That series that used to attract big audiences has lost its sparkle. The ratings are down and people don't talk about the show as they did in its heyday.

A programme that used to produce water cooler moments, making it the talk of the office the following day, has gone down the pan. It might have been laying dormant for some time, or simply look like it's on its last legs.

The solution is to call in the TV makeover doctor to give the old programme a Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen type new look.

The latest show to get the treatment is Ask The Family, the early evening quiz show that graced our screens between 1967 and 1984 with Robert Robinson as the headmasterish question master delivering a mix of general knowledge questions, puzzles and word games

An update of the classic quiz show debuts this spring on BBC2, the channel that's already breathed new life into highbrow quiz shows University Challenge and Mastermind. There, a change of presenter - Jeremy Paxman for Bamber Gascoigne and John Humphrys for Magnus Magnusson - was all that was needed.

The new look Ask The Family promises a more extreme makeover. The title gives the game away - Ask The Family With Dick And Dom. The stars of the popular Saturday morning children's TV show Dick And Dom In Da Bungalow have been recruited to pep up the show with their "unique and wacky sense of humour". Hopefully this doesn't mean that the losers will be pelted with food and have buckets of gunge poured over them as happens on the duo's children's programe.

It will certainly be different to the last time Ask The Family was on TV screens, in 1999 on UK Gold with gardening expert Alan Titchmarsh in charge.

We can rest assured that the Bafta-award winning team of Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood will liven things up no end. Even the format has been adjusted for the 2005 version. Before, two family teams of parents and children competed against each other. Now four members of the one family - two adults and two children - will pit their wits against each other.

The old Ask The Family is recalled next week in a documentary, Lashings Of Fun, in which former contestants recall their experiences and the 1983 final is repeated.

BBC2 is currently enjoying success with Masterchef Goes Large, an updated version of the amateur cooks competition that began in 1990 with Loyd Grossman as presenter. It was briefly revived a few years back with chef Gary Rhodes in charge of the kitchen, but didn't last beyond one series.

The 2005 Masterchef, originally created by North-East born director and producer Franc Rodam, has been given a Pop Idol style new look as two judges eliminate contestants in a series of rounds.

No longer is the programme studio-bound. The amateur chefs are sent out to work alongside professionals in the kitchens of London restaurants. Next week the three finalists will undergo a series of tests, from cooking lunch for the crew of a warship in the North Sea to working in the kitchens of Michelin-starred restaurants.

There is evidence to suggest that makeovers can breathe new life into stale shows. Top Gear was the long-running motor show which first pulled away from the starting grid in 1978. When outspoken presenter Jeremy Clarkson left, the show went downhill like a vehicle with the handbrake left off.

Some presenters moved to five and its Fifth Gear show. Then, in 2002, BBC2 persuaded Clarkson to return and relaunched Top Gear. The running time was doubled to 60 minutes and the studio abandoned for a 600-acre aerodrome with its own racetrack. The result was a new-look Top Gear described as "a testosterone-fuelled rollercoaster entertainment loaded with interviews, stunts and characters". Even better, the viewing figures were good.

A Question Of Sport has been through various presenters and team captains since debuting in 1970. Those changes have helped keep it fresh.

Alterations to the Big Brother house and the rules each time not only keep contestants on their toes but provide viewers with the unexpected.

Dramas are more difficult to update successfully. Changing the star can help but, more often than not, it's best just to dump the series and start again from scratch.

For the fourth series of Teachers, C4 ditched several long-running characters and introduced new ones with hardly a word of explanation. It was not as successful as previous series and a fifth wasn't commissioned.

ITV1's The Bill is the best example of a drama reinventing itself successfully. The Sun Hill police series had been on the air since 1984, first with half-hour episodes and then moving to the two or three times a week hour-long format. With ratings slumping and the series attracting the wrong sort of audience for advertisers, action was needed.

Four years ago producer Paul Marquess was brought in with the brief of giving the show a total overhaul. If it hadn't worked, The Bill would have been axed.

He turned it into a continuing drama, along the lines of Casualty and Holby City. The personal lives of the coppers began to play as big a part in the drama as the crimes and their aftermath. More female characters and more younger characters were introduced.

It worked. Ratings rose, the series became talked about again and it's now an important anchor in the weekday schedules.

The BBC will be keeping its fingers crossed that Dick and Dom's madcap antics can do the same for Ask The Family.

* Lashings Of Fun: The Story Of Ask The Family is on BBC2 on Tuesday at 7pm. Ask The Family With Dick and Dom begins this spring.

* Masterchef Goes Large is on BBC2, Tuesday to Friday at 6.30pm.

Published: 26/03/2005