Martin Clunes admits to being put off sitcoms after his series ‘Reggie Perrin’ flopped.
The 57-year-old actor played the titular character in the programme – which was a remake of 1970s BBC show ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’ and starred Leonard Rossiter – and the poor response to it put him off comedy for a long time.
However, he admits he loved the script for his upcoming new series ‘Warren’ so much he decided he couldn’t pass on the opportunity to appear in another sitcom.
Martin told TV Times magazine: "I didn’t want to do another half-hour comedy, but this was so funny, I didn’t want anyone else to do it. I didn’t want anyone else to do it. The script was sent to me by my friend Jimmy Mulville, who runs the production company. I’ve known him 30 years. We did a play together and stayed in touch, so I knew it was going to be good.
"I did Reggie Perrin, which I really enjoyed, but it didn’t go down well and the BBC dropped it, so I thought maybe that’s enough. Then ‘Warren ‘ came along and there just wasn’t a good enough reason to say no."
In the original ‘Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’, Rossiter’s titular character goes through a mid-life crisis and fakes his own death, returning to his new life in disguise to find that nothing has changed.
In the update, Martin played a successful executive at Groomtech who was not happy with his working life and fantasised about his colleague, Jasmine, to keep himself amused.
Martin portrays driving instructor Warren Thompson who moves to Preston in his next project and he admits his character was "joyous" to play because he’s so awful.
When asked how he would describe Warren, the former ‘Men Behaving Badly’ star replied: "Self-satisfied, completely without conscience, short-sighted and awful! But he’s joyous to play."
‘Warren’ begins on BBC One on Monday 25 February at 9pm.
Martin Clunes was put off sitcoms after Reggie Perrin flop
