Yes, Prime Minister return

That promo was very annoying.

I have to say it was plain daft of the BBC to miss this show for the want of a pilot. I mean, who has the money to float a studio pilot these days? Isn't that a preposterous barrier to new talent?

Bonkers.

The original writers of a classic should have been given the series on the nod - I'm not suggesting the BBC play fast and loose with licence money - but you rarely get a pedigree as strong as this, do you?

You do realise that it would have been the BBC paying for it. Given the inital reviews, they were right to be cautious.



Right going by that standard we should be handing out shows to everyone who once had a hit show 30 years ago in 3 channel land.

This

Yes, I'm suggesting the BBC might have paid for the pilot. I haven't read any initial reviews, being as the show hasn't been broadcast yet. Yes I'm *sure* that you've had unfettered access to the tapes.





Not very good at reading, are you? I specifically said in the case of this one show with a great pedigree. Its not as if I said Girls on Top should be recomissioned.

Anyway, I'll make my own justment when I see it. You can presumably quote someone else's and say, "this".

Oh, crikey <laughter>

What is this? <guffaws, laughter, clapping>

It insults the intelligence of the viewer, which the classics never did.

I found it alright,

Disagree. In fact, watching the documentary just now, we see the "Kumrani Embassy" story from the original series - played for laughs and very OTT with lots of audience guffawing. Nice to see Kumranistan making a return. Similarly, the news interview could be seen as overplayed - but that was the same when Ludovic Kennedy appeared in 1980.

I thought it felt very similar to the original in terms of story shape and gags - but being honest I missed Paul Eddington's thoughtful performance. I like David Haig, but he doesn't muster the verisimilitude of his predecessor.

Was the studio very hot? David Haig had a very sweaty head - but he could be forgiven for feeling the pressure of a series opener.

Definitely worth a series link, and a not bad at all start.

He did have his forehead dabbed a couple of times between takes. I was in the audience for this first episode.

I didn't really enjoy it. If there needed to be a revival at all, building it around the same characters rather than the premise itself was really off-putting. I could barely absorb the dialogue because *that's not Bernard* and *that's not Humphrey*. Henry Goodman never quite hit the Machiavellian edge of Nigel Hawthorne. The whole thing felt more like a school play.

With this cast having experience with the stage version, and the scripts based on the stage script, it can't help but feel staged.

I am hoping once these 6 episodes are complete, if more are commissioned, these will be more televisual!

Seemed to be the case to me too. Oddly though they renamed Dorothy Wainwright as Claire Sutton, I'm not sure why, it was essentially the same role.

David Haig looks nearly exactly the same as he did in the Thin Blue Line fifteen years ago and I found there seemed to be a bit of Derek Grim in his version of Jim Hacker, he didn't seem as likable as Paul Eddington's version.

I found there was no real depth to the lead actors' performances. You always got a deep sense of how Hawthorn's Sir Humphrey's mind was working overtime. When he panicked, we felt his panic, when he was smug, we couldnt help but feel his sense of satisfaction. The new Sir Humphrey is so two dimensional. In fact the whole thing was pretty flat. Was very disappointed.

Also how did they manage to make the sets look less realistic than those used 30 years ago?