A big hand for reunions ... again

There's something a bit sad about showbiz reunions. They put you in mind of middle-aged men who wear snazzy shades while driving red Corvettes, or grandmothers doing the Jerkin at Ministry of Sound. There's a sense of desperation about it, of people refusing to let go. For some reason, comics seem to be especially susceptible to the bug. You may recall the Grumpy Old Men franchise of the 1990s, which tried (and failed) to recapture the magic Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon brought to the screen three decades earlier.

Last October, the Monty Python team had a reunion to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Flying Circus. This reunion, incidentally, also marked the 10th anniversary of the troupe's previous reunion, which was held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the show. You see? Now comes news that Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are having a reunion of their own. This duo first made their mark in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, a BBC sketch show that aired in the 1980s.

Since then, they have worked together in sitcoms (Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster), but their upcoming TV special - which has the working title Fry & Laurie: Re-United - marks the first time they've reprised their original act. This would seem to put them in comeback territory, which is where things often start to go horribly wrong. The odd thing about this comeback is that neither Fry nor Laurie needs it. Normally, you hear the word "comeback" and immediately assume that the people involved have spent the past two decades emceeing in a working men's club somewhere, that this may be a last-ditch effort to avoid having the furniture repossessed.

There's something just heartbreaking, isn't there, about the fact that the Krankies are playing the Skegness Embassy this summer. Or that Cannon and Ball, another 1970s-era double act, are described on their website as "regular bill-toppers at pantomimes around the country." Fry and Laurie are different. Laurie has acquired an American accent and gone on to star in the world's most popular hospital drama, House, while Fry airs literate cultural commentaries via an endless parade of TV shows, podcasts and tweets.

These two are not like the walking-dead duos who normally re-unite. But then you learn that their show is being aired to mark the 30th anniversary of the day they met, and that the format is two guys sitting in armchairs, reminiscing about themselves. Perhaps it should have been called A Bit of Self Indulgence. While we're on the subject. The most recent series of Curb Your Enthusiasm has Larry David orchestrating a reunion of the Seinfeld cast. Here, things get a little complicated. Seinfeld, the show David created in the early 1990s, featured Jerry Seinfeld playing a comedian named Jerry Seinfeld, while the character George was based on David. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, David plays a sitcom writer named Larry David, who created the show Seinfeld.

By my count, that makes the Seinfeld reunion plot a meta-meta-meta-comedy - or a comedy about a comedy about a comedy. Despite the postmodern detachment here, we're still talking about a Seinfeld reunion. Also, there's no denying that some of the cast members could use a little comeback action. But, by all accounts, the new series is among the funniest yet. Another successful recoupling involves Jason Bateman and Will Arnett, the main figures behind Arrested Development, who have rather weirdly started making ads together, which are also very funny.

Otherwise, comic collaborations are rarely as good the second time around - not to mention the third, fourth and fifth. But these things are not going away. The public's appetite for nostalgia is too strong, as is the entertainment industry's attachment to the phrase "tried-and-tested". There will never be any shortage of has-been comics looking to be reborn, either. With double acts in particular, the only thing that seems to kill the comeback urge is an actual death. And fate, as if to hammer this point home, usually conspires to have the driving force go first: Ronnie Barker before Ronnie Corbett, Eric Morecambe before Ernie Wise, Rod Hull before Emu.

Some reunions, however, are made of sturdier stuff. Walter Matthau died in 2000, Jack Lemmon a year later. They are buried in the same cemetery, a few metres apart.