Rising Damp - Series 1 - Region 1 DVD

Some aspects of Rising Damp have not aged well, principally Rigsby's stream of racist jibes at Philip. Although these were doubtless well-meant and supposed to illustrate Rigsby's foolish bigotry, one suspects that it might have been a convenient cover for 1970s audiences to enjoy racist humor. However, Rossiter's Rigsby--stuttering, stammering, bent perpetually over backwards--remains a great comic creation, embodying all the festering prejudices, small-mindedness and self-delusion of the lower middle class Little Englander. --David Stubbs

In a series called the pinnacle of British comedy, the miserly and mean-spirited landlord of a rundown boarding house is hilariously one-upped by his luckless tenants.

Like Archie Bunker in the U.S., Rupert Rigsby is the British comedy character the whole country loved to loathe. Comic genius Leonard Rossiter (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin) plays the odious Rigsby, whose ludicrous pretensions and bigotry are played off against the hijinks of his more enlightened but cash-strapped tenants: long-haired medical student Alan (Richard Beckinsale), love-starved administrator Ruth (Frances de la Tour), and urbane "African prince" Philip (Don Warrington). The BAFTA Award-winning series, a critical and popular success during its four seasons on the U.K.'s ITV network in the 1970s, remains a winner. It was the highest-rated ITV sitcom in a 2004 poll to name Britain's top 100 sitcoms of all time.

The Episodes:
The Lodgers (Rooksby)
Black Magic
A Night Out
Charisma
All Our Yesterdays
The Prowler
Stand Up and Be Counted