Raising Arizona; After a break of 16 years, Oz, Barry, Bomber and the

IS the past always a foreign country where they do things differently? Not if you're the creators of a once-huge TV hit series, it's not. The new series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, brain-child of film director Franc Roddam and scriptwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, is due for transmission tonight, a mere 16 years after we last watched the nation's favourite builders chip out a living for themselves in Thatcher's Britain.

Except that, of course, Oz, Dennis, Nev, Moxey, Wayne, Barry and Bomber left Britain behind, getting on their bikes and heading out to Dusseldorf and then Malaga, in search of work. It was 1983, Margaret Thatcher had won a second term in office and miners' leaders were preparing to call an all-out strike. The north of England was a grim place to be, with the highest unemployment rates in the country and precious little in the way of progress.

That seven brickies hailing from London, Birmingham and Newcastle should have generated such a hold on the TV-viewing public says much about the talent of the writing team, the group of then-unknown actors, and independent TV company Witzend's faith in the project. The band of seven, living in grotty conditions on a German building site, quickly became highly identifiable characters, from the foul- mouthed Oz to the soft-hearted Nev.

Commandeering the favoured Friday-night spot on ITV, the series soon accumulated 14 million devoted fans, and made stars out of Jimmy Nail, Kevin Whately, Tim Healy, Christopher Fairbank, Gary Holton, Timothy Spall and Pat Roach. Two years ago, enthusiasm for it hadn't waned. A poll by the British Film Industry of the Top 100 TV programmes placed Auf Wiedersehen, Pet at number 46, just one behind Only Fools And Horses.

And now? With such success behind them it is perhaps not surprising that its creators should be so enthusiastic about reprising their original hit. Since November 2000 when one newspaper circulated reports that Clement and La Frenais had teamed up for a new series called Guten Tag, Pet, rumours had been rife in the industry that we'd be seeing the brickies back in action before long (without, alas, Gary Holton, who died of a drugs overdose during the filming of the second series in 1986).

Ready and primed for a new generation who may be wondering what all the fuss is about, this new series re-unites the remaining six who are experiencing various degrees of success. Oz has been in prison where he shared a cell with a prominent Tory MP-turned-author (remind you of anyone?) with whom he is planning a consortium to mastermind the demolition of a Middlesborough bridge and pocket the profits. So Oz gets the lads together for this one last job - Barry is a rich entrepreneur, flogging goods past their sell-by date to the Russian black market; Nev is struggling to keep his Build-Your-Own- House company afloat; Moxey is running errands for crooks; and Dennis is an impoverished taxi driver. "Everything's changed!" an exasperated Nev shouts in the opening episode. "Get used to it!"

But has everything really changed? The men may be 18 years older and wiser and the Britain they fled in the 1980s may no longer exist. But a few superficial nods to a new century - mobile phones, club DJs, Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North framing the first episode - cannot disguise the series' dated feel. Brian McNair, reader in film and media at Stirling University, thinks the programme makers will find it difficult to place the series in a modern context because the issues it dealt with were specific to the 1980s: "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet was very much tied to a particular time, place and culture. It was about rootless, Northern masculinity set against the backdrop of Thatcher's Britain."

McNair has a point. In Clement and La Frenais's update, there is no nod to our more politically-correct culture for women still come in for classic stereotyping: Nev's wife is a nagging shrew, which is possibly the reason he can barely take his eyes off the nubile form of his secretary who is, of course, young and tarty, constantly hitching up her shorter-than-short skirts; Barry is married to a Russian beauty who clearly wants only his money; Oz makes jokes about living in the countryside surrounded by cows, when in the past he only used to "wake up with a few".

Set for the most part in the wrecked, heavy-industry landscape of Middlesborough, the opening episode sidesteps its larger neighbour, Newcastle, and all the newness the latter has embraced. Shots of derelict shipyards and rough old pubs dominate. The only hint of youth comes from some young lads outside a pub, admiring Barry's new Bentley (Wayne's son who arrives on the scene is black, but he's also from London and has never set foot in the north before). Where are the new theatres that decorate Newcastle's renovated Quayside? The cafe bars of Osbourne Road?

Last year Newcastle University produced a document detailing the changes in urban nightlife in the city, focusing on the shift from working-class, hard-drinking pubs to trendy, upmarket bars. Such was the strength of this shift that the authors felt they had to warn against corporations and theme bars pushing out the smaller, independent pub operators. Newcastle may be the favourite to win the 2008 European City of Culture title, but the authors did not want to see the city lose its own identity in the process.

Paul Rubenstein, head of arts and culture at Newcastle City Council is reluctant to do Clement and La Frenais down. "It's not their job to promote the positive side of Newcastle," he says. The council is realistic about the problems still facing the city, in spite of its recent regeneration, and Rubenstein "welcomes a TV programme that brings the issues of unemployment among older men who once worked in the heavy industries to light". Newcastle is still, he says, "a very defiant and very passionate city". No amount of trendy new bars, it seems, are going to change that.

If one were to judge the north by Auf Wiedersehen, Pet's opening shot it would be hard to believe that the last two decades have ever happened. Will this series yet turn out be an exemplar of zeitgeist TV drama, just like the first? Or will viewers wish that Clement and La Frenais had never decided to pay their past a visit?

Who's who in the tea-and-butty crew Jimmy Nail (Oz Osbourne): Became the hero of the series as big-mouthed Oz but found greater fame as a pop star, and co-starred with Madonna in Evita.

Tim Healy (Dennis Patterson): The foreman of the group has starred with Robbie Coltrane in Cracker Kevin Whately (Neville Hope): Whately went on to become Inspector Morse's sidekick, Segeant Lewis.

Gary Holton (Wayne Winston Norris): Originally a punk singer with Heavy Metal Kids. He starred in Quadrophenia before Pet came along. Died of a heroin overdose during the filming of the second series.

Timothy Spall (Barry Taylor): With roles in Oscar-nominated films Secrets And Lies and Topsy Turvy, Spall has become the biggest star since the series ended.

Pat Roach (Bomber Busbridge): Roach appeared in all three Indiana Jones movies as well as A Clockwork Orange.

Christopher Fairbank (Albert Arthur Moxey): Fairbank has had roles in The Fifth Element and Batman, as well as TV shows Prime Suspect and Spender.

Copyright 2002
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