Rising Damp was a UK television sitcom produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV, first broadcast from 1974 to 1978. It was adapted for television by Eric Chappell from his well-received 1971 stage play, The Banana Box (retained as the working title early in the series). The series was the highest-ranking ITV sitcom on the 100 Best Sitcoms poll run in 2004 by the BBC.

Rising Damp starred Leonard Rossiter, Frances de la Tour, Richard Beckinsale and Don Warrington. Rossiter played Rupert Rigsby (originally Rooksby in the stage play): the miserly, seedy, and ludicrously self-regarding landlord of a run-down Victorian town house who rented out his shabby rooms to a variety of tenants.

Beckinsale played Alan George Moore, a long-haired, naive, good-natured and amiable medical student who occupied the top room. Frances de la Tour was Ruth "Miss" Jones: a fey, whimsical spinster and college administrator who rented another room, with whom Rigsby was in love and to whom Rigsby proposed in the last episode.

In the pilot episode, a new tenant arrived. Philip Smith (Don Warrington) was a planning student who claimed to be the son of an African Chief. As a black man, he brought out the ill-informed fears and knee-jerk suspicions of the Rigsby.

However, the landlord quickly accepted his new tenant and henceforth regarded him with a wary respect, wary because of Philip's intelligence, smooth manners and especially because Miss Jones was attracted to the handsome sophisticate. Of these four principal actors, only Beckinsale was a new recruit - the others had all played their roles in the original stage play.

Other tenants occasionally lived at the house but never became permanent residents, often appearing only in a single episode. The series is in the British comedy tradition of having failure as a key underlying theme, each of the characters having lives of quiet desperation.

Frances de la Tour temporarily left the series in 1975 due to theatre commitments, and was 'replaced' by occasional other tenants. She returned for the final two series.