Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers is a British television sitcom written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, originally broadcast on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979. Two series of six episodes each were made. The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a dysfunctional hotel in the English seaside town of Torquay in Devon. The plots centre on the tense, rude and put-upon owner, Basil Fawlty, his bossy wife Sybil, the sensible chambermaid Polly, and the hapless and English-challenged Spanish waiter Manuel. They show their attempts to run the hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding and eccentric guests and tradespeople.
Fawlty Towers was inspired by the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, where Cleese and the rest of the Monty Python group stayed in 1970. The snobby and eccentric owner, Donald Sinclair, was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty.
While some critics initially derided Fawlty Towers, it soon received general acclaim. In 1976 and 1980, it won the British Academy Television Award for Best Scripted Comedy. In 1980, Cleese received the British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance. The popularity of Fawlty Towers has endured and it is often re-broadcast. The show was ranked first on a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000. In a 2001 poll conducted by Channel 4, Basil Fawlty was ranked second on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters. In 2019, it was named the greatest-ever British TV sitcom by a panel of comedy experts compiled by the Radio Times. The BBC profile for the series states that "the British sitcom by which all other British sitcoms must be judged, Fawlty Towers withstands multiple viewings, is eminently quotable and stands up to this day as a jewel in the BBC's comedy crown." In 2023, Cleese suggested that a sequel series was being developed.
Origins
In May 1970, the Monty Python comedy group stayed at the now-demolished Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon, while filming on location in Paignton. John Cleese was fascinated with the behaviour of the owner, Donald Sinclair, later describing him as "the rudest man I've ever come across in my life". Among such behaviour by Sinclair was his criticism of Terry Gilliam's "too American" table etiquette and tossing Eric Idle's briefcase out of a window "in case it contained a bomb". Asked why anyone would want to bomb the hotel, Sinclair replied, "We've had a lot of staff problems." Michael Palin states that Sinclair "seemed to view us as a colossal inconvenience". Rosemary Harrison, a waitress at the Gleneagles under Sinclair, described him as "bonkers" and lacking in hospitality, deeming him wholly unsuitable for a hotel proprietor. "It was as if he didn't want the guests to be there." Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth stayed on at the hotel after filming, furthering their research of its owner. Demolished in 2015, the building was replaced by a new retirement home named Sachs Lodge in memory of Andrew Sachs who played Manuel in the sitcom and who died in 2016.Cleese was an occasional writer on the 1970s medical sitcom Doctor in the House and its follow-ons for London Weekend Television. An early prototype of the character that became known as Basil Fawlty was developed in an episode of the third Doctor series. In this episode, the main character checks into a small-town hotel, his very presence seemingly winding up the aggressive and incompetent manager with a domineering wife. The show was broadcast on 30 May 1971.
Cleese said in 2008 that the first Fawlty Towers script he and Booth wrote was rejected by the BBC. At a 30th-anniversary event honouring the show, Cleese said,
Cleese was paid £6,000 for 43 weeks of work and supplemented his income by appearing in television advertisements. He said "I have to thank the advertising industry for making this possible. Connie and I used to spend six weeks writing each episode and we didn't make a lot of money out of it. If it hadn't been for the commercials I wouldn't have been able to afford to spend so much time on the script."
Production
Although the series is set in Torquay, no part of it was shot in South West England. For the exterior filming, the Wooburn Grange Country Club in Wooburn Green, Buckinghamshire, was used instead of a hotel. In several episodes of the series, the entrance gate at the bottom of the drive states the real name of the location. This listed building later served for a short time as a nightclub named "Basil's" after the series ended, before being destroyed by a fire in March 1991. The remnants of the building were demolished and a housing estate was built on the site. Few traces of the original site exist today. Other location filming was done mostly around Harrow.Both Cleese and Booth were keen on every script being perfect, and some episodes took four months and required as many as 10 drafts until they were satisfied. Booth clarified in 2025 that Cleese was primarily responsible for the dialogue.
Cleese said that one of the reasons the series worked so well was the quality of the scripts and the care taken over the editing. He told a TV interviewer that while the average BBC half-hour comedy script had 65 pages, the ones for Fawlty Towers had between 135 and 140 pages. He said "We literally did twice as many camera cuts—average shows got 200, we used to have 400. So there was an enormous amount in there. The other thing is that they were very well constructed." Once an episode had been filmed, the editing process started. "We did anything between 20 and 25 hours editing each show. Almost every minute you see up on the screen, we spent one hour editing and it was only by doing that you could just tighten it up, just tighten it there and take out a line of dialogue, sometimes take out a repetition, they'll then lose two lines of dialogue there. That's what really got the pace on it."
The theme music was composed by Dennis Wilson. It was recorded by the Aeolian Quartet, who were asked by director John Howard Davies to perform the piece badly, although in the end they did not.
Plot directions and examples
The series focuses on the exploits and misadventures of short-fused hotelier Basil Fawlty and his acerbic wife Sybil, as well as their employees: waiter Manuel, Polly Sherman, and, in the second series, chef Terry. The episodes typically revolve around Basil's efforts to "raise the tone" of his hotel and his increasing frustration at numerous complications and mistakes, both his own and those of others, which prevent him from doing so.Much of the humour comes from Basil's overly aggressive manner, engaging in angry but witty arguments with guests, staff and, in particular, Sybil, whom he addresses with insults such as "that golfing puff adder", "my little piranha fish" and "my little nest of vipers". Despite this, Basil frequently feels intimidated, Sybil being able to cow him at any time, usually with a short, sharp cry of "Basil!" At the end of some episodes, Basil succeeds in annoying the guests and frequently gets his comeuppance.
