rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (02/21/85)
> Ok, here's one I never seen mentioned on the net, that I consider to be the > finest show ever done. THE FALL AND RISE OF REGINALD PERRIN. ... In a > nutshell the show is about Reggie who is 40 yrs old, middle manageament and > very bored with his life, finally one day he fakes a suicide wanders around > trying to have fun, returns to his wife, gets a job with his old firm, gets > found out, loses his job, cleans up afters pigs, opens GROT a store devoted > to sell only junk and totaly useless items, gets bored with GROT and all > the sucess, sells, and opens PERRINS, which offers the universal pancea for > all the worlds ills, stay as long as you like and pay as much as you like, > when PERRINS crashes down, he ends up working for his first bosses brother > and the circle of his life is complete. The shows take in about 7 years > of reggies live in great detail. [DENNIS WILMOT] It's next to impossible to describe the intricacies of this show in a few paragraphs, but I'd have to say, yes, this is one great series. As far as situation comedies (whatever *they* are!) go, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is running neck-a-neck with Fawlty Towers as the best of them all. (At least in my book.) Which makes it all the more befuddling as to why American TV couldn't usurp the idea to make a decent American TV series out of it. Even Richard Mulligan, who's quite an expressive comic actor, couldn't save the pilot. (Actually it's not befuddling at all. Americans want completely different things from TV than the British do. And, unfortunately, that's all too often what we get...) -- "Which three books would *you* have taken?" Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (03/03/85)
> Agreed. "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin" has to be one the greatest > (if not _the_ greatest) series to come out of Britain, in terms of the > subtlety of its humor (that's for the falmers who like Fawlty Towers, which > is also great). I'm curious, though.. Can someone supply a list of > GROT shop items that Reggie sold while the show lasted? (It would make > a perfect item to sell at aa GROT shop -- completely useless.) [STEVEN GRADY] You're quite right. I agree that "Perrin" and "Fawlty" are quite possibly the two best British (or even English language?) sitcoms ever made, but that, yes, they are very antipodal in style and wit. Where Fawlty (Cleese) was brash and loud and abrasive, Perrin (Rossiter) was subtle and contorted (in an intellectual sense). Still, "Basil, if I found out that YOU bet the money on the horse you know what I'm going to do?" followed by "You'll have to sew them back on first..." has the best of both worlds, don't you think? By the way, if there *were* GROT shops in which to sell such lists as you've described, the lists would in fact by quite useful (i.e., giving you useful information about which useless things are available). It would only be truly useless if there is no such thing as a GROT shop in which to sell such a list... (???????) (I just realized that, for perhaps the first time in history, I don't have a single Python-based signature line in my directory...) -- Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen. Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr
ron@wjvax.UUCP (Ron Christian) (03/20/85)
***MILD SPOILER WARNING***
'Fall and rise of Reggie' greatest tv program ever? I think not.
It is good, I agree. I saw all of them, (some twice and thrice)
and I enjoyed them immensely. But a few things bother me about
the show, the chief amoung them being the lack of characterization
of the supporting parts. Everyone is a straight person for Rossiter.
The character of Reggie's friend (the one that keeps saying "Bit
of a cock up on the (whatever) front" played by Geoffrey Palmer)
is particularly one-dimensional. Watch Palmer in 'Butterflies',
where he plays the main supporting roll, and 'The Last Song', his
own show, and then watch him in 'Fall and Rise'. What a waste of
a fine actor.
The same is true for CJ, ("I didn't get where I am today..") Reggie's
wife (wasn't she also Sybill of Fawlty Towers?) his two co workers,
("Super!" and "Repetition City, Arizona".) and his son-in-law. ("I'm
not very good at (whatever)". Or is it "I'm not a (whatever) man".
I forget.) One knows them only by their particular verbal cliches.
The only exceptions were the Irish farm worker Reggie hires as management
consultant (who turns out to be a genius) and to a lesser extent
Reggie's secretary. (Names fail me at the moment.)
During the first two or three episodes I was rolling on the floor,
but it gets harder and harder to dredge up the yucks after the 53rd
repitition of "47 minutes late (whatever excuse)". The show *does*
get more interesting as you start following Reggie's fall and eventual
rise, but at this point the old cliches just get in the way.
As a side note, it occured to me after the second viewing that an
ideal place to end the series was where Reggie and his wife are
looking through the telescope at all his friends throwing off their
old identities, and Reggie says, "You see, everyone's doing it."
The show got much weaker after that.
It's a good show, but with a little more thought and material it could
have been a great show. Give me the gentle philosophizing of 'Butterflies'
or the verbal interaction of 'Good Neighbors', for greater continuing interest.
--
__
Ron Christian (Watkins-Johnson Co. San Jose, Calif.)
{pesnta,twg,ios,qubix,turtlevax,tymix,vecpyr,isi,idx}!wjvax!ron
"...so I did a 'fmt trip.report > trip.report' and..."