Classic ITV show hit with trigger warning after use of old-fashioned language

The 70s British sitcom Rising Damp has been slapped with trigger warnings from ITV due to its use of old-fashioned language. All 28 episodes have been flagged on the broadcaster's streaming platform, ITVX, for their "discriminatory language and attitudes." This includes one of the show's BAFTA-winning episodes, which warned viewers about "racial references that may offend."

The hit series followed Leonard Rossiter as Rupert Rigsby, a tight bedsit landlord who rents out rooms of his rundown Victorian townhouse to unfortunate tenants. The programme, which ran for four series from 1974 to 1978, also featured Richard Beckinsale, Don Warrington and Frances de la Tour, as prim Miss Jones.

Among many questionable scenes, one exchange shows Rigsby and Warrington's character Philip, who jokingly claims to be the son of an African chief to get a rise out of his landlord.

Warrington, who also stars in the BBC's Death in Paradise, previously defended Rising Damp following complaints about the show not being politically correct. In 2022, the actor said the show should not be edited for modern audiences because "its intentions were good."

He argued: "The show was never cynical ... the standard of work was just so great." Warring, who is black, added: "A lot of black people still say to me that their parents would call them down from their bedrooms whenever it was on, because of the way it showed a black man on TV who wasn't being put down or abused."

The show's creator, Eric Chappell, also hit back at similar claims and said Rigsby "was not a racist or a bigot, but he was prejudiced and suspicious of strangers." A spin-off Rising Damp film was released in 1980 after the series won a BAFTA for Best Situation Comedy in 1978.

It was the highest-ranking ITV show in the BBC's 100 Best Sitcoms poll of 2004, at 27th while Only Fools And Horses claimed the top spot with 342,426 votes.

Rossiter tragically died six years after Rising Damp's finale in 1978, aged 57 from heart attack while waiting in his dressing room to go onstage at the Lyric Theatre, London, where he was performing in Joe Orton's play Loot.

At the time, Warrington was among the stars to pay tribute to the actor and said: "Rossiter was tremendously helpful to me. He is the comic master, so inventive. He can smell a laugh hidden away in quite an ordinary line.

"He used to take me aside and say 'Don't try so hard, don't say it that way, just try it like this,' he was always right."