Fawlty Towers
First Aired in 1975
The genesis of Fawlty Towers came when John Cleese and the rest of the Pythons went filming in the Southwest of England in May 1971. They were scheduled to spend two weeks at the Gleneagles in Torquay, but cut their stay to one night. It all had to do with the "wonderfully rude" hotel manager, the late Donald Sinclair.
Sinclair hated all the guests who had the shortsightedness to stay in the Gleneagles. Worse, Sinclair was only 5'4" and was married to a large, domineering wife.
Cleese turned Sinclair into a character for a Doctor in the House script for the BBC in 1973. This was just after Cleese had finished his TV chores on Monty Python's Flying Circus. Cleese wanted to strike out with his now-separated wife, Connie Booth, so the BBC gave both the offer to do a series.
It didn't take long at all for Cleese and Booth to make the series out of that Torquay hotel, which they named Fawlty Towers. Cleese cast himself as manager Basil Fawlty, who felt that the main nuisances in a hotel were the guests. Wife Sybil Fawlty was Basil's equal and opposite, the competent co-owner who could lash out at Basil and win on the first stroke. ("We reversed the sizes [of manager and wife]," said the 6'4" Cleese.)
Rounding out the regular staff at Fawlty Towers were Andrew Sachs as Manuel, the dumb waiter from Barcelona who could not make sense of Basil's commands (¿Qué?), and Connie Booth as Polly, whose calmness was sorely tested in each of Basil's schemes and cover-ups.
While most sitcom writers spend two weeks turning out an episode, John Cleese and Connie Booth spent six weeks writing each episode of Fawlty Towers. Cleese said each program started with two or three plot threads, which start parallel, but begin to intertwine. The best shows, of course, are those in which the plot threads touch at the end.
With such intense work put into each episode, Fawlty Towers drew raves around the world, exceeding the success of Monty Python's Flying Circus in some countries. But Cleese limited the run of Fawlty Towers to approximately twelve shows. He did not want to diminish the impact Fawlty Towers has had. And there has been plenty of impact. America tried three times to regenerate the show, none of which worked. The best U.S. homage to the show may be a hotel called "Fawlty Towers" in Cocoa Beach, Florida (near Ron Jon's Surf Shop). Its owners have adopted the pseudonyms Basil and Sybil.
If you see any mistakes on this page or if you have more infomation about this show, please submit a comment
|
