Porridge

Imagine setting a television sitcom in today’s run-down, overcrowded British prisons. A non-starter or maybe the darkest of black comedies?

A Brief History of Tim, Motherland, and Porridge will all return to television with a full series. Each programme was piloted as part of the BBC's celebration of 60 years of the sitcom, marking the anniversary of the first TV episode of Hancock's Half Hour.

Porridge was brought back by the creative time behind the original 1974 sitcom of the same name. A reimagining of the BBC One favourite, the new Porridge stars Kevin Bishop as the cyber criminal grandson of Ronnie Barker's iconic inmate Fletcher.

The classic sitcom no longer rules the TV schedules in the way that shows such as Fawlty Towers, Open All Hours and Porridge did in the 1970s. Or does it?

A panel of TV practitioners attempted to tease out the answer last month at an RTS early-­evening event, “No laughing matter: how does comedy fight back?” This stimulating debate made one think that we could be living through another golden age of TV comedy without necessarily knowing it.