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The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin | |
|---|---|
 Cover of the DVD release of the 1st Series |
|
| Format | Comedy |
| Created by | David Nobbs |
| Starring | Leonard Rossiter Pauline Yates John Barron Sue Nicholls Geoffrey Palmer Trevor Adams Bruce Bould Tim Preece Sally-Jane Spencer John Horsley |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of episodes | 21 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | BBC |
| Original run | 1976 – 1979 |
| External links | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is a novel and British sitcom starring Leonard Rossiter in the title role. Both book and TV series were written by David Nobbs, and the screenplay for the first series was adapted by Nobbs from the novel, though certain subplots in the novel were considered too dark or risqué for television and toned down or omitted from the TV series, a case in point being the relationship between Perrin's daughter and his brother-in-law.
The original three series, all of the same name, were broadcast between 1976 and 1979; a fourth, The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, also written by Nobbs, followed in 1996.
Contents |
The first series was based on Nobbs's novel The Death of Reginald Perrin, which was retitled The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin to tie in with the TV series and retains its new title to this day.
The plot hinges on the mid-life crisis experienced by Perrin as he becomes desperate to escape his dreary life. He lives at number 12 Coleridge Close, part of the "Poets Estate" in a south London suburb called Climthorpe, a suburban development differentiated from those around it only by having all the streets named for famous poets. He commutes each workday to Sunshine Desserts where he works as a sales executive. Each morning he is reliably and invariably 11 then 17 then 22 minutes late (as the series progress), yet each morning he gives a different excuse for his lateness[1]. These excuses become increasingly bizarre throughout the first two series ("defective junction box, New Malden") reflecting the decline of both British Rail and his own mental health. His arrival at the office is illustrated with a sequence of him walking into the entrance under the company logo, which, again as the series progresses, loses more and more letters from the name.
"Reggie", as he is known by all, constantly daydreams in a Walter Mitty style. Part of the narrative demonstrates what the voices in his head are saying. Although he appears to love his wife, he fantasises about running away with his secretary, Joan Greengross. As his behaviour becomes more erratic, he is unable to dictate letters to Joan without inadvertently uttering words like "breast". Far from being offended, Joan welcomes the attention, adjusting her posture to better show her fine figure.
The endless marketing campaigns for ever more bizarre products, hilariously satirized in the reports from the product research department, combine with Reggie's relations with his oppressive boss "C.J." and his yes man subordinates to drive him over the edge. Ceasing to care about the consequences of his actions at work, he dictates offensive and condescending replies to customer letters.
At home things are no better. Despite his warm relationship with his wife Elizabeth he suffers what came to be called "erectile dysfunction". As the pressures at work build, relations with his dysfunctional relatives deteriorate, especially with his incompetent brother-in-law Jimmy and son-in-law Tom, a man with a surfeit of "political correctness" masking his innate pomposity. After a few reckless acts, including getting out of his car in the lion enclosure at a safari park, Reggie fakes his own suicide by drowning, leaving his clothes and personal effects to be found on a beach. Before this he gives C.J. the fright of his life by, after sending an anonymous threat containing the words "blood will flow", dumping tons of hijacked loganberry essence into C.J.'s favourite fishing stream while C.J. is enjoying a relaxing afternoon's angling. C.J. collapses with the shock, and the company doctor, Doc Morrisey pronounces him dead. C.J. opens one eye and says, "You're fired!"
Assuming a series of diguises, Reggie encounters more of the banal and pompous side of life south of London. Only as a buck-toothed farm labourer does he find some fulfillment looking after pigs. Missing his wife, he assumes the identity of Martin Wellbourne, returned from South America, and visits her. Naturally he realizes he loves her still. Elizabeth, seeing through his disguise, is happy to have him back in any form.
In the second series, he remarries his wife and they build a retail business ("Grot") which sells useless items, hoping that it will be an interesting failure. Instead, the useless items are snapped up as novelties: Grot becomes a runaway success, and Reggie ends up employing all the staff from Sunshine Desserts, including his former boss, CJ. This causes the Perrins to fall into the same boredom that Reggie had suffered before, so at the end of the second series they fake a joint suicide. This series was novelised as The Return of Reginald Perrin. Leonard Rossiter insisted that the quality of the first series was better since it was a book adaptation, and insisted Nobbs write books for the subsequent series before he would consider appearing in them.[citation needed]
In the third series, novelised as The Better World of Reginald Perrin, Reggie and his wife open a therapy centre for bored middle-aged people. He is rehired by CJ's brother FJ at Amalgamated Aerosols, with CJ himself as Reggie's supervisor. The final scene sees him contemplating another trip to the beach for another possible faked suicide.
