The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

The original three series, all of the same name, were broadcast between 1976 and 1979, and a fourth, The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, followed in 1996.

The basis of the plot is the mid-life crisis experienced by Perrin as he becomes desperate to escape his dreary life as a sales executive at Sunshine Desserts. 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. In the second series he remarries his wife, they build a successful business ("Grot") but the two of them fall into the same boredom that Reggie suffered before, so at the end of the second series they fake a joint suicide. In the third series, Reggie and his wife open a therapy centre for bored middle-aged people. The fourth series shows the effect of Reggie's legacy, a fortune left to his friends and family but with strange conditions attached.

Cast

• Reginald Iolanthe Perrin - Leonard Rossiter
• 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 ...")
• Elizabeth Perrin, his wife - Pauline Yates
• Mark, their son
• Linda Patterson, their daughter - Sally-Jane Spencer
• Tom Patterson, her husband - Tim Preece and Leslie Schofield

External Link Reggie Perrin fan site (http://www.pf757.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/reggie/index2.htm)