, suggested the revival.

At the moment this Pet project is only an idea.

A BBC spokesperson would only say: "It's in development but we don't know more than that."

Apparently, La Frenais and Clement have produced a script bringing the characters' lives up to date, and the actors have said that they want to do it, although contracts have yet to be signed.

Fans of the original will have misgivings.

Sometimes revisiting old characters works, as Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? demonstrated.

Others, like the attempt to revive 1970s comedy, The Liver Birds, in the 90s, have been embarrassing failures.

Certainly in these latter cases, you can't help thinking it would have been best to leave things alone.

But Oz and the gang are individual and original enough to survive the test of time