Fawlty Towers

It’s been a long time since I did a long belly laugh. It’s so nice to sit back with your kids and have uncontrollable fits of laughter. We watched a rented DVD of the first series of Fawlty Towers and it just reduced us to almost non stop laughter. This old 1975 British sitcom really is one of my all-time favourites. Despite having only 2 series with 6 episodes each, this comedy has won many awards and is often being replayed in the BBC and all around the world.

Besides the great writing team of John Cleese and Connie Booth, the ensemble acting is superb starting with rude, arrogant, hypocritical, social climbing, incompetent, loony Basil Fawlty marvelously played by John Cleese. Sybil Fawlty, the irascible wife of Basil is performed by Prunella Scales. Polly the maid and all around assistant was played by Coonie Booth and poor Manuel (from Barcelona) the Spanish waiter who’s the frequent subject of Basil’s physical abuse is ably played by Andrew Sachs.

I really love it when Basil’s hysteria rises to a crescendo and either he collapses or does something really funnily stupid like thrashing his Morris Minor car, or screaming down the phone. In a way I think I see myself in Basil, there are times before when I can be seen reprimanding a pet cat/dog or really scolding a faulty appliance. Sometimes I talk to my electric fan or hair dryer – hahaha!! That is true. One thing I also like about not only this one but most British comedy is that they are so politically incorrect.

This series is apparently inspired by a real ‘Basil’ in the form of Mr. Sinclair of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Cornwall. Mr. Sinclair’s idea was that hotels and hotel management is good and wonderful except for the guests. It seems the cast and crew of the Monty Python show was shooting on location and so most of them were billeted at Gleneagles. All of them took exception to Mr. Sinclair’s rudeness that they moved to other hotels except for Cleese and Booth who was fascinated by the former’s “wonderful rudeness”. And so a series was born.

I can’t wait to see the second series I rented which I’m expecting through the post. We’ll have another belly laugh night by then.

Some of Fawlty Tower’s funny quotes:

Basil: “Yes my little piranha?” - answering Sybil’s call.
----------------------
Basil: “Manuel, there’s too much butter on those trays.”
Manuel: “No no no, senor.” (slowly) “Uno, dos, tres.”
----------------------
Nurse tucks in Basil, gets close to him.
Basil: “My god, you are ugly.”
Nurse: (taken aback) “I will call the doctor.”
Basil: “You don’t need a doctor, you need a plastic surgeon.”
----------------------
On realising the new guests speaking to him in German:
Basil: “Oh German! I thought there was something wrong with you.”