Fawlty Towers

This is pure comedy. It is genius. It is hilarity that transcends the boundary of comedy. Fawlty Towers is the kind of comedy that has you on the floor gasping for air in a puddle of your own tears. John Cleese has created one of the defining characters of comedy in Basil Fawlty. Manuel Sachs is superb as Manuel, the confused waiter from Barcelona. Prunella Scales is brilliant as the tyrannical wife. Connie Booth is very good as Polly, the hassled waitress. Put it all together inside a small hotel in Torquay and you get one of the greatest, most alluring comedies ever to grace the screen. The only bad thing about Fawlty Towers is that they didn't make more.

Fawlty Towers will always be tearfully, heart stoppingly, deadly, and disasterously funny.

Come visit the worst-run hotel in the whole of western Europe (well, except for that place in Eastbourne...) In a field with many top contenders, 'Fawlty Towers' remains my favourite of all 'Britcoms' - situation comedies originating on British television. Fawlty Towers has a cult following decades after the originals aired; it is sometimes hard to believe that there are but 12 episodes, six hours total. The regular cast is led by John Cleese, veteran of the famous Monty Python comedy troupe, as the irrepressible Basil Fawlty, titular head of the hotel with dreams of class and glory; Prunella Scales is his long-suffering and hardworking wife, Sybil, who recognises that while Basil may think 'the sky's the limit!', in fact, '22 rooms is the limit'. Connie Booth (Cleese's real-life wife) played the level-headed and sensible, overworked maid Polly, and in a role matched only by Fawlty's own bizarre manner, Andrew Sachs plays the lovable and ever-incompetent Spanish waiter, Manuel (he's from Barcelona...). Ballard Berkeley makes Ballard Berkeley makes a regular appearance as the Major, a retired long-term resident at the hotel. Brian Hall joined the cast for the second season as the not-quite-gourmet chef, Terry.

From the very first episode (first aired in 1975) featured a social-climbing Fawlty as perhaps the most rude and insufferable hotel manager in existence, in the resort town of Torquay, on the Channel coast of Britain. Sybil tries to maintain a reasonable level of service, but Fawlty's snobbishness permits him to be gracious (indeed, excessively fawning) toward those he considers 'worthy', which in this episode turns out to be Lord Melbury, who ends up not being Lord Melbury, but rather a confidence trickster, and Fawlty's revenge scares away the real 'posh' guests, whom Fawlty sends off with the hilarious shout, 'Snobs!' In each of the episodes, there is a crisis - one gets the sense that the life of Fawlty is non-stop crisis, with his wife and Polly forever picking up the pieces, Manuel always complicating things, and the others wandering around in a state of disbelief (or, in the case of the Major, perpetual daze). The twelve episodes highlight all the things that could wrong at hotel in classic comedic fashion - the institution of a Gourmet Night falls flat when the not-quite-recovering alcoholic chef starts drinking the night of the main event; a guest dies in the middle of the night, and Fawlty tries to slip him out unnoticed; remodelers install and remove the wrong doors; the health inspector unexpected shows up and gets served a bit of rat with his cheese.

However, nothing quite matches the kinds of situations Basil can get himself into. When trying to plan a surprise anniversary dinner for his wife, she leaves the hotel thinking that Basil has forgotten again, and Basil dresses Polly up as a sick-bed-bound Sybil to fool the guests. When Polly's friends check in for a wedding over the weekend, Basil suspects the group of free sexual expression (highlighting his own repression); this theme is carried over to a glorious extreme in the episode about the visiting Psychiatrist.

'How does he make his living?' Basil protests. 'He makes his money by sticking his nose into others' private parts, er, details...' This is also the episode where Sybil finally confronts Basil about his double-sided hotel manner toward guests: 'You're either crawling all over them, licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some Benzedrine puff adder,' she declares. He replies in perfect form, 'Just trying to enjoy myself, dear.' As the psychiatrist will comment near the end, there's enough material for an entire psychiatrist conference. Indeed there is, as this is slapstick humour with a difference. Intelligent and witty while utterly chaotic and beyond the pale, one is treated to the moose-head incident and the ingrowing toenail as well as Fawlty's unique form of automobile motivation (how many of us have ever been tempted to whack away at a stalled car with a stick!) and a nice performance of Brahms (his 'third racket', to be precise). One must not overlook the little details, either, including the ever-changing sign in front (the actual hotel used for the exteriors unfortunately burned down many years after the show), and the fact that the interior and exterior layouts of the building cannot correspond (shades of 'The Simpsons' whose furniture layout changes from scene to scene).

It is almost inconceivable that the two series, each of six episodes, were four years apart (1975 and 1979), as they flow rather seamlessly together. Popular on television networks worldwide, it can be seen variously on BBC America and local public television channels, often during the fund drives, when the most popular pieces are shown.

Based on an actual hotel Cleese and the MP gang stayed at once, Fawlty Towers is a hilarious British sitcom with great characters and situations. Probably the most famous episode is the one with the Germans, as I hear it referred to the most.

