The original three series, all of the same name, were broadcast between 1976 and 1979, and a fourth, The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, followed in 1996.
The basis of the plot is the mid-life crisis experienced by Perrin as he becomes desperate to escape his dreary life as a sales executive at Sunshine Desserts. At the end of the first series he fakes his own suicide by leaving his clothes on a beach in Dorset and running into the sea. In the second series he remarries his wife, they build a successful business ("Grot") but the two of them fall into the same boredom that Reggie suffered before, so at the end of the second series they fake a joint suicide. In the third series, Reggie and his wife open a therapy centre for bored middle-aged people. The fourth series shows the effect of Reggie's legacy, a fortune left to his friends and family but with strange conditions attached.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump