The creators of cult favourite sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart have addressed the possibility of another revival, ahead of a novel that reveals their plans for a scrapped seventh season.
Only Fools and Horses legend Nicholas Lyndhurst led the hit series, which followed TV repairman Gary Sparrow as he maintained a double life separated by history – via a time portal that transports him from the 1990s to the war-torn 1940s.
In both eras, Gary finds love with 1990s businesswoman Yvonne (Emma Amos) and 1940s barmaid Phoebe (Elizabeth Carling), but juggling his commitments to both relationships becomes ever more challenging.
After nearly two decades off-air, the story continued in a 2016 special titled Goodnight Sweetheart: Many Happy Returns, but it didn’t lead to a full seventh season as some fans had hoped.
Among them were creators Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who proceeded to adapt their plans for more episodes into a crowd-funded novel instead, which is soon to be released to backers.
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Speaking to The Sun, they remained enthusiastic about the prospect of doing more Goodnight Sweetheart on television and seemed confident that the cast would return – as long as one condition is met.
“If we were asked by the BBC, ‘would you do a one-off?’, and we rang Nic and the girls, they would probably say yes,” speculated Marks in the new interview. “But they’d want to know that they’re playing the ages they are.”
That would mean moving Goodnight Sweetheart forward with the times, as the writers did in 2016, which shifted the two featured time periods from the ’40s and ’90s to the ’60s and ’10s.
“We would only do it if we had our cast,” clarified Marks.
Michelle Holmes and Dervla Kirwan preceded Amos and Carling in the roles of Yvonne and Phoebe, but both left the sitcom midway though its original run.
Gran proceeded to imply that Goodnight Sweetheart could potentially move from the BBC to another channel, adding: “If anyone on TV suddenly found a few million quid they want to find a home for then we could make it.”
Previously, Dave had revived BBC sitcom Red Dwarf for several new seasons, beginning with 2009’s Back to Earth, although UKTV has recently indicated that scripted comedy is currently “less of a priority”.
Lyndhurst recently returned to the genre for Paramount+ reboot Frasier, co-starring as an aloof professor opposite Kelsey Grammer’s iconic psychiatrist, but the series didn’t live up to the esteemed original. It was recently cancelled after two seasons.
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