"When did you land?! How?! It doesn’t matter, it never made sense anyway!"

Ron Wheatcroft

In a DVD extra in series three of Goodnight Sweetheart, cast member Christopher Ettridge had a suspected Freudian slip of the tongue and accidentally referred to "Goodnight Sweetheart" as, "Goodnight Sh**heart". When this happened my dear father turned to me and said, "That’s what they must’ve all called it on set!"

Dead now, I disagreed with my father then, as I do now. Goodnight Sweetheart stands as an exception to a rule of the BBC’s controlled vandalism of cultural relics, bringing back classic sitcoms Are You Being Served? and Open All Hours . Sweetheart is a classic, but a classic like no other. It has legs. And I’m not talking about Yvonne and Phoebe!

Speaking of Gary Sparrow’s lovers, don’t they look old? The age-drained faces of Yvonne Sparrow and Phoebe Bamford made you think you were watching a horror movie. More to the point, it reminded my wife Julia of when Racquel and Cassandra appeared in the final ever Only Fools and Horses after Del Boy had lost his millions. Like deflated footballs which have been left in a garage since the 1990s. Bags under their eyes. World-wearied, or probably best I say Trotter-wearied, women. Reg Deadman, meanwhile, looked halfway between bearing a resemblance to a tortoise and a pencil.

In Goodnight Sweetheart, Phoebe and Yvonne are Sparrow-wearied. Indeed, once a time-travelling bigamist, always a time-travelling bigamist, and the self-serving smugness of the megalomaniac, sociopathic Sparrow arrived in full force as we saw him in the ‘60s.

Sparrow crouches to stroke his dog Ron Wheatcroft and stares into the grotty wallpaper of the Royal Oak: "I-need-to-be-at-St-Mary’s-Hospital-next-Thursday," he reminds himself before adding ominously, "Cos that’s the day… I’m being born". So, leaving dog Ron to fend for himself, the self-obsessed lunatic sets off to the hospital

Most men would feel awestruck when meeting their dads in a different time period; most people would kill for the opportunity. But Sparrow doesn’t seem to care and, in the end, the culture snob even ticks his old man off for daring to have a drink from his hip flash. It’s the ‘60s, Gary!

Marks and Grans’ commentary on modern life, is sadly familiar. Phone boxes with coffee shops in; little oikes staring at rectangular screens and laughing at them. The age of the smartphone; the aliens are taking over, and the world’s gone mad. Who better to depict this world than dear Laurence and Maurice? They’re right to be worried; Julia and I feel the art of conversation is truly over.

Like a cheap Doctor Who, the sci-fi remains utterly absurd, and written for laughs. And perhaps Ettridge is a less an accidental critic of his own show and more an accidental prophet, as Goodnight Sweetheart really does become Goodnight Shitheart as the Sweetheart Time Lords position the new time portal – previously in ‘Duckett’s Passage’ and in the back garden of his shop ‘Blitz and Pieces’ – a toilet cubicle. Karma is alive and well in Marks and Grans’s parallel universe; the cubicle was both an appropriate punishment for Sparrow’s past misdeeds, and I hope they also meant it to reflect the dumbed-down society we live in today.

But despite being a parallel universe, with The Telegraph’s Ed Power stating the obvious that the episode ‘reminds us just how weird how the premise is’, as Sparrow gets catapulted into the present, the whole episode goes up a gear, with more laughs, and the scenes of choking pathos which Marks and Gran have always been capable of creating, without overloading (watch Ricky Gervais’s Derek to see how

Vic McGuire, for whom Goodnight Sweetheart became his tour de force, gets the wittiest lines as he always did in the original series. While Ron’s looking plumper than usual, the character’s lost none of the original sparkle, getting the pithiest exchange of the night when he realises Gary’s named his "fat, lazy dog" after him.

Emma Amos is also on fine form as the hard, sardonic Yvonne, rediscovering the comedy which lit up the final series. During the scene which makes the episode, as she berates Gary while knocking down the wine, she asks, "You sure you haven’t got a bit on the side tucked away during the Boar War".

Goodnight Sweetheart shows how Marks and Gran, the old eccentrics, are the masters of creating engrossing premises for sitcoms with characters rich with potential. They just have a knack for it. When Sweetheart first aired in the ‘90s, the show was hampered by Marks and Grans’s tendency to farm shows out to other writers, leaving the series inconsistent and lacking in continuity and direction.

Were they to bring in a team of writers even more similar to themselves (and the scriptwriters for Goodnight Sweetheart weren’t bad!), a pair of old eccentrics who can buy into the ridiculousness of the concept, this show can return for a full series and become the best (the only if you exclude the ‘Dimensions in Time’ episode of Doctor Who, although the comedy might not have been intended) British sci-fi comedy drama to land on British television screens.

That’s what Goodnight Sweetheart is: it’s a sci-fi romantic comedy drama which has the potential to become the institution its amazing premise allowed it. The strength of the idea, and the awesome scope it allows, is proven by not just the viewing figures for last night, or the popularity of repeats on ITV3 and GOLD’s repeats, which always attract a considerable amount of viewers. On the contrary, it’s the sheer amount of fans who want dear old Auntie to let Marks and Gran have another go at Sweetheart in a full series.

Onto the choking pathos, as Gary meets the daughter Ellie he never knew was his, the truth he’s been so desperate to share for twenty years comes pouring out.

Richard Herring, the ‘90s comedian, has a relatable obsession with Goodnight Sweetheart, believing the sitcom betrayed the greatness of the idea. While I disagree with Herring – Goodnight Sweetheart was always perfectly watchable - this is the best episode of Goodnight Sweetheart I remember. One fan on summed up why in a tweet, and I can’t for the life of me find the exact quote, such is the level of support this episode has received

But, to paraphrase, Marks and Gran shifted the premise beautifully; now Gary Sparrow is discovering the future, not the past.

And the biggest laugh of the night goes to a visual gag of Gary walking through the time portal as a burly-looking boozer takes a crap. The sh** gag is the new knob gag. Step aside, Ben Elton, you’ve got competition.

Gary Sparrow’s lovers Phoebe and Yvonne look like something from a horror movie. They reminded my wife Julia of Racquel and Cassandra when Only Fools and Horses came back after six years and Del Boy had lost his millions. Like deflated footballs, with. Bags under their eyes. World-wearied, or probably best I say Trotter-wearied, women. It was awful.

For once the beeb got things 100% right with their comedy greats series. I know not everyone was as taken as I with this time travelling latharios life but being a science fiction geek it enthralled me when it was first on and has been a miss.

Thankfully this latest outing dotted the Is and crossed the Ts in the correct manner with humour and pathos in equal measure.

A rare treat of comedy magic for me.

I was watching this on BBC One and it seems to have fallen flat, It was supposed to be a celebrating the best of Comedy. Unfortunately it was just clips of the good old stuff and weak panel show people. Only the audience there was laughing. This was further proved by the ratings which fall below 3 Million viewers on Friday night. Simply because it was quite bad.

Generally the BBC Comedy don’t have a clue what the audience enjoys watching when they make new programmes. Which is why they are doing older stuff like Goodnight Sweetheart which is fine. But the whole of BBC Comedy needs fresh people with new ideas. As the current team don’t really have any clue on what makes a comedy funny.

Bad job to BBC for a stupid panel show that was so bad that it made me tune out after two mins and I wasn’t the only one. I am lucky to hear the fact that it was just a one off and I hope to never see it again.