The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

There is no shortage of excellent sitcoms - the U.S. gave us Seinfeld, and Soap, the Brits Good Neighbors, Fawlty Towers and Butterflies. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, rises above even these, and is a true masterpiece of television.

What makes The Fall and Rise so exceptional is its incredible depth. While other shows were content to earn certain points and then coast (e.g. Seinfeld acts as a catalog of ridiculously mutated and twisted social convention, but rarely moves beyond it) The Rise and Fall never lets up on its observations, criticisms and offering of wild and crazy solutions, providing a hero who sees everything wrong with the world and is desperate and willing to change as much as possible.

The absurdity of corporate culture, suburban monotony, flaky post-hippie child-rearing concepts, condescendingly manipulative advertising and marketing, sexism, racism, class conflict, are hung, drawn and quartered for laughs. And Leonard Rositter's posturing and snarking make it surreal. It is Voltaire, Brecht.

Of course, the hero's plans rarely turn out as he expected, and Perrin is constantly thrown off course as each of his absurd plots is met by an even more absurd response from the world. Rositter's Perrin reacts with even more absurdity, all the while stammering and mugging to underline the fact that, well, that's life.

The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, is a must to television viewing as Mozart is to music, Citizen Kane to cinema, and Dickens to reading. You will probably like it, but even if you don't, it will do you great good, and be the yardstick by which you judge all other related material.