The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

*The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin*
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
	Cover of the DVD release of the 1st series
Created by	David Nobbs
Starring	Leonard Rossiter (Fall and Rise); Pauline Yates; David Warwick (series 1); Sally-Jane Spencer; Tim Preece (series 1–2 and Legacy); Leslie Schofield (series 3); Sue Nicholls; John Barron; Geoffrey Palmer; Trevor Adams (Fall and Rise); Bruce Bould; John Horsley; Derry Power (series 2–3); Joseph Brady (series 3); Theresa Watson (series 3); Patricia Hodge (Legacy); Michael Fenton Stevens (Legacy);
Theme music composer	Ronnie Hazlehurst
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	3 (Fall and Rise); 1 (Legacy)
No. of episodes	21 (Fall and Rise); 7 (Legacy) (list of episodes)
Production
Producer	Gareth Gwenlan
Running time	30 minutes
Original release
Network	BBC1
Release	8 September 1976 –; 31 October 1996
Related
	Reggie (US remake); Reggie Perrin (UK remake); Fairly Secret Army;
	Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is a British sitcom starring Leonard Rossiter in the title role. Three series were produced from 1976 to 1979, based on a series of novels written by David Nobbs. Nobbs adapted the screenplay for the first series from the first novel. Some of its subplots were considered too dark or risqué for television and were toned down or omitted. A fourth series, The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, also written by Nobbs, followed in 1996.

The story concerns a middle-aged middle manager, Reginald "Reggie" Perrin, who is revealed in the first series to be aged 46, and is driven to bizarre behaviour by the pointlessness of his job at Sunshine Desserts. The sitcom proved to be a subversion^{[clarification needed]} of others of the era, which were often based on bland, middle-class suburban family life.

The first novel in the series, The Death of Reginald Perrin, was published in 1975. Later editions were retitled to match the title of the television series. The Return of Reginald Perrin (1977) and The Better World of Reginald Perrin (1978) were written by Nobbs to be adapted for the second and third television series; Rossiter did not want to take the series forward unless it continued to be grounded in novels.^[1]

A new dramatisation of the original novels by Jon Canter, without the complications introduced in the TV series, was broadcast on BBC Radio Four in November 2022.^[2]

^ David Nobbs, I Didn't Get Where I Am Today, Heinemann, 2003, pp. 219–222.
^ "BBC Radio 4 - Working Titles, the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin - Part 2".

[1] David Nobbs, I Didn't Get Where I Am Today, Heinemann, 2003, pp. 219–222.

[2] "BBC Radio 4 - Working Titles, the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin - Part 2".

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