The Legacy of Reginald Perrin (1996) User Reviews (8)

Life Without Reggie

[Rabical-91 · 8/10 · 3 July 2017]

1996 saw the BBC's failed attempts to revive two of their best loved sitcoms from the '70's - 'The Liver Birds' and 'The Fall & Rise Of Reginald Perrin'. Unlike 'The Liver Birds', 'The Legacy Of Reginald Perrin' had to try and soldier on without its leading man ( Leonard Rossiter had died of a heart attack in 1984 ). A colossal task, but one that David Nobbs worked around by having Reggie's passing being the plot outline for the show.

Reginald Iolanthe Perrin has died after being crushed to death by a collapsing billboard, a billboard which ironically was advertising a life insurance company with which Reggie had a policy with. He bequeaths his entire estate to his family and former colleagues from Sunshine Desserts. However, the fly in the ointment is that in order to qualify to inherit a share of Reggie's will, the entire party must do something utterly ludicrous, a task which is to be judged by Reggie's solicitor Geraldine Hackstraw.

All of the cast from the original series returned, save for Tony Webster, who was said to have moved to New Zealand ( the late Trevor Adams had given up on acting in 1982 to start a career in law ). Tim Preece reprised his role as Tom ( he was replaced in the third series of the original show by Leslie Schofield ). Some new characters were introduced. There was, of course, Hackstraw ( played by Patricia Hodge, who had earlier appeared in another David Nobbs scripted show, 'Rich Tea & Sympathy' ), Joan Greengross' new yuppie boyfriend Hank ( Michael Fenton Stevens ) who instead of saying ''Great!'' or ''Super!'' said ''Wicked!'' and incompetent journalist Welton Ormsby ( the late David Ryall, who played Phoebe's dad Eric in the first series of 'Goodnight Sweetheart' ). They all link forces, along with a large army of pensioners, to head a bloodless campaign to seize control of the government.

As a single serial, it was strong enough to work, showing us how everyone had gotten along over the passing years and how they were all coping with the loss of Reggie. There were some telling moments, such as the reconciliation of Tom and Linda and the budding romance between Jimmy and Geraldine and David Nobbs still came up with some witty lines but I think for some, the absence of Rossiter was just too much and, consequently, 'The Legacy Of Reginald Perrin' flopped.

The final episode ended on a cliffhanger, suggesting that Nobbs hoped there would be demand for a second series but it was not to be. Only seven episodes were made.

'The Legacy Of Reginald Perrin' may not have been excellent, but it was worth watching and is vastly superior to the 2009 remake starring Martin Clunes. Despite Clunes' very best efforts, he simply was not Reggie.

Flawed but entertaining

[nickomcminn · 6/10 · 1 December 2007]

When David Nobbs starting working for the BBC again in the mid-90s he made the bold decision to bring back Reginald Perrin. The critics were scathing about the show and claimed that following the death of Leonard Rossiter it should never have happened. With the benefit of hindsight however, the show was not the disaster it was first claimed to be.

David Nobbs has always been a hugely talented writer and he proves that again here. The ideas in The Legacy of Reginald Perrin are more innovative and funny than most other comedy shows and it is only the overly repetitive catchphrases and a few slow sections which let the scripts down.

Even despite Leonard Rossiter's absence, there are still positives to the cast as well. Geoffrey Palmer is superb as Jimmy Anderson and John Horsley, Bruce Bould and Tim Preece all perform well as well. Sadly though John Barron's age appears to be catching up with him and one or two other cast members had not acted for several years and it shows.

All in all, I would recommend this to fans of the original series. It is certainly imperfect and could have benefited from strong editing but it is nevertheless fascinating viewing.

Bold and a nice way to wrap things up...

[jackstupidjack · 7/10 · 20 November 2015]

David Nobbs said in a radio interview (BBC Radio 2 ??/09/96) he had half heartedly dabbled sporadically at many ideas during the late 70s and early 1980s to wrap up the Reginald Perrin series as he was never fully satisfied with the conclusion of The Better World of Reginald Perrin (series 3). Nobbs felt as though he had fulfilled his original intention and caught the zeitgeist of the 1970s workplace with the original Perrin trilogy and couldn't take that vein too much further as the original Reggie Perrin was mainly about increasing dissatisfaction in the workplace, and the breakdown in worker/management relations which plagued British industry in the 1970s and the lack of humanity in dealing with workers. He now had a chance to move the cast on to the materialistic nineties zeitgeist with the new series as well as a golden chance to tie up the character's loose ends. He fought off the temptation (and apparently a fair amount of pressure from within the BBC) to recast another actor as Reggie, especially as Ronnie Barker was, at the time the series was floated in 1994, only recently semi-retired and he was still highly keen to get a chance to play Reggie Perrin - a role originally written for him - though he was too busy in 1977 to play the role in the series - and Leonard Rossiter got the role instead, made it his own and the rest is history. While the series had its critics, it was a bold move to reintroduce basically a supporting cast without the star. The series rolls along nicely in the gang's quest for absurdity and a slab of Reggie's legacy but never breaks any boundaries of comedy as the original series did. There were too many rehashed Reggie gags from the original series which the others just couldn't carry off. The true joy of the series was, that after a long break, we had the chance to catch up with old friends once again to find them all in fine fettle apart from Tony Webster (Trevor Adams) and of course Reggie (Leonard Rossiter) himself.

