(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 26 April 2002

MARK LAWSON:
Craig Brown, it's often a mistake for actors and writers to go back to old material. Do they get away with it here?

BROWN:
They look as if they are going to. It's difficult to establish on first episodes of sitcoms, but you realise how few unheralded people there are portrayed on television, just people working. That's interesting. I am worried about them going to Arizona, because I think, as in Cold Feet or EastEnders, the minute they go abroad to a sunny location, it goes wonky.

LAWSON:
They were always abroad.

BROWN:
I think they were in Costa del Sol in the second series, less successful. Sitcoms work best in claustrophobic surroundings, like Fawlty Towers, or the village hall in Dad's Army, or Steptoe and Son. I am a bit worried. By and large, it's refreshing, very good acting. Jimmy Nail is a brilliant naturalistic actor.

LAWSON:
A joy to have them back in the North-East.

TOM PAULIN:
I thought it was wonderful, a work of genius. In the building trade, the series is legendary. It is national folklore being created in front of your eyes. Marvellous on British identity, without the kind of piety that goes in Ireland for this. It reminded me again of Irish legends, making it real, absolutely brilliant. Then I thought is it sentimentality? My dad comes from Newcastle, and is it the pull of family ties? Then I thought, no. It's extraordinary, brilliant. Here you are in the north of England, it's standing up against the whole world. What are they doing now? Wearing hair nets and packing airline meals? It's great comradeship and great tragedy in it. There is a feeling of tragi-comedy. One minute you are laughing your legs off, the next moment you think something terrible is going to happen. Absolutely brilliant, the best television I have ever seen.

GERMAINE GREER:
I am struck by the way things have changed since they went to Germany, because they are in physical and moral danger, and the scary thing is that there are drugs everywhere. The world is a much more difficult place, and they are chancing their arm, and they are also involved in all the vile things. They are going to employ the ganger who is going to bring the illegal immigrants to work on the scheme. They are now gaffers instead of workers.

PAULIN:
There is a great Ulster engineer, I hope we have more of him.

LAWSON:
Comedy has got darker since they have been away.

GREER:
I think you could argue we have in fact lost our bearings. It's difficult to know where innocence lies. They have certainly lost it.

PAULIN:
They are sadder and wiser men. It's great on friendship, isn't it? Marvellous on friendship.

GREER:
How much wiser are they? I would be interested to see how Wyman develops, the kid who lives at the interface of youth culture, because basically we are more interested in young people than in older people. It's going to be hard to keep...

PAULIN:
Older people are much more interesting.

GREER:
To us, maybe, because we are just so hairy and hoary. I can't watch it easily. I get a knot in my stomach because I am frightened.

PAULIN:
That's because it's so brilliant, unstable, so dangerous, so poignant and so funny.

GREER:
What was lovely about the first series was the bubble that it had.

LAWSON:
We will have to leave it there.