Perrin cast confirmed
Clunes updates classic role
The BBC had confirmed the cast of its Reginald Perrin remake, with actor Martin Clunes in the title role.Cold Feet actress Fay Ripley and Wendy Craig have also been cast in the show, alongside Geoffrey Whitehead, Neil Stuke, Lucy Liemann and Nick Mohammed.
The show’s creator David Nobbs worked with Men Behaving Badly writer Simon Nye on the new series, which will be screened on BBC One later this year.
The programme – now called Perrin – updates the lead character, a bored businessman going through a midlife crisis, to modern Britain.
BBC One controller Jay Hunt said she was ’really excited’ about the revival of the comedy, adding: ’It feels as fresh and sharp now as it did all those years ago.’
Lucy Lumsden, the BBC’s controller of comedy commissioning, said the new show would be ‘an inspired update rather than a remake’.
She added: ‘To have combined the writing talents of David Nobbs and Simon Nye in a sitcom fronted by Martin Clunes is a dream come true.’
A pervious spin-off show The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, was made in 1996, but without the lead character and original star Leonard Rossiter, who died in 1984.
The six new half-hour are being made by Objective Productions.
Published: 14 Jan 2009
