The Psychiatrist

I like the bit where he said he had sex three or four times a week

The best episode in the best series of the best sitcom ever put on TV. The Germans may be the most famous but as brilliant as it is, The Psychiatrist surpasses it. It's better written and produced with 4 years to perfect episodes and get them even tighter and funnier than series 1. There is so much going on in this great episode it makes me dizzy still.

Pure farce as busy as it comes with cripplingly funny scene after scene, it is relentlessly funny from start to finish with hardly a wasted line. Inspired with possibly even a hint that Cleese himself was in need of psychiatric assessment. Everything ties together make the funniest half hour of comedy I've ever witnessed. A classical lesson of what can be achieved in a half hour sitcom if you really try. But you probably need a genius at the helm to do it.

The Psychiatrist must be one of the best episodes from Fawlty Towers, and in turn one of the funniest comedies ever made. The sheer quality of this episode is phenomenal, the script is sublime, and the physical humour, genuinely off the scale.

The content is so rich, it goes beyond being purely farce, we are treated to mistaken identity, half heard conversations, and misunderstandings, everything going on in that Hotel seems destined to cause mayhem for poor Basil.

Once again there are too many side splitting moments to mention, but for me, the two best scenes feature the Doctors. The initial moment where Basil meets them, Three Doctors, and the second being where poor Basil misunderstands the conversation about holidays.

Why can't comedies be this funny. 10/10

I agree with the reviews of both Jellybeansucker & Theo Robertson. This is not only the very best of the 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers, it is the funniest half hour of comedy that has ever been written, in my opinion. John Cleese & Connie Booth packed so much into it that it is really quite incredible. A married couple of doctors (the Abbotts) check in to the hotel & Basil Fawlty does his his usual fawning routine, that is until he finds out that the male doctor (played by Basil Henson) is a psychiatrist. This knowledge turns Basil into a nervous wreck suggesting that he is in dire need of help from Dr. Abbott himself!. A handsome & personable playboy type of young man (Mr. Johnson played by Nicky Henson) also checks in. Basil's wife Sybil takes a shine to him & tries chatting him up. He is wearing a shirt with the buttons undone flashing his hairy chest & the medallion he is wearing. Basil takes an instant dislike to him & suggests he is an ape calling him a "Piltdown ponce". Basil gets wind of the fact Mr. Johnson has also smuggled a girl into his room & becomes obsessed with trying to catch her. A beautiful young Australian lady called Raylene also checks in to the hotel. When she bends down to sign the register she flashes her ample cleavage & Basil can hardly divert his gaze away. She is played by Luan Peters & whilst trying to prove that Mr. Johnson has indeed smuggled a girl in he inadvertently ends up in Raylene's room. Sybil naturally gets the wrong idea & thinks he is infatuated with the beautiful Aussie lady. To fully appreciate this utterly hilarious episode of Fawlty Towers it simply has to be seen because anything I write can hardly do it justice. It is just the most fabulous piece of situation comedy I have ever seen. 10/10 with five gold stars!!!.

I wouldn't say that The Psychiatrist has got the strongest of plots, but it doesn't matter much because there are so many great jokes and brilliant moments of physical humour that the story-line itself is of little consequence. On gags alone, this is one of the best.

For what it's worth, the episode sees hotel owner Basil in serious fawning mode when a married couple, both doctors, book a room; when he's not being obsequious, he's trying to catch another guest, ladies' man Mr. Richards (Nicky Henson), with a woman in his room after hours. The introduction of another customer, sexy Australian Raylene Miles, only adds to Basil's problems, as he seemingly cannot avoid being caught by Sybil in compromising situations with the Antipodean babe.

Best moments: Basil mistakenly looking in the wrong window while up a ladder, and Basil reaching round a doorway to find a light switch only to grab Miss Miles' breast.