The debut of Reggie Perrin on Friday night was dated in both form and content. It was a sitcom shot in a studio before a live audience (you don't see them so much these days), and it was a revival of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin which between 1976 and 1979 carried some weight as a critique of the little man lost amid corporatist capitalism. I didn't think it had much original to say then and I don't think that it does now. It is, however, very funny, largely because of Martin Clunes as Perrin who lumbers through home, his daily commute and his office life, like a giant suffering the early stages of pathological disinhibition. Clunes must have been wary of stepping into Leonard Rossiter's shoes. He is funnier than Rossiter was in the part.

The nation can breathe a collective sigh of relief. The new Reggie Perrin is not an insult to the memory of a much-beloved original, in fact, it's a rather good sitcom in its own right. Simon Nye and David Nobbs' remake cranks up the misanthropy and the joke count, with Martin Clunes bringing his own brand of caustic charm to the role of the executive suffering existential angst.

One occasion when repeats would have been a better

There were only big two things wrong with the re-make/update of Reggie Perrin: the idea and the execution.

Manchester Confidential looks at the resurrection of a sitcom which didn't get where it is today without a Man Behaving Badly. It's early days, but this Reggie is a shadow of his former self.

The Times Review

Personally, I engage with the escalating depression and insanity of Clunes's Perrin more than I did with Rossiter's - who, however talented an actor, couldn't quite cover up the fact that he would have been a ferociously bitter, difficult and demanding next-door neighbour, say; or company if seated next to him at a dinner party.

Episode 1 Review

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let's hope the late Leonard Rossiter agreed with that sentiment. Reggie Perrin can't hold a candle to its 1976-79 predecessor, but it wasn't anywhere near as awful as I was expecting it to be. Most of this is down to Clunes' performance, although I'm not sure even he's good enough to keep us watching once the novelty wears off.

Leave old Reggie dead & Perri-ed

It's not funny. Perhaps not disastrous enough to have us all leaving our clothes behind on the beach or even paddling off to oblivion in a canoe just yet. But you have to wonder whether there's been a bit of a cock-up in the commissioning department.

Martin Clunes is the best thing about this ambitious revival of a great sitcom. What made Leonard Rossiter's suburban middle-manager so loveable in the 1970s original was the way he combined hangdog disillusion with a sense of mischief, and Clunes hits the same notes. But he's a bigger, taller actor: where Rossiter was the little man caught up in the system, Clunes seems to have outgrown it.

Today's Reggie works not at Sunshine Desserts but next door at Groomtech, where he's in charge of developing a ten-blade disposable razor. He has a gormless secretary, two breathless (and unfunny) underlings and an overbearing, CJ-ish boss called Chris, who at one point does say, "I didn't get where I am today..." The trouble is, office egomania has evolved since the days of CJ, in ways that Peep Show and The Office have mocked brilliantly.

Against the likes of them, this seems like a blunt instrument. It has good moments (Reggie's suggestion for a playground: "Put in a rifle range - kid's love that"). But like Reggie's commuter trains, it's faltering, unreliable and a bit behind the times.

The London Paper Review

Every line is delivered with the overemphasis of the perennially unfunny. Modern gags about iPods and email are jammed in with a death-march predictability.

The modern-day adaptation of the classic 1970s sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin begins tonight, with Martin Clunes in the title role. He brings a very different, cuddlier character to the manic Perrin that Leonard Rossiter played. There's far less of the real angst that defined the original.