TV Guide: Rising Damp (1974-78)

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Rising Damp is usually voted the best-ever ITV sitcom, but I would say it is among the gems of British television overall. It was created and entirely written by Eric Chappell, and the writing is consistently good; there isn’t a single “bad” episode.

The setting is a boarding house in a northern university town (never named but almost certainly Leeds), owned and run by the curmudgeonly Rupert Rigsby. Once a Victorian townhouse, it has become drab and dingy, reflecting Britain’s post-imperial trajectory. Themes of class, race, decline, disappointment and personal failure abound, yet the show is always amusing and heart-warming, and often hilarious.

Throughout the four seasons, the action is virtually entirely within the house. On the two occasions we venture outside, it is to another studio set. Thus, with no location filming at all and virtually no straying from the core “situation”, Rising Damp demonstrates how good a “pure sitcom” can be. A minuscule budget can produce magic. You just need three walls, a decent production designer, a talented writer, and a small set of good performers.

Leonard Rossiter was one of the best comic performers of Britain’s 20th Century, and working with Chappell he created a truly legendary character in Rigsby. But said leering landlord is so well-done that he can over-shadow everything else the show offers. People forget about the endearing performances from the other regulars - Richard Beckinsale, Frances de la Tour and Don Warrington - along with the many guest actors who appear along the way, one or two in each episode. Even they are consistently well-chosen; the casting director, like that on Father Ted, seems to have had a Midas touch.

Special mention should be made of the production design. This matters in sitcoms because they tend to be confined to a very few sets, therefore how those sets look is important. With Rising Damp the design is done particularly well, really creating the sense of a dilapidated house in an unremarkable town. Colin Piggott is to be commended for his work, but also the lighting guys who kept it gloomy, avoiding the nasty over-lit look common in that era.

One other technical note is the incredible fact that this programme was made entirely “live”. Editing was done on the hop by a vision mixer, switching between multiple cameras. There was no editing afterwards except to stitch the scenes together. There were no special effects added and even no sound effects added; those were “fed in” to the studio space during filming. Titles likewise were overlaid directly onto the incoming camera footage. So what you see fifty years later is exactly what the vision mixer saw in his monitor on the night. That such a show could be produced so cheaply, quickly and precariously, really puts everything nowadays to shame.

Rising Damp could be described as a comedy of manners, in that it is shot through with subtle and hilarious observations about the English people. But, while often cutting, it is never nasty. This elevates it above so many comedies, which are political in intent. Rising Damp was clearly informed by the liberal politics of its time, but it never loses empathy for its various characters. Even Rigsby, who is a buffoon and an ignoramus, often turns out to be right, and is shown to be loyal to those he cares about, putting himself at risk to protect them. This fond acceptance of “the way they are” is completely absent from contemporary treatments of the English people. So too is the awareness of archetypes that Chappell displays - this is a man who has lived, and has observed the English, and knows them in their many forms. Today, everything is political so the honesty one sees here is gone from TV, perhaps especially from comedy.

Hyde Park Terminus in Leeds, a few years before Rising Damp was made. The house was probably supposed to be like these ones, and its surroundings too - a world drifting from Victoriana to VCRs

To look at Rising Damp sociologically, it is a record of the English during a period of national decline and rapid social change which left the more conservative puzzled and despondent, and led the more liberal towards personal ruin (not that this was known to the liberal characters, or to Chappell himself, at the time). But to look at it creatively, it is simply a highly enjoyable piece of TV history that I would recommend to all British people, and to anyone interested in them.

Recommended episodes

A Night Out
Rigsby tries to woo Miss Jones on her birthday, only to be shown up by Philip and by his own tragic lack of refinement. Many funny lines, especially as Rigsby tries desperately to outshine his tenants in pursuit of the lady. I love the last few lines, between Rigsby and Alan, where they decide to close off the evening by doing something simple and fun (“fancy a bag of chips?”). It shows a camaraderie between the two of them which is always under the surface but rarely manifests.

Charisma
This is worth it just for the absurdity of Rigsby trying to woo Miss Jones but accidentally playing a record of romantic music at the wrong speed.

The Prowler
George Sewell plays a police officer. His delivery of the line “there’s many a woman expected a warm embrace…” is great, as is his interplay with Rigsby - he is a wily character gauging someone and then tricking him. The dialogue in the “investigation” scene is almost a laugh for every line. Chappell on absolute top form here. Rigsby’s line about social workers is particularly funny - it’s interesting that this perception of them goes as far back as 1974.

Stand Up and Be Counted

An election is happening and several politicians visit the house to canvass. Alan and Philip are involved with the Labour Party, whose candidate is an absurdly camp gay man. Rigsby sucks up to the Tory candidate, but he dislikes how Rigsby treats his tenants and remembers him as a cheat and liar.

