The return of Goodnight Sweetheart on the BBC has a concept that Doctor Who would die – or at least regenerate – for.
Nicholas Lyndhurst’s time-travelling Nineties sitcom saw him play Gary Sparrow – a man who lived a double life, with a family in the present day, and a different family in the 1940s.
A time portal allowed him to hop back and forth between the eras, but the final saw him trapped in the past on VE Day, living out his days with Phoebe.
If that seemed like a definitive ending for the series, this revival has a great concept.
Years have passed – and with Gary getting older, he’s now reached the year of his own birth. But attempting to see the moment of his own entrance into the world has serious consequences.
Lyndhurst is back in the role, getting himself into further scrapes as he – mild spoiler alert – travels to an era that’s even more baffling to him: 2016.
BBC sitcom revivals 2016
Original series writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran mine big laughs from Sparrow’s confusion in the ways the world has changed since 1999 – the internet, smartphones, hoverboards, Google.
A scene in a phone shop is a particular highlight – and proof that there’s maybe more years in this sci-fi sitcom after all.
BBC One, 9pm
