 Fawlty Towers
1 9 7 5 (UK)
1 9 7 9 (UK)
12 x 30 minute episodes
America may lay claim to inventing the sitcom, but it was the
British who elevated it to a perfected art form. Look no further
for evidence of this than the 12 near faultless episodes of Fawlty
Towers.
What a formula. Misconstrued conversations, befuddled guests
and an eternally hostile Basil Fawlty, played by the magnificently
manic John Cleese. Throw in a Spanish speaking waiter and a bit of
slapstick and you're on a winner!
Created by Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, the idea
occurred to him while on location in Torquay in 1971 for Monty Python's
Flying Circus, when an over zealous hotel owner threw Eric
Idle's briefcase into the street because he believed it contained
a bomb, and complained that American Terry Gilliam's table manners
were "too American".
With riotous interplay between Cleese and a cast headed by
Basil’s wife Sybil (with a laugh like "someone
machine-gunning a seal"), chambermaid Polly, inept
stereotypical Spanish waiter Manuel , and a number of resident
guests, the series was a huge success.
A keen worker, Manuel is eager to please but possesses a very
poor command of the English language. In the position of the dog
to be kicked following run-ins with his wife, Basil vents most of
his frustrations on Manuel, screaming at the hapless soul,
browbeating him and often physically assaulting him - "That
Sybil, me Basil, this a slap round the ear!".
Andrew Sachs portrayed Manuel as a frightened rabbit, often
flinching in Basil's presence, expecting and usually receiving
punishment for errors he was usually unaware he had
committed.
Manuel wasn't quite as stupid as Basil thought him, but the
character was thought likely to offend Spaniards, so when the
series aired in Spain he was made out to be Italian!
Basil Fawlty was a near psychopathically hyper-active,
middle-aged, stick insect caricature of a human being with
pretensions beyond both his social and moral status. He was also
breathtakingly funny, whether fawning insincerely over his upper
class guests or heaping abuse on the- 'riff-raff we get around
here'.
 In The Germans, try as he might to 'not mention the war',
eccentric Basil confirms with his German guests that their meal
order is "two eggs mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann
Goering and four Colditz salads…"
A US adaptation of Fawlty Towers, titled Snavely
(aka Chateau Snavely), transferred the Torquay hotel
setting to an off-highway hotel in middle America.
Otherwise, the characters and situation mirrored the UK
original, with Harvey Korman as the Basil-like Henry Snavely,
Betty White as his domineering wife Gladys, Frank LaLoggia as the
bellhop Petro who barely speaks English, and Deborah Zon as a
college student Connie, working as a waitress.
 ABC screened the
pilot episode on 24 June 1978 but it failed to be picked up for a
series.
In 1983, ABC reworked the concept as Amanda's which
aired from 10 February to 26 May 1983. Inexplicably Basil was now
a woman called Amanda, played by Bea Arthur (Maude) - the
formidable owner of Amanda's By The Sea, a hotel overlooking the
Pacific.
She had some of Basil's anger and frustration but the series
had none of Fawlty Towers' class. They tried adapting the series
again in 1999 with a show called Payne (surely a spelling
mistake) starring John Larroquette.
EPISODES
A Touch of Class / The Builders / The Wedding Party / The Hotel
Inspectors / Gourmet Night / The Germans Communication Problems /
The Psychiatrist / Waldorf Salad / The Kipper and the Corpse / The
Anniversary / Basil the Rat
"May I ask what you were hoping to see out of a Torquay
hotel bedroom window? . . . The Sydney Opera House Perhaps? . . .
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? . . . Herds of wildebeests
sweeping majestically across the plains? ..."
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