Line #32 Series/TheFallAndRiseOfReginaldPerrin


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/reginaldperrin_826.jpg]]
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3	''The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin'' is a 1970s [[BritCom British sitcom]] written (and developed from his own series of novels) by David Nobbs. The series starred Leonard Rossiter as Reginald "Reggie" Perrin, an advertising executive at Sunshine Desserts trapped in a dreary existence and pointless job who is in the throes of a full-blown midlife crisis. Three seasons of episodes were made under this title. The protagonist's strained and often bizarre behaviour, sometimes surreal flights of fancy and an always dark undertow -- the first series ended with Perrin ''faking his own suicide'' -- mean the show remains an enduring counterpoint to the more bland and straightforward sitcoms of its era. In 1996, a dozen years after Rossiter's death, a belated fourth series was made with the remaining cast under the title ''The Legacy of Reginald Perrin''.
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5	In the '80s the show was adapted as an American sitcom called ''Reggie!'' with Richard Mulligan in the title role, and more recently [[TheRemake remade]] as ''Series/ReggiePerrin'', with Creator/MartinClunes in the title role.
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8	!!This show provides examples of:
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10	* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Linda is often described as plump in the original book (with [[spoiler:Jimmy]] mentally admitting he falls for her because he is irrationally attracted to [[ChubbyChaser fat sweaty women.]] In the series, she is definitely none of those things.
11	* AllMenArePerverts: Reginald likes to fantasize about his secretary: suggestively licking ice cream cones with her, making love to her on his desk, in the middle of a field, etc. His doctor spends his downtime looking at porn in his office.
12	* AllForNothing: Reggie ends up exactly where he started off; stuck in a cruel and completely nonsensical world that he can no longer stand.
13	* AllergicToRoutine: Reginald Perrin, whose routine eventually drives him round the bend.
14	** He's also allergic to the season-spanning routine of destroying everything he's previously created.
15	* AttendingYourOwnFuneral: A disguised Reggie does this shortly after faking his own death, and as a result starts a romance with his own widow. She realises that it's him straightaway, but doesn't let on.
16	* BlackComedy: Although it's farcical and ridiculous, the first series especially is a catalogue of a man in the middle of a nervous breakdown.
17	* CampGay: Reggie becomes this in a futile effort to shock people who have become used to his eccentricities.
18	* CatchPhrase: Many that have entered common usage, especially in business. See MadLibsCatchPhrase below.
19	* CouchGag: Similarly to ''Series/FawltyTowers'', the Sunshine Desserts sign was always humorously dilapidated, though losing letters rather than anagramming them.
20	* DeadpanSnarker: Reggie.
21	-->"Are you trying to tell me you're providing a valuable social service?"\
22	"I'm not ''trying'' to tell you, I'm succeeding. If I'd said 'I like squashy bananas' I would have been failing to say 'I am providing a valuable social service', but I didn't say 'I like squashy bananas', I said 'I am providing a valuable social service', thus succeeding brilliantly in saying 'I am providing a valuable social service'."
23	* DownerEnding: The series ends with Reggie on his way back to the Dorset coast, possibly to kill himself for real.
24	** He survives long enough to appear in a 1982 Boxing day special.
25	** ''The Legacy of Reginald Perrin'' finally revealed that he did not kill himself -- rather he died in a storm, struck by a falling billboard advertising health insurance.
26	* EmbarrassingMiddleName; For Reggie, 'Iolanthe'. Even worse than being embarrassing, it also makes his initials R.I.P.
27	(To Himself)"Why did My mother give the middle name (aloud) Iolanthe? (To himself) she was was due to appear in a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan but couldn't when she discovered she was having me; if it had been a year later I would have been (aloud) Reginald Pirates Of Penzance Perrin!"
28	* EveryEpisodeEnding: Every episode of series one (except the last) ends with a despairing scream from Reginald.
29	* FakingTheDead: Spoofed in the opening credits, later played straight.
30	* GiftedlyBad: Tom's wine and advertising slogans for Grot.