Basil Fawlty (Cleese) is a grumpy hotel manager, with his domineering wife Sybil, the hotel maid Polly (co-creator and Cleese's wife at the time of the show Connie Booth), the Spanish waiter Manuel ("I learned classical Spanish, not this strange dialect he's using"), and the hotel's longest standing resident, the Major. Witty dialogue and hilarious slapstick situations make this a great show.

Fawlty Towers is one the best, most popular but sadly slightly overshadowed comedies in Britain. it has the ingredients for perfect comedy and contains perfect characters. It is about this misanthropic arrogant man, Basil Fawlty, played brilliantly by the genius John Cleese, who is totally in the wrong job. He runs hotel and is rude to nearly everyone within a ten mile radius of him, but determined to make a success of his business. His wife Sybille played by Prunella Scales, whom he despises to the nth degree because she rules him with a rod of iron. Then there is Polly the waitress played by Connie Booth, the most intelligent character in the show who always ends up sorting out all the problems and keeps the hotel running. There is Manuel played by Andrew Sachs, the lovable gormless Spanish waiter who Basil bullies and tries to kill in nearly every episode. Other additional characters are the batty Major Gowen played by Ballard Berkeley, the dotty old ladies Miss Gatsby and Miss Tibs played by Renee Roberts and Gilly Flower and Terry the chef played by Brian Hall. All played very well.

One thing this programme didn't do like others is go on for series after series and eventually become far-fetched like several British sitcoms seem to do (cough, Last of the Summer Wine). It only ran for two series and left the audience starving for more. I think that it was a wise move not to do more, even though I would have loved it if they had. This is probably what John Cleese might be best remembered for in Britain, he not only stared in it he wrote it as well with wife Connie Booth. He based the character on a hotel proprietor in while staying at a hotel in England with the Python Gang.

I have no issues with this show at all, brilliant work. This kind of stuff needs to be treasured in Britain because it captures British humour perfectly. Whether you know the show or not, treat yourself to a DVD of series one or two (or both if want) and enjoy. And to those of you who haven't seen it before, I guarantee that you'll be in stitches within the first ten minutes of any episode.

QUOTE:- Basil Fawlty (trying to start his car)-Come on! Come on, start....START YOU VICIOUS BASTARD!

Just saw again the first four episodes of John Cleese's wonderful, wonderful Fawlty Towers, the dysfunctional hotel run by the inimitable Basil Fawlty (Cleese), and his battle-wagon wife, Sybil (Prunella Scales). Amazing how many belly laughs and guffaws the show can still inspire, and this is probably my third or fourth viewing (still, it's been years).

Even more amazing is the short documentary on the realBasil Fawlty--Donald Sinclair, manager and owner of the Gleneagle, an ex Navy commander who (as Ray Marks, present manager of the Gleneagle puts it) thought running the Gleneagle "would have been a wonderful job, if it wasn't for the guests. The guests spoiled his job."

According to legend, the Monty Python troupe once booked rooms at the Gleneagle, in the seaside town of Torquay; they still remember some of the things Sinclair did to them there. Pythoner Eric Idle carried an alarm clock inside his briefcase at the hotel reception; when Sinclair heard the ticking he said "My God, there's a bomb in there!" and threw it off a cliff. Later, Pythoner Terry Gilliam sat down to a meal and ate American style, cutting up the food first before picking up the pieces with his fork; Sinclair, passing by, picked up Gilliam's knife and snapped "we don't eat like that here!"

Eventually the entire Python troupe moved to another hotel--all except Cleese, who stayed. Apparently, he thought there was an idea for a TV show here somewhere.

It wasn't only the Pythoners that suffered; one guest asked for a drink at the bar, to which Sinclair replied by slamming down the grill and saying "the bar's closed." When his friend invited him to a nearby hotel to drink, Sinclair informed him that if he isn't back by 11 pm, the front door will be locked. He comes back late, and just as Sinclair threatened, the front door was locked. "This is ridiculous," he said, "my wife and daughter are in there," and started banging on the door; a light turned on in a window, and Sinclair popped his head out and said "I told you I'd lock the doors by 11!" The guest replied: "If you don't open the doors I'm going to knock them down!" Three or four minutes later, Sinclair opens the door, lets him in, bangs the door behind him loud enough to, as the guest put it, wake everyone in the hotel, and yells "Don't let that happen again!"

Sinclair was also hard on the hired help. He hated builders, and would yell and curse at them; one Greek waiter was so fed up with Sinclair's treatment of him he jumped into a taxi and demanded to be driven to London. Rosemary Harrison, who once worked for Sinclair, describes how when one waiter, tired of waiting for Sinclair to make the tea, took a teapot meant for another table. Sinclair stopped the serving of breakfast and "went up and down the tables like a policeman, questioning the guests. He came across a set of teapots at a table for two. He realised because of their size they were meant for a table for four, and he asked the guests for a description of the waiter."

Sinclair was apparently so appalling that when his wife had to go out shopping, she would lock him up in their room, and say to the staff "don't let him out, he's only going to upset you." Ian Jones, owner of the nearby Coppice Hotel, said "fugitives from the Gleneagle used to come knocking on our door, pleading accommodations."

He was, as Cleese would put it, "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met."