Aherne working on new Royle Family "special".

Hmm. I'm really not so sure about this. As much as I loved The Royle Family at the time, it was very much of its time, and I really don't think that revisiting it is necessarily a surefire good idea. British comedy has moved on since then - and so has Craig Cash, having created the funnier, warmer and cleverer Early Doors. Aherne, meanwhile, hasn't produced anything of note since Jim Royle uttered the immortal words "Roger, my arse!", and this smacks of a desperate attempt to recapture past glories.

You want my opinion? Get Cash cracking on a third series of Early Doors instead. Or, at the very least, something new with a good chunk of the same cast. As for The Royle Family... if there ever was a time to make more episodes of it, I think that time has been and gone. But we shall see.