31	-->'''Reggie''': "It ''almost'' rhymes and scans properly, that's the important thing. This is exactly what I'm paying you for."
32	-->'''Tom:''': "Thank you. Well, I'll just give you one more, perhaps: 'Grot is the ideal place for gifts, because they're all on one floor, so there aren't any lifts.' They aren't all of that standard, of course."
33	* GoneHorriblyRight:
34	** The view Reggie comes to take of Grot. It was supposed to be a joke business, but it turned into a big success. His attempts to destroy it keep turning it into an even bigger success.
35	** In ''Legacy'', the entire cast's attempt satisfy Reggie's SillyWill and do something "completely absurd" results instead in the creation of a genuine widespread political movement.
36	* GranolaGirl: Reggie's son-in-law, Tom, who distills his own wine, smokes brier pipes, and insists that his children be treated not as children but as "tiny adults".
37	* HurricaneOfPuns: Reggie is quite fond of these.
38	* HypocriticalHumour: "I'm not a petty man..." as Reggie launches into a neurotic tirade about the tea lady refusing to save him a macaroon in 1971.
39	** "I didn't get where I am today by talking in cliches", from CJ
40	* ImagineSpot: [[MrImagination Reginald provides these all the time]].
41	* ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne: After Reggie has been insulting CL, the German sales rep, since the conversation started, he finally snaps after another barb about flatulence.
42	* LargeHam: CJ
43	* LastSecondWordSwap: "... and with the coming of metrication ''office phone begins ringing'' I feel confident -- no, the advent, the advent of metrication -- I feel confident that the bloody phone will ring all day."
44	* LineOfSightAlias: One episode has Reggie trying to choose a new name after running away from the rat race.
45	-->'''Reggie:''' Okay, "Sid" and then the first thing I see when I look over this fence... "Sid Cowpat"... hmmm.
46	* ListingTheFormsOfDegenerates: When Jimmy reveals he is involved with a Far-Right group looking to Make Britain Great Again, his list of all the malcontents who are destroying this once-great nation runs on and on and on. Re-runs of the series in 2022 are prefaced with a content advisory about "this series reflects the values of its times and some viewers may find this content offensive", whilst at least two categories of degenerates loathed by Jimmy are bleeped out.
47	* MadLibsCatchPhrase: Lots, which have [[invoked]][[MemeticMutation entered everyday use]].
48	--> '''CJ:''' "I didn't get where I am today by [action/behavior]"
49	--> '''CJ:''' "Neither I, nor Mrs CJ, have ever [action]"
50	--> '''Jimmy:''' "Bit of a cock-up on the ____ front"
51	--> '''Tom:''' "I'm not really an ____ person"
52	* MaddenIntoMisanthropy: The premise of the show: Reggie one day decides he has had enough of being polite and trapped in his meaningless world, and starts cultivating an antisocial persona.
53	* {{Malaproper}}: One of the symptoms of Reggie's rapidly declining mental state.
54	* {{Metaphorgotten}}: CJ is quite prone to these.
55	-->"There's no smoke without the worm turning."
56	* NationalStereotypes: Intentionally invoked and later subverted with Seamus Finnegan, the Irish labourer who Reggie hires as his admin officer in a pub (quaffing Guinness, naturally). A self-confessed hard-drinking lazy gambler, he soon turns out to be [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass hyper-competent]], much to Reggie's annoyance.
57	** Also, Kenny McBlane's incomprehensible Scottish accent.
58	* NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat: One of the boss' toadies is MistakenForGay after overindulging at a party and does a desperate Not That There's Anything Wrong With That speech, going overboard with panic when he thinks his boss might be reading more into his use of the stock phrase "Some of my best friends are ..." than he intends.
59	* ObfuscatingStupidity: Elizabeth, who pretends not to realise that Martin is in fact Reginald.
60	* PragmaticAdaptation: The TV series dropped some of the darker subplots from the books, such as Mark's disappearance, Linda and Jimmy's incestuous affair and the whole "Climthorpe Strangler" strand from the second book.