The plots are intricate and farcical, involving coincidences, misunderstandings, cross-purposes and meetings both missed and accidental. The innuendo of the bedroom farce is sometimes present but it is his eccentricity, not his lust, that drives the plots. The events test to the breaking point what little patience Basil has, sometimes causing him to have a near breakdown by the end of the episode.
The guests at the hotel typically are comic foils to Basil's anger and outbursts. Guest characters in each episode provide different characteristics that he cannot stand. Requests both reasonable and impossible test his temper. Even the afflicted annoy him, for example in the episode "Communication Problems", revolving around the havoc caused by the frequent misunderstandings between the staff and the hard-of-hearing Mrs. Richards. Near the end, Basil pretends to faint just at the mention of her name. This episode is typical of the show's careful weaving of humorous situations through comedy cross-talk. The show also uses mild black humour at times, notably when Basil is forced to hide a dead body and in his comments about Sybil and to Mrs. Richards
Basil's physical outbursts are primarily directed at Manuel, an emotional but largely innocent Spaniard whose confused English vocabulary causes him to make elementary mistakes. At times, Basil beats Manuel with a frying pan and smacks his forehead with a spoon. The violence towards Manuel caused rare criticism of the show. Sybil and Polly, on the other hand, are more patient and understanding towards Manuel; everyone's usual excuse to guests for his behaviour is "He's from Barcelona"; Manuel even once used the excuse for himself.
Basil longs for a touch of class, sometimes playing recordings of classical music. In the first episode he is playing music by Brahms when Sybil remarks, after pestering him asking to do different tasks: "You could have them both done by now if you hadn't spent the whole morning skulking in there listening to that racket." Basil replies, with exasperation, "Racket? That's Brahms! Brahms' Third Racket!" Basil often displays blatant snobbishness as he attempts to climb the social ladder, frequently expressing disdain for the "riff-raff", "cretins" and "yobbos" that he believes regularly populate his hotel. His desperation is readily apparent as he makes increasingly hopeless manoeuvres and painful faux pas in trying to curry favour with those he perceives as having superior social status. Yet he finds himself forced to serve those individuals that are "beneath" him. Basil's efforts tend to be counter-productive, with guests leaving the hotel in disgust and his marriage stretching to breaking point.
Characters
Basil Fawlty
, played by John Cleese, is a cynical and snobbish misanthrope who is desperate to belong to a higher social class. He sees a successful hotel as a means of achieving this, yet his job forces him to be polite to people he despises.He is intimidated by his wife Sybil Fawlty. He yearns to stand up to her, but his plans frequently conflict with her demands. She is often verbally abusive but although he towers over her, he often finds himself on the receiving end of her temper, verbally and physically, and it is only on one occasion when Sybil mistakenly believes he is stalking an attractive Australian guest that he finally snaps and stands up to her.
Basil usually turns to Manuel or Polly to help him with his schemes, while trying his best to keep Sybil from discovering them. However, Basil occasionally laments the time when there was passion in their relationship, now seemingly lost. Also, it appears he still does care for her and remains loyal to her, and actively resists the flirtations of a French guest in one episode. The penultimate episode, "The Anniversary", is about his efforts to put together a surprise anniversary party involving their closest friends. Things go wrong as Basil pretends the anniversary date does not remind him of anything though he pretends to have a stab at it by reeling off a list of random anniversaries, starting with the Battle of Agincourt, for which he receives a slap from Sybil, who becomes increasingly frustrated and angry. He continues guessing even after Sybil is out of earshot, and mentions other anniversaries, including the Battle of Trafalgar and Yom Kippur, just to enhance the surprise. Sybil believes he really has forgotten, and leaves in a huff. In an interview in the DVD box set, Cleese claims this episode deliberately takes a slightly different tone from the others, fleshing out their otherwise inexplicable status as a couple.
In keeping with the lack of explanation about the marriage, not much is revealed of the characters' back-stories. It is known that Basil served in the British Army and saw action in the Korean War, possibly as part of his National Service. Basil exaggerates this period of his life, proclaiming to strangers, "I killed four men." To this Sybil jokes that "He was in the Catering Corps—he used to poison them." Basil is often seen wearing regimental and old-boy style ties, perhaps spuriously, one of which is in the colours of the Army Catering Corps. He also claims to have sustained a shrapnel injury to his leg; it tends to flare up at suspiciously convenient times. The only person towards whom Basil generally exhibits tolerance and good manners is the old and senile Major Gowen, a permanent resident at the hotel who is a veteran of one of the world wars. When interacting with Manuel, Basil displays a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish ; this knowledge is also ridiculed, as in the first episode in which a guest, whom Basil has immediately dismissed as working-class, communicates fluently with Manuel in Spanish after Basil is unable to do so.
Cleese described Basil as thinking that "he could run a first-rate hotel if he didn't have all the guests getting in the way" and as being "an absolutely awful human being" but says that in comedy if an awful person makes people laugh they unaccountably feel affectionate towards him. Indeed, he is not entirely unsympathetic. The "Hotel Inspectors" and "Communication Problems" episodes feature guests who are shown to be deeply annoying, with constant and unreasonable demands. In "Gourmet Night" the chef gets drunk and is unable to cook dinner, leaving Basil to scramble in an attempt to salvage the evening. Much of the time, Basil is an unfortunate victim of circumstances.