I didn't think that
Rising Damp (1974) would have quite the longevity it's enjoying actually. At the time we knew it was good because it was very well written by
Eric Chappell, and he wrote characters as well as situations. In fact, very little situation happens in this particular situation comedy, it's character based. And we knew it was good but there were a lot of very popular and good sitcoms in the seventies. You could name at least five. It became more popular years later, five, ten years, even then 20 years and people started calling it a classic. But it's like we left it behind and it never died.