Each week, we will be taking an in depth look at some of the best sitcoms and comedy shows from both the UK and the USA.

Today we will be looking at a comedy that was originally scripted to star Ronnie Barker – The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

Opening Sequence / Theme Tune

About the Show

Summary of Plot

BBC Television comedy detailing the fortunes of Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. Disillusioned after a long career at Sunshine Desserts, Perrin goes through a mid-life crisis and fakes his own death. Returning in disguise after various attempts at finding a ‘new life’, he gets his old job back and finds nothing has changed. He is eventually found out, and in the second series has success with a chain of shops selling useless junk. That becomes so successful that he feels he has created a monster and decides to destroy it. In the third and final series he has a dream of forming a commune which his long suffering colleagues help bring to reality. Unfortunately that also fails and he finds himself back in a job not unlike the one he originally had at Sunshine Desserts. –IMDb

Number of Seasons / Episodes

3 seasons

Characters:

Leonard Rossiter – Reginald Perrin

Pauline Yates – Elizabeth Perrin

John Barron – C.J

Sue Nicholls – Joan Greengross

Trevor Adams – Tony Webster

Bruce Bould – David Harris-Jones

Trivia

• Real-life Labour MP (Member of Parliament) John Stonehouse faked his own apparent suicide in exactly the same way as Reginald Perrin – in the summer of 1974 he left his clothes on a beach in Miami and disappeared. However this was pure coincidence: David Nobbs wrote his novel early in 1974, before Stonehouse disappeared (so Nobbs couldn’t have based the novel on Stonehouse’s disappearance) but the novel wasn’t published until 1975, after Stonehouse went missing (so Stonehouse couldn’t have got ideas for his disappearance by reading the novel).
• Reginald Perrin’s full name is Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. His middle name is due to the fact that he was born during a performance of the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera “Iolanthe.” His initials also make up the acronym RIP for “Rest in Peace,” the designation for a deceased person, a reference to his repeated phony suicides.
• According to Tim Preece, people were sacked from the series because they couldn’t work with the notoriously difficult star Leonard Rossiter.

Classic Clips

Reggie Perin Clips

Doctors Advice

Forces of Anarchy