In 1982, as part of a show called The Funny Side of Christmas, there was a short, festive sketch featuring the regular cast crowding Reggie's house. The sketch appears to be set during Reggie's crisis and is out of synchronisation with the other episodes.
| The Legacy of Reginald Perrin | |
|---|---|
 Title card |
|
| Format | Comedy |
| Created by | David Nobbs |
| Starring | Pauline Yates John Barron Sue Nicholls Geoffrey Palmer Bruce Bould Tim Preece Sally-Jane Spencer John Horsley Theresa Watson |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of episodes | 7 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | BBC |
| Original run | 1996 – 1996 |
| External links | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
This followup series, made long after Leonard Rossiter's death, shows the effect of Reggie's legacy: a fortune left to his friends and family but with strange conditions attached. This was largely seen as a failure by viewers, because time had moved on and the loss of Leonard Rossiter as the main character removed any affection for the series. Both book and series were titled The Legacy of Reginald Perrin.
A short-lived US version of the series was produced and broadcast on ABC in 1983 as Reggie, with ex-Soap actor Richard Mulligan replacing Rossiter in the lead role.
At the end of the first series he fakes his own suicide by leaving his clothes on a beach in Dorset and running into the sea. (While this was coincidentally similar to a stunt pulled at around the same time by maverick MP John Stonehouse, neither was inspired by the other: the novel was written before Stonehouse's faked suicide in November 1974 but not published until 1975. The phrase "do a Reggie Perrin" did enter the vernacular, however, no doubt assisted by the media circus that surrounded the Stonehouse affair.)
The series also introduced a number of catchphrases that have entered popular culture in the UK, including Perrin's reflexive apology for a late arrival at the office, his boss CJ's "I didn't get where I am today ..."; the fawning junior executives Tony Webster and David Harris-Jones with their alternating "Great/Super"; and Perrin's brother-in-law Major Jimmy Anderson, an army officer with no grasp of organisation or leadership, coming round for a bite to eat because of a "bit of a cock-up on the catering front".
Although mainly produced on video and shot on studio sets, the series also incorporated innovative elements of surreal escapism through the use of film inserts, most notably during the numerous scenes in which, whenever his dreaded mother-in-law is mentioned, Reggie involuntarily visualises a huge hippopotamus trotting along. (This is the same technique used to illustrate the dreams and reveries of the characters in the American TV medical comedy series Scrubs.)
Occasionally characters would chorus each other exactly, another surreal tone, which was done skilfully enough to make it work comedically without affecting the vérité of the show.
- Reginald Iolanthe Perrin: Leonard Rossiter
- Elizabeth Perrin, his wife: Pauline Yates
- Joan Greengross, his secretary: Sue Nicholls
- CJ, his boss: John Barron (CJ is fond of pompous statements beginning "I didn't get where I am today by ..." – except when Reggie becomes his boss, whereupon he says "I didn't get where you are today by ..."; also "Neither Mrs CJ nor I have ever..." and "We're not one of those dreadful firms that...")
- David Harris-Jones, 'Yes man': Bruce Bould
- Tony Webster, 'Yes man': Trevor Adams
- Mark Perrin, their son: David Warwick (Series One only)
- Linda Patterson, their daughter: Sally-Jane Spencer
- Tom Patterson, her husband: Tim Preece (first two series and Legacy) and Leslie Schofield (third series) (Catchphrase: "I'm not a ... person.")
- Jimmy, Elizabeth's brother: Geoffrey Palmer
- Doc Morrissey, company doctor at Sunshine Desserts: John Horsley
- Seamus Finnegan, Irish Labourer with a genius for management: Derry Power (Series Two and Three only)
- Kenny McBlane, Scottish Chef at Perrin's: Joseph Brady (Series Three only)
- Prue Harris-Jones, wife of David Harris-Jones: Theresa Watson (Series Three and Legacy only)
| DVD Title | Country of Release | Region | Date of Release | DVD company | Catalog Number | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin - The Complete 1st Series |  United Kingdom |
0 (PAL) | October 21, 2002 | Second Sight Films | 2NDVD 3042 | |
| The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin - The Complete 2nd Series | United Kingdom |
0 (PAL) | October 21, 2002 | Second Sight Films | 2NDVD 3048 | |
| The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin - The Complete 3rd Series | United Kingdom |
0 (PAL) | May 19, 2003 | Second Sight Films | 2NDVD 3049 | |
| The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin - The Complete Collection | United Kingdom |
0 (PAL) | October 6, 2003 | Second Sight Films | 2NDVD 3062 | 3-disc box set of all 3 series. |
Neither The Legacy of Reginald Perrin nor the Christmas sketch has been released on DVD yet.
- Fairly Secret Army - Series featuring Geoffrey Palmer in a similar role to that of Jimmy and written by David Nobbs.
Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 2007-11-14.