The Permissive Society
A wonderful performance by George A. Cooper as a disapproving father (also named Cooper). I can’t describe how funny I find his voice and mannerisms. He only appears in one scene but I really think he could have sustained a sitcom of his own. It is largely down to the actor; this role couldn’t have been played better.

Aside from him, this episode has a lot of crackling dialogue between the regulars. Alan’s retort about the Himalayas is one of those lines that, if you’re not dead, you will laugh out loud at. Note: Cooper says that Alan sent a love letter to his daughter, noting with disgust that it was “written in green ink” - a social convention the audience in 1975 were familiar with but I had to look up.

Things That Go Bump in the Night
Many hilarious lines in this ghost-themed episode which sees the tenants terrorising Rigsby, him insulting the vicar, then the vicar believing him to be practising transvestism. Note: the actress Gabrielle Rose is in this and three other episodes, and this year appeared in Final Destination: Bloodlines. What an incredible career to go from a tiny Yorkshire sitcom to a massive Hollywood film! I also have to commend this Canadian actress on her perfect grasp of a (to her) foreign accent.

The Good Samaritans
A hilarious performance by Clive Swift as a suicidal Liverpudlian.

Fawcett’s Python
Ruth’s music rehearsal with the vicar, combined with the chaos unleashed by the titular reptile… wonderful.

The Cocktail Hour
Alan has a posh girlfriend whom he is desperate to impress, along with her snobbish mother. Rigsby attempts to coach him in social etiquette. I can’t imagine what a Zoomer would make of this episode; the idea of class-based etiquette seems to be extinct now. But it’s a relic for me, as well. Even when this episode was made, though people clearly still understood the idea, it must have seemed silly for someone to be as concerned about it as Rigsby is.

Suddenly At Home
This is worth it just for Rigsby’s line about freezing sperm.

Fire and Brimstone
A religious fanatic moves into the spare room and soon becomes convinced that the house is plagued with wickedness.

Great Expectations
Rigsby is set to receive an inheritance from his deceased uncle. The conditions include his being happily married, so he stages a charade to convince his aunt. She visits - a great performance by Gretchen Franklin.

Episodes that show unique parts of the house

Something I enjoy about Rising Damp is that, like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, one can never quite get to grips with the house. It changes slightly each week because the sets were dismantled between episodes. Additionally, some storylines call for specific rooms that only appear once, so the house occasionally offers up some new corner of itself that we haven’t seen before. It’s a pleasure because the production design is so good, even with these “one-off” sets.

Clunk Click - the garage (above)
Rooksby - a bedroom that is never seen again
The Good Samaritans - the roof
Suddenly At Home - the cellar
Stand Up and Be Counted - the front door and hallway
For the Man Who Has Everything - the tradesman’s entrance
The Prowler - a storage room (below)

Episodes that leave the house

A Night Out - a fancy restaurant, “the Grange”. The set is surprisingly large
Pink Carnations - a pub, “the George”

Curiosities

Rooksby / The New Tenant
The pilot. It’s ropey, but has a unique version of the theme tune.

For the Man Who Has Everything
The Christmas “special”, though it’s no longer than usual and isn’t very Christmassy. Surprisingly, there weren’t any more Christmas specials.

Don’t bother with…

The 1980 film. These “big screen” adaptations of sitcoms never worked, in my opinion. Rising Damp in particular relies on the claustrophobia of small sets, the sound of audience laughter and the energy of live performance, so in every way it only suffers from the transition. The film is also a sad reminder, by his absence, that Richard Beckinsale had died.

What I would have liked

“Bottle episodes” done on just one set where the characters simply chat and argue for the full duration. Maybe there’s a power cut and they all have to sit around a candle to pass the time. Or Rigsby is hiding from someone and the tenants variously drop in and find him, go away to check, come back, etc. The episode Clunk Click is probably the one that comes closest to being a bottle episode, playing out almost entirely in the (specially-built) garage set.

A few “two-hander” episodes where the other tenants are away. This would help to bring out the various relationships.

An episode where we see the bathroom. It’s an obvious omission given that we see every other room in the house. There is also mention of a garden, which we never see. (In fact, there is not a single “exterior” shot in the entire series.)

An episode where it’s stormy outside, just because it would be so incredibly cosy.

A proper Christmas special (snow outside, tinsel, a tree, etc.)

A seventh episode for the final season. The only reason there isn’t one is they forgot to commission it!

A spin-off series with Cooper where he has an escalating feud with Rigsby. I think Eric Chappell really missed a trick here, because the potential was there, with the two characters and the two actors, for a hilarious show. It would be based around Cooper repeatedly imagining that Rigsby is an amoral degenerate trying to subvert the community, which in turn would bring out Rigsby’s actual moral and social failings. Each man is the ideal antagonist for the other. What a wonderful “add-on” such a series could have been to Rising Damp!

RIP
Eric Chappell, 25th September 1933 - 21st April 2022
Leonard Rossiter, 21st October 1926 – 5th October 1984
Richard Beckinsale, 6th July 1947 - 19th March 1979.

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