There's a new Alf Ganett, Harold Steptoe and Tony Hancock

Here are the first pictures from the BBC's remakes of classic sitcoms.

In the first, Simon Day capture the essence of Warren Mitchell's legendary bigot Alf Garnett in Til Death Us Do Part. The cast also includes Lizzie Roper as Else, Sydney Rae White as Rita and Carl Au as Mike.

It is one of several original sitcom episodes – including Steptoe and Son and Hancock's Half Hour – which are being remade after being destroyed from the BBC archives.

Written by Johnny Speight, the Til Death Us Do Part script has Alf arriving home to find himself in an empty house with a burnt supper, so he sets about putting things right using his local telephone box.

Meanwhile, the Steptoe and Son episode A Winter's Tale, written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, sees Harold desperate to go on a skiing holiday, without Albert, under any circumstances.

Jeff Rawle – best known as long-suffering news editor George in Drop the Dead Donkey – stars as Albert Steptoe and Ed Coleman as his son Harold.

Finally, Kevin McNally reprises his role as Tony Hancock, whom he has played on stage and on Radio 4 in the Missing Hancocks series, which also featured rerecorded episodes missing from the BBC vaults.

The cast also comprises (from left) Kevin Eldon as John Vere; Robin Sebastian as Kenneth Williams; Katy Wix as Hattie Jacques and Jon Culshaw as Sid James.

Shane Allen, the BBC's controller of comedy commissioning said of BBC Four's Lost Sitcom season: 'When the originals were made and then lost, no-one knew they'd go on to be such classic and well-loved series. It feels rightful and respectful to bring them back to life with a new cast to be appreciated all over again for the brilliant writing they all contain.'

The new pictures follow the release of images from the new Porridge spin-off last month.

In the new one-off, Kevin Bishop plays Nigel 'Fletch' Fletcher - the grandson of Ronnie Barker's original inmate. He shares a cell with Joe Lotterby, played by Dave Hill, best known as Bert Atkinson in EastEnders.

Stand-up and former soap actor Ricky Grover plays another inmate, Scudds, and Ralph Ineson, who played Dagmer Cleftjaw in Game of Thrones and Chris Finch in The Office, is another hardman lag, Richie Weeks.

Catastrophe's Mark Bonnar plays Scottish prison officer Meekie, bound to evoke comparisons with Fulton Mackay's fearsome Mr Mackay from the original series, which ran from 1974 to 1977.

Porridge's creators, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, have written the script for the new episode, which involves Fletch jailed for a series of cyber crimes. Once inside, Fletch finds himself beholden to Richie Weeks and forced to use his hacking skills to get him off the hook

The new episodes go out from next month as part of the BBC's Landmark Sitcom season of reboots, pilots and celebrations of the genre – that also revisits Are You Being Served?, Goodnight Sweetheart and Keeping Up Appearances.

Published: 4 Aug 2016