As good as it could have been without Reggie.

[Muldwych · 20 April 2008]

In many ways, The Legacy Of Reginald Perrin is a testament to the faith the BBC had in series creator David Nobbs, given that the star of the original series - and the main reason for its success - had passed on. 'Legacy' instead focuses instead upon the supporting characters, giving Geoffrey Palmer, by this time considered a safe pair of hands in a starring role, centre seat. New supporting characters are also added to fill out the cast, most notably Patricia Hodge, as the legal executor of Reggie Perrin's fortune, for which the others must do something silly in order to collect their share.

The pen of David Nobbs ensures that the series at all times maintains the feel of the original, and the returning cast generally seem to slip effortlessly back into their roles. Time may have softened John Barron a little, but the defiant spark accompanying every mixed metaphor is still there. However, although everyone concerned gives their all, it just isn't the same without the title character. Perrin and Rossiter were the dynamoes that drove the entire series. While the supporting characters were content to put up with their mundane middle-class lives, every fibre of Reggie's being yearned for more, and he went out and got it, achieving new levels of wonderful lunacy each time. Nobbs is very much aware of this, since the premise of 'Legacy' has to do with everyone wondering just how to achieve similar heights of silliness in order to claim their inheritance.

It's a brave try, and certainly a very watchable one. It's almost like watching scenes from original episodes where Reggie isn't in the room. Nonetheless, even though the final episode suggests quite strongly that this wasn't meant to be a one-off series, it's not difficult to see why it was. And to paraphrase CJ, I didn't get where I am today by not seeing why it was.

funny funny funny

[frankiegoesagain · 10/10 · 23 September 2006]

Missed this when first shown in 1996 but recently managed to watch the entire series in one day! That wasn't my intention but I just got hooked from the first episode, perhaps it's like CJ states "I love nostalgia, especially when it's about the past!" Great fun I thought and every bit as well written as the original shows from 20 years earlier.

And a great cast to boot! Actually, I do seem to remember watching the first episode of this when first broadcast - then it did nothing for me, strange how the passing of time and being bothered to watch the series in full can change one's initial thought.

They don't do 'em like this these days and sure, it's not 'cutting edge comedy' (whatever that is?)but I didn't care.

Even without Reggie it was still great, super! to see so many original cast members reunited for this one-off (that's all it was intended to be) series.

Sure, it won't (indeed it didn't!) change the world, but a ruddy good Brit-com all the same.

If you can find a repeat I urge you to give it a try.

I didn't get where I am today by recommending rubbish sitcoms on IMDb you know! :)

Here Lies Reginald Iolanthe Perrin - Forever Revolting!

[ShadeGrenade · 5/10 · 10 September 2006]

The '90's saw the B.B.C. revive a number of famous comedy shows, including two made by I.T.V. - 'Agony Again' and 'Doctor At The Top' - along with 'The Liver Birds' and, of course, this. Whereas these featured the original casts, 'Legacy' was at a disadvantage because Leonard Rossiter passed away in 1984. David Nobbs tried to work around this by making Reggie's death the catalyst for the show's events. Reggie's family and friends must do something really absurd in order to qualify for a share in his will. After a number of failed individual attempts, they combine to try to take over the country, at the head of an army of pensioners. The show was not the disaster critics tried to make out; 'Jimmy', 'C.J.', 'Elisabeth', 'David Harris-Jones', 'Tom' and 'Linda' were strong enough to carry the show. The problem was that Reggie wasn't around to belittle them anymore. It was like watching 'Fawlty Towers' without Basil. Best of the new characters was Geraldine Hackstraw, played by the lovely Patricia Hodge.

The Strange Afterlife of Reginald Iolanthe Perrin

[JamesHitchcock · 4/10 · 11 February 2021]

The first two series of "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", based upon comic novels by David Nobbs, were two of the greatest comedy series in the history of British television. (Nobbs himself wrote the scripts). The first traces the downfall of Perrin, a stressed, depressive middle-aged executive working for a dreadful firm called Sunshine Desserts where he is bullied and patronised by his pompous, overbearing boss CJ. In the second Nobbs brilliantly inverts the premise of the first. Reggie starts a shop called Grot selling nothing but useless, worthless products. He intends this as a despairing two-finger gesture aimed at society, but the business proves a surprising success and Reggie ends up as a business tycoon himself, with CJ and others of his former colleagues working for him.

