BBC to re-run the entire first series of cult 90s classic This Life over one week

The show, which launched the career of Walking Dead star Andrew Lincoln, centres of the lives and loves of five young lawyers sharing a house together in London fresh out of university.

It was a commercial and critical smash, leaving fans in the pre-streaming/binge-watching era desperately waiting for the next episode every week.

Noted for its depiction of casual sex and drug-taking, the show become a hugely popular word of mouth hit when it was first shown in 1996 at the height of the 'Cool Britannia' Britpop era.

Despite its popularity the programme's creators only made two series, save for a one-off, 10-year anniversary special in 2006, and have resisted calls to revisit the lives of Egg, Milly, Miles, Anna and Warren.

It's also something of a rarity on other streaming services (although you can splash out £20 for the entire first season on Amazon) and the Beeb's own iPlayer rarely makes the programme available.

The programme returns to TV schedules, with the entire first series being show over one week in February.

The first, 40-minute long episode airs on BBC Four at 10pm on Monday, February 3, with episode two and three following straight after on the same night.

The remaining episodes of the 11-part series will be shown from 10pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of that week.

For those who watched the show the first time around as 20-somethings, that might involve pulling an unwelcome late one on a school night, so hitting series link and binge-watching at a more civilised hour in the company of a glass of red might be the order of the day.

There is no information currently available on plans to screen the second series.