Mark Andrews: It's Bergerac, Jim, but not as we know it

If 80s nostalgia is the trend for 2025, I don't think I've ever been so much in vogue. All week, my social media feeds have been bombarded with trailers for the new Bergerac series, with even John Nettles apparently giving his seal of approval. I'm not convinced.

Except of course, it's not a 'remake', it's Bergerac 'reimagined' for 2025. Which, of course, really means it's been remade by people with no feel for the original, and with all the fun taken out of it.

There will be no pastel suits, leather jackets or chunky medallions. 

The original Jim Bergerac was a maverick detective sergeant, with a cavalier disregard for authority and a thinly disguised contempt for his uptight, career-focused inspector who had once been his friend. Now he's the inspector himself, and from the clips we have seen so far, he doesn't exactly look the carefree, swashbuckling type.

While the original Bergerac's alcoholism was a running theme, he remained cheery and upbeat, and usually managed to stay on the wagon. Bergerac reimagined looks a troubled, tortured soul,  nervously shaking as he empties the content of his hip flask on the pavement. And his wide-boy father-in-law, whose shady shenanigans gave Bergerac 1981 its comic relief, Charlie reimagined has become his mother-in-law, and comes across as the stereotype 'strong female lead', who sternly reminds him he is 'not the only detective in the family'. It's Bergerac Jim, but not as we know it.

It was the same, of course, with the remake - sorry, 'reboot' - of Van Der Valk, which saw the boozy, short-tempered cigar-chomping detective of the 70s reimagined as a sullen introspective loner who lived on a houseboat, brooding about the death of his wife. It's just not what the series was about..

The problem for TV executives is that while the idea of brining back our favourite programmes and movies from the past always seems terribly alluring, they invariably lead to disappointment from fans of the original. 

Sometimes this is because the product they are pumping out is plain dreadful. Like the remake of Minder with Shane Richie, or that movie version of The Sweeney with Ray Winstone. Dad's Army, with Bill Nighy and Catherine Zeta-Jones was another example. These were little more than cynical attempts to cash in on the popularity of the originals. And when presented with a third-rate product masquerading as their favourite programme, viewers didn't  buy it.

With others, it is simply that they are just unable to live up to the impossible expectations of those who loved the original. The 1997 Hollywood interpretation of The Avengers is a case in point. I'm sure if the same film had been called, I dunno, Two Glamorous Fighty People - you can see why I don't work in movie PR - and dropped any pretence of replicating the original, it would probably have done ok. But after 18 months of hype that the greatest TV series of all time was returning for the big screen, disappointment was inevitable. Fans were sold a dream, they were expecting to see a young Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg pick up where they left off. What they got was Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman pretending to be those people. It didn't help that the plot was an elongated, drawn-out version of an episode from the original series, and it received a dreadful kicking from the critics.

The 2001-2003 revival of Crossroads did ok for a while, but its problem was that, in addressing everything that was wrong with the original,. they also took away every reason people had for watching it. Millions watched Crossroads because they actually enjoyed the ludicrous melodramatic storylines and over-the-top acting. Take that away, and it's just people working in an hotel. 

There are exceptions. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?  was, if anything, better than the original. But this wasn't really a remake,  and definitely wasn't a 'reboot' or 'reimagined'. It was just a new series of The Likely Lads, brought back six years after the original prematurely finished.

And that perhaps brings us to the biggest problem with these 'reimagined' golden oldies. The reason people yearn to see these old classics brought back - apart from the fact that they don't make anything interesting and original today - is that they help them relive a favourite period of their lives. They want to see a hairy-chested John Nettles throwing his weight around with a flash BeeGees wannabe on a financial whizzkid's yacht. They want to see a perma-tanned Barry Foster voicing his unfounded - but invariably correct - suspicions of somebody he doesn't like the look of. Adapting these programmes to fit the social mores of the 2020s is like a leopard with no spots. Or  Benny Hawkins with an O-level.

It's why I expect decent crowds to turn out for tonight's relaunch of Kipp's wine bar - or Kipsies as it is now being called. It's not that people really want to see the return of gingham table cloths, candles in empty wine bottles,  Liebfraumilch on draught, or that ghastly cold lager they used to serve. It's that people want to relive their youth. And if the owners of Kipsies can help them do that, good luck to them.

And it's why I expect far more people will tune in to re-runs of the original Bergerac, with John Nettles, than will see the new 'reimagined' version. 

Particularly as it's on some obscure channel that nobody's even heard of.