61	* PutOnABus: The first series included the character of Mark Perrin, Reggie's son, played by David Warwick. However, David Nobbs felt he diverted the comedy from Reggie, so he was written out by going on tour with a theatre group in Africa.
62	* ReluctantFanserviceGirl: Joan, in the book. When she and Reggie were trying to have an affair, the first thing she would do on visiting his house for a rendezvous was undress completely, whereupon Reggie's wife would inevitably turn up and Joan would be forced to spend the rest of the chapter hiding naked in whatever location was available. Toned down in the series, for obvious reasons.
63	** In recent (2022) re-runs, an element of FanDisservice intrudes when it dawns that Joan the sexy secretary is, nearly fifty years later, the octagenarian great-grandmother Audrey in ''Series/CoronationStreet''.
64	* RuleOfThree: The very first episode features three days in the life of Perrin; each repeating almost exactly the same incidents with only minor variations.
65	* RunningGag: Plenty, often OnceAnEpisode at least. One example is Reggie drifting into an ImagineSpot of a hippo wallowing in mud every time his mother-in-law is mentioned.
66	** 18 minutes late, correcting Website/TVTropes entry, missed 7:15 train, had to wait for 7:30 train.
67	** I didn't get where I am today by modifying TV Tropes pages for 40-year-old shows during my lunch hour!
68	* SeriousBusiness: The employees of Sunshine Desserts treat the most ludicrous news on various idiotic puddings with complete professionalism.
69	-->"Well we're beginning to make headway. Some of our mousses are holding their own in the Rhennish Palatinate, and flans are heating up in Schleswig-Holstein."
70	* SexySecretary: Perrin's secretary, Joan. Reginald thinks so, anyway, and often fantasizes about her with her hair (and more) down.
71	* ShrinkingViolet: David
72	* SillyWill: Perrin leaves a fortune to be shared among his friends, on the condition that they each do something sufficiently absurd.
73	* SpringtimeForHitler: Grot, conceived as a TakeThat to capitalism, ends up being a massive success.
74	* SuicideBySea: Reggie fakes his death by leaving his clothes on the beach, making it look like he has committed suicide by walking out into the sea.
75	* ThoseTwoGuys: Tony and David.
76	** Great!
77	** Super!
78	* TransAtlanticEquivalent: VERY briefly adapted into an American sitcom called ''Reggie!'' starring Richard Mulligan, in TheEighties at some point between his playing Burt on ''Series/{{Soap}}'' and Dr Westin on ''EmptyNest''.
79	* {{Tuckerization}}: The streets in Reggie Perrin's neighborhood, the signs for which he is regularly seen walking by to and from work ("Wordsworth Drive," "Tennyson Avenue" and "Coleridge Close") are named after the famous British 19th century poets, William Wordsworth, Creator/AlfredLordTennyson and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the last episode of the series, when Reginald Perrin has taken another executive job in a large corporation, like the one he had at the beginning of the series, the street signs when he walks to work now read Liebnitz Drive, Bertrand Russell Rise and Schopenhauer Grove. These streets are named after the philosophers Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Bertrand Arthur William Russell and Arthur Schopenhauer.
80	* TheUnintelligible: Sunshine Desserts' vans are these in the book. The back double doors contain the slogan "Bring a little Sunshine into your life" -- but several of the vans had the doors put on the wrong sides, with the result that they read '''little Bring a hine suns ur life into yo'''.
81	* UnintelligibleAccent: [=McBlane=], the Scottish chef hired by Reginald when he tries to open a hotel, speaks in what could be described as "a dialect", possibly Glaswegian, and nothing else.
82	* VideoInsideFilmOutside: A prime example.
83	* ViolentGlaswegian: Kenny [=McBlane=], the cook from Series 3 who is always muttering indeciperable gibberish and almost always wielding something very sharp in his time on-camera.
84	* YesMan: Whenever Reggie or CJ suggests something, [[ThoseTwoGuys Tony and David]] respectively say "Great!" and "Super!"

Context Series / TheFallAndRiseOfReginaldPerrin