So where did Nobbs go from there? The answer was that he didn't really know, but the first two series had proved such a success that he came under pressure from the BBC to produce another novel which could be dramatised as a third. Nobbs therefore concocted a storyline in which Reggie starts a suburban commune for the middle-aged middle class, designed to help them become "better, happier people", but compared to the first two series it was a failure, and there were no immediate moves to follow it up with a Series 4. And that should have been the end of the matter, especially after Leonard Rossiter, the star of the show, died in 1984.

Only it wasn't. Fast forward to 1996. The Beeb must have been desperately short of ideas for new comedy as someone came up for the idea of a new Reggie Perrin series. A new Reggie Perrin series, that is, without Reggie Perrin. Rossiter had been one of the finest comic actors of his generation and Reggie was his most inspired creation, so that someone, whoever he or she was, seems to have realised that asking another actor to step into his shoes would have been pointless. So the decision was taken that Reggie must die too and the new series begins at his funeral.

The next major event is the reading of the will. Reggie, it turns out, died a wealthy man, and left a million pounds to each of his various friends and relatives, on one condition. They must do something totally absurd, and Reggie's solicitor Geraldine Hackstraw has the task of deciding whether their actions are absurd enough to merit a million-pound payout. What they decide to do is to stage a revolution on behalf of the elderly and "occupationally rejected". (Euphemism for "unemployed"). And, yes, that is as daft as it sounds.

Most of the original cast (apart, of course, from Rossiter) return, but there are a couple of omissions. Tony Webster has disappeared to New Zealand. (Apparently Trevor Adams had given up acting). Reggie's son Mark, who appeared in the first series, is also conspicuous by his absence. No reason is given to explain why he is not mentioned in the will- in fact, he is never mentioned in the script at all.

So why is "The Legacy of Reginald Perrin" so poor? Part of the answer is the main reason why Series 3 failed. Series 1 and 2 were essentially satires on seventies consumerism, but the third removed this element of satire and so ended up looking rather pointless. Series 4 also removes this element, but there is another reason why it ends up as being even worse than Series 3, and that of course is the absence of Reggie. He was the central figure around whom all the others revolved, and they were essentially defined in terms of their relationship to him. Take away that central figure, and all the others seem to lose their relevance.

All those catchphrases ("I didn't get where I am today by....", "Bit of a cock-up on the .... Front", "I'm a .... person" no longer seem very relevant either. In the original series their function was to satirise the sort of lazy ways of speech people slip into as a substitute for thinking. Here, however, they are so overused that they no longer have a function, other than that of keeping happy fans who would be disappointed if David Nobbs did not trot them out several times in every episode.

The surviving cast are not always as good as they were in earlier series. John Barron's CJ and John Horsley's Doc Morrissey both look old and tired. I would agree with the reviewer who said that Leslie Schofield (who played Tom in Series 3) missed the character's essential priggishness, so the return of Tim Preece should have been a bonus. The problem is, however, that part of the fun lay in the fact that Tom was still a young man but prematurely middle-aged, an ageing, bearded head on young shoulders. Now that Tom actually is middle-aged (and clean shaven), he no longer seems so funny.

Some of the cast do retain something of their old appeal, such as Geoffrey Palmer's Jimmy and Bruce Bould's wet-behind-the-ears David, but nobody does enough to persuade me that resurrecting the series was anything other than a mistake. There seem to have been plans to extend the strange afterlife of Reginald Perrin even further, but they came to nothing and we were spared a Series 5. 4/10

It was bold

[geneticjackhammer_316 · 27 April 2006]

This programme was a bold move, it did only survive one series, but without Leanard Rossiter, it couldn't be what it used to. The main story was after Reginald Perrin passed away, he left a will to his family and former colleagues. A million pounds each. But, to get this money they had to do something totally absurd. After efforts were made they decided to work as a team and their idea was to have a bloodless revolution for the older generation, however, it actually was a good idea, so they didn't get a penny. On the character side of things, new characters were bought in and supporting characters were in the lead. With his success in "As Time Goes By", Geoffrey Palmer took the spotlight, relinquishing his role as Jimmy Anderson, the Leader of the Revolution along with all the other classic characters from the original series, CJ, Doc Morrisey, David "Great" Jones and Joan Greengross. If I hadn't of seen this programme at the tender age of 11, I would have never seen the original classic programme, so thank you David Nobbs.