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 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…"

TRIVIA NOTES
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