Porridge
It looks like the rebooted version of Porridge will not be returning.
The BBC has confirmed to Beyond The Joke that there are currently no plans for a second series of the prison sitcom starring Kevin Bishop
I'm not going to attempt to mount a huge defence of this current series of Porridge. In fact I can totally understand the bile that gets lobbed in its direction on Twitter when it is being broadcast. People care passionately about sitcoms in the way they rarely care about dramas. This reboot was always going to be on a hiding to nothing, trying to recapture the magic of the original Ronnie Barker version.
You know what? I still think it's an odd decision to reboot this classic, but this second episode isn't too bad at all. In The Cake Fletcher (Kevin Bishop) is reluctantly celebrating his birthday behind bars while a hard man wants a special cake, sorry, loaf, brought in for him from the outside on visiting day. You don't need to be Stephen Hawking to see that the two plots are going to interlink.
Over the weekend I posted a small preview of this new series on Facebook and very quickly got an unusually large number of comments. Let’s put it this way. The only person who said something nice about the reboot of the regularly repeated classic prison sitcom was a mate of one of the cast.
Porridge is back with a new series, commissioned off the back of the last year’s sitcom season special, and sees Kevin Bishop return as Nigel ‘Fletch’ Fletcher.
He plays the grandson of Ronnie Barker’s iconic character Norman Stanley Fletcher banged up in Wakeley prison for a series of cybercrimes who spends his days trying to escape the attentions of authoritarian Officer Meekie (Mark Bonnar) and the much softer Officer Braithwaite (Dominic Coleman).
The new version of prison sitcom Porridge, starring Kevin Bishop, starts filming in February.
BBC2 has commissioned the production of a new scripted comedy project Nigel Farage Gets His Life Back.
Starring Kevin Bishop (Porridge, The Rack Pack, We’re Doomed! The Dad’s Army Story) as Farage, the 30 minute fly-on-the-wall mock-documentary will combine pieces to camera with footage following the day-to-day reality of being Nigel Farage.
For this new version of Porridge the original writers, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, are back on board which should be a good sign. The difference is that the original set-up has been updated. Fletch played by Kevin Bishop is now Nigel Norman Fletcher, the grandson on Ronnie Barker’s Norman Stanley Fletcher.
The full cast has been announced for the remake of Porridge as part of the BBC's forthcoming landmark sitcom season.
Comedian/actor Kevin Bishop is to take on the lead role in a modern remake of prison sitcom Porridge, which originally starred Ronnie Barker as repeat offender Norman Stanley Fletcher.
The casting has not been officially announced yet but Bishop posted a picture on Instagram this morning of a courtroom scene with the comment "Big Day!!" and the hashtags of 'Porridge' and 'Fletch'.
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