One reviewer said it should have been called ‘One Script in the Bin’

One reviewer said it should have been called, ‘One Script in the Bin’. Now previewers are saying that The Thin Blue Line is getting better It’s not. They’re just getting used to it.”Perkins’s sensitivity shows what an easy target he is; everyone has an opinion about BBC comedy, particularly as Christmas looms and the BBC and ITV schedules groan with 60-minute versions of long-running, half- hour comedy hits. With the responsibility for 90 hours a year of original programming covering everything on BBC1 andBBC2 and an annual budget of pounds 30m, he has the difficult job of keeping both trendies and traditionalists happy.

With The Thin Blue Line, he is hoping to blend the two.”Pre-nine o’clock needn’t be bland. There are people like Ben Elton, who might be regarded as non-mainstream, who are very interested in doing mainstream shows [Jack Dee and Paul Merton are also said to be considering sitcoms]. There are compromises to be made, but that’s not like selling out.”It’s the most difficult challenge to try to get an audience of 10 million You’re juggling elements that are contradictory. It’s got to be something familiar and different at the same time But you can’t have a set formula. Dennis Main Wilson said to me, ‘Hopefully, you’re one of those people who knows the basic rule of comedy -there are no rules’.”Still, some have pointed to the number of long-in-the-tooth shows in the BBC sitcom stable.

They say Last of the Summer Wine is fit only for the knacker’s yard. Though he’s a new broom, Perkins is adamant that he’s not going to sweep away all traces of previous regimes (the last two incumbents were Martin Fisher and Robin Nash). A script by David Nobbs, The Legacy of Reggie Perrin, is lying on his coffee-table, and Perkins is also developing ideas with David Renwick (One Foot in the Grave), Simon Nye (Men Behaving Badly) and John Sullivan (Only Fools and Horses) as well as working on an update of Carla Lane’s Liver Birds.”I’m extremely happy with shows like Last of the Summer Wine,” he declares. “I’ll keep on top of the scripts and ensure they don’t become too complacent, but you’d be mad to start by saying, ‘We’ll get rid of these old shows’.

At Radio 4, a new controller came in and axed a load of programmes – including Desert Island Discs – and then said, ‘Let’s have these new shows’ But they got jumped on. That’s remained with me.”At the same time, he’s eager for fresh talent. Budding Ben Eltons should note that he reads 30 new scripts a week and has two dozen in development at any one time.Unlike the commercial channels, Perkins can let sitcoms “find their audience. You can’t assume that in their first or second series they’re going to be ratings winners. The debate about nurture or euthanasia is difficult, but comedy needs more nurturing than anything else It would have been easy to drop Only Fools and Horses. It had three series before it took off.”That doesn’t mean he’s in favour of a more recent trend: episodes just plopping off the script-factory production-line “I’m wary about comedy as fodder. It’s very difficult to go the American route of 25 episodes per year and keep quality up.

Seinfeld is great, but they have the equivalent of John Sullivan, David Renwick, Ben Elton and Richard Curtis all writing for the same show.”Perkins looks down at his watch and asks, politely, to be excused for a meeting with BBC2 Controller Michael Jackson. Busy, busy, busy.Despite the large target on his back, Perkins has the track-record for success. Thompson has no doubts: “With John Lloyd [Not the Nine O'Clock News, Blackadder], Geoffrey is the young comedy producer of the last 20 years. He has that important but frequently overlooked quality of actually knowing what’s funny.