I was surprised to read there was only one episode broadcast of this show as I can still recall seeing the pilot back in 1978. My local PBS station had been running repeats of Fawlty Towers about the same time. I liked Harvey Korman from the Carol Burnett Show so I thought I'd check it out.
What surprised me is how faithful they were to Fawlty Towers. They recreated the same set and the pilot episode was basically a Fawlty Towers script (the first episode of Three's Company also follows the first episode of Man About the House pretty faithfully as well, including Jack Tripper waking up in the bath). Even Frank LaLoggia's "Petro" successfully captured Andrew Sachs "Manuel" to the point that I thought Sachs was performing the character at first! While keeping in mind that I haven't seen this show since 1978, I'm not sure it's even been rebroadcast since then, but I can remember laughing quite hard at Korman's portrayal of the title character, capturing Basil Fawlty's perpetual exasperation and near insanity.
Harvey Korman was perfectly cast as the American version of Basil Fawlty. It would be interesting to see the pilot episode packaged as an extra as part of a DVD set in the future. One can only hope.
