Yorkshire Television at Forty: Rising Damp

As part of our features on the 40th anniversary of the ITV franchises; HTV, LWT, Yorkshire and Thames, Flashback takes a look at the Yorkshire comedy series, Rising Damp. Fondly remembered today, this series ran for four years in the mid 70’s and is still shown across the world today.

Rising Damp: 1974 to 1978 + a cinema movie

Rising Damp started out life in 1971 as stage play, The Banana Box, and was adapted for television by the original writer, Eric Chappell. Early on in production for the series it retained its original title but this was dropped in favour of Rising Damp. The series starred Leonard Rossiter as landlord Rigsby with his tenants being played by Richard Beckinsale, as Alan George Moore, Frances de la Tour as Miss Jones and Don Warrington as Phillip Smith.

One of the longer running storylines, as each episode usually had a self contained storyline, was Risby’s love for Miss Jones and his attempts to try and woo her – which often failed with comic outcomes. Often Rigsby suspected Miss Jones of fancying one of the other tenants, especially Phillip who was intelligent and well mannered – unlike Rigsby. Over the course of the seasons other tenant came in but usually only stayed for an episode – often or not Rigsby’s many failures would drive them out. Although being a comedy the series had a depressive quality about it from the sets, which were run down and grubby, to the characters – most of whom were failing in life or love. Perhaps the biggest failure of them all was Rigsby as he failed each week to win over Miss Jones and failed to connect with his other tenants.

Frances de la Tour, Don Warrington and Leonard Rossiter had all appeared in the stage play which the series was based on and so only Richard Beckinsale was new to the others and to the series. In 1975 Frances de la Tour left the series to return to theatre and her role was taken up, in the series, by a string of single episode tenants. Frances de la Tour then returned to the show for its final two seasons. Richard Beckinsale also skipped a series, the fourth, to appear in the Porridge spin-off, Going Straight.

Towards the end of the 1970’s it was common place for successful comedy series on television to get their own feature-length movie at the cinema. The producers of Hammer Horror having switched from camp horror to camp comedy instead as they tried to cash in on the success of shows on television. Such shows to get a cinema movie included Bless This House, Dad’s Army, George & Mildred and Rising Damp. In 1980, two years after the series closed, a film was made.

In 1979 Richard Beckinsale had sadly passed away and so, in respect to the actor, a new character was added to the film and was played by Christopher Strauli. The theme to the movie was released as a single with a B-side featuring a comedy dialogue between Miss Jones and Rigsby. The movie did reveal that Phillip wasn’t the son of an African chief after all – as Rigsby had believed through the series.

In all 28 episodes, including a Christmas special, of Rising Damp were made by Yorkshire Television and one cinema movie. The show is still repeated on a regular basis but episodes are subject to cuts due to possible racist connotations, the show was, after all, a product of a different time. Writer Eric Chappell claims that Rigsby wasn’t racist but just suspicious of newcomers/strangers but got did get along with Phillip and accepted him.

It’s important to remember that in the 1970’s political correctness didn’t exist and people were casually racist without thinking about it as often or not they didn’t really know what they were saying. Rising Damp and Rigsby are merely products of their time in this fashion and are not intentionally racist.

The show has also been released on DVD and is widely available to buy. In 2004 the series was the highest ranking ITV sitcom in a BBC poll on the 100 Best Sitcoms.