Mobile phones spotted in Reggie Perrin

Leonard Rossiter is one of the greatest comedy geniuses who’s ever lived, and many people reckon his finest hour was The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (in the interests of fairness, though, just as many people reckon that series had a tremendously weak script, and was made great solely by Rossiter and the other actors’ performances). Anyone who thinks that remakes are the work of Satan had best look away now, because the remake of that classic series, Reggie Perrin, is actually rather good.

Oh, and yes, it’s got mobile phones in it.

Well, come on, in a series that’s all about becoming disconnected and alienated by the world around you, a boring job, and the various ways the world can make you crack up in spectacular style (including having onscreen fantasies about snapping your boss’s neck), mobile phones are going to get a mention. Because not everyone loves them as much as me, let’s be honest.

And so, Reggie (played by Martin Clunes) gets an LG Viewty. Reasonably decent phone at what it does, showing its age in the modern world of mobile phones. So, was it chosen because of that, to make it a proper counterpoint to Reggie, a man whom the exact same things could be said of?

Or was it because someone on the production team likes ‘em?

Either way, it ends up making sense. I can’t see someone like the character they’ve crafted in Reggie Perrin using something like an HTC Magic, no matter how hard I try.

Although it would’ve been nice if they stuck a sneaky reference to Nokia in, when they did the episode set in Finland that had ‘globalisation’ as a theme. Us mobile phone types could have guffawed for ages, then.

So, what of Reggie Perrin the series, then? Well, a weird thing’s happened. Watching it objectively, it’s not actually that laugh-out-loud-and-wet-yourself-giggling funny… and yet, I really like it. I tune in religiously to watch it every week, and in all honesty, for the life of me, I can’t work out why I like it. Maybe it’s the pretty harsh lens it casts modern life through. Maybe it’s the fact that Martin Clunes plays downcast and fed up better than anyone else I can think of. Maybe it’s the fact it’s got personality coming out of its ears, despite not, objectively, being that hilarious. Maybe it’s because I can just feel them building up to the same fake suicide ending the original series had, which was genuinely poignant.

Or maybe it’s because it’s got Lucy Liemann in it, who knows…