The resurrection of Reggie Perrin

DAVID NOBBS remembers well the moment he realised that his Reginald Perrin television series was a hit. As he walked into the Dragonara Hotel, in Leeds, one evening, he encountered three businessmen waiting for the lift. “One of them said, ‘I didn’t get where I am today hanging around waiting for lifts’,” he recalls.

Hearing the series’ catchphrase “I didn’t get where I am today…” confirmed to Nobbs that Perrin, so memorably played by Leonard Rossiter, had become a TV legend. Only three series of The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin were shown on the BBC between 1976 and 1979, but the series, and Reggie himself, achieved iconic status.

Even now, anyone who leaves their clothes on the beach and goes missing is said to have “done a Reggie”, a reference to the opening scene of the TV series, in which Perrin stripped off and disappeared into the sea.

Tonight is pretty important, Nobbs tells me from his home in North Yorkshire. Reggie Perrin is being revived on BBC1 in the first of six new episodes penned by Nobbs and Men Behaving Badly writer Simon Nye. Martin Clunes replaces the late Rossiter in the title role.

“Friday is huge for me, as huge as anything,” says Nobbs. “The first time round it was just another show. It was a case of I’m a professional writer and here’s the next one.”

The new series will be judged against that original and Reggie’s creator is quietly optimistic that it will be well-received. He’s cautious about predicting it will be a success, but sees no reason why it shouldn’t be.

The remake idea dates back two years and came from Objective Productions, which made the series for the BBC. “They approached me and said, ‘what do you think?’. I picked myself off the floor and said I’d think about it,” he says.

“I didn’t say yes straight away. I had to ask myself two questions – is the premise still valid in 2009 and have things changed enough to have a point in remaking it? I answered yes on both points.”

He was confident that the central idea of job dissatisfaction was as relevant today as it was in the Seventies when he created Reggie. Reggie’s work, and his family situation, are different in the new version, but his problems remain much the same.

In a way, Reggie had never gone away. He’s lived on in repeats, videos, DVDs and many people’s memories long after his disappearance from TV screens. “It’s amazing and I’m very proud about it. I didn’t see it coming. It’s regarded as an iconic classic and you have to be grateful for that,” Nobbs says.

He admits to feeling daunted by the prospect of a new series, which accounts for his joint writing credit with Simon Nye whom, he says, gave him “more than a bit of help”. Nye wrote the first draft of the first episode, creating the characters for the 21st Century version.

“I decided it was a bit fearsome to do the whole thing again myself and divorce it from the original. I live in North Yorkshire, down a track outside a village and don’t have a pulse on office life at my fingertips, and I thought perhaps I should have someone Reggie’s age writing. It seemed sensible to everyone and to me because I wasn’t sure how to go about it.

“Simon did the first draft and created the modern equivalent of the old characters and new jokes alongside new versions of old jokes. This time round, it has more influence from him than me.”

CLUNES’ name was mentioned to play Reggie early in the process, after some scripts had been written. He and Nye worked together on Men Behaving Badly.

“We wanted some scripts to show potential actors, no one had really been put forward for the part. The BBC said they’d like to get Martin Clunes back in front of a studio audience and you can’t say no to an actor of that quality.

“If you went back to the beginning of the first book all those years ago, the description of Reggie appears more like Martin Clunes than Leonard Rossiter – this big man who seems slightly too big for his body.

“Len made the character his own. There’s an unconscious process of change as he grows. It lives and so it grows a bit. Because of Len’s great ability to be caustic, it influenced that aspect of Reggie where he says what we’d all love to say – that rudeness and bluntness.”

The new Reggie is essentially the same man, in the same way that different Hamlets are still Hamlet and different Doctor Whos are still Doctor Who. Although, Nobbs says: “It wouldn’t be exactly the same because each one brings different things to the performance”.

The changes mean the end of the hippo – an image of the animal entered Reggie’s head every time his mother-in-law was mentioned.

She’s replaced in the new version by his mother, played by Wendy Craig.

He now works for a company, Groomtech, in the world of male grooming, instead of being head of exotic ice cream at Sunshine Desserts.

But his boss, the new CJ – now called by his full name Chris Jenkins, still says, “I didn’t get where I am today…”

Perhaps the biggest change in his life concerns his wife. Before, she was a housewife who, as Nobbs says, “just plonked Reggie’s food on the table”. New wife Nicola (played by Fay Ripley, from Cold Feet) is a harassed teacher with a life outside the home.

Nobbs was around for the filming, feeling an obligation to be on hand to answer questions.

But at the beginning of location filming, he says he felt quite sad as he remembered all his old Reggie Perrin friends and the happy times they had.

“I had a moment where I thought I’m not going to enjoy this. But I got to know them and it’s been a pleasurable experience,” he says.

If successful, the BBC will undoubtedly want a second series. “Then the big question is where it goes, whether we can go in the same direction as the original,” says Nobbs.

For the moment, he’s keen to find out what viewers think. “I hope new people will react rather like people did the first time – that it strikes a chord truthfully and is funny at the same time. And I hope people who love the original will look at this as a new show.”

■ Reggie Perrin: tonight, BBC1, 9.30pm.