Check Into Fawlty Towers If You Dare

John Cleese is a funny, funny man. I say that after having spent the last couple of months watching all 12 episodes of the hilarious British sitcom Fawlty Towers. My husband and I doled them out like rare chocolates, enjoying each one as the mood struck and not necessarily rushing on to another one very quickly.

Cleese co-wrote and co-starred in this deliciously weird and funny sitcom back in the 1970s. The 12 episodes were originally broadcast in two series on the BBC, the first in 1975 and the second in 1979. The DVD "Complete Set" contains all 12 original episodes plus some fun and informative extra features, including interviews with John Cleese, Prunella Scales, and a few -- though not quite enough in my humble estimation -- very funny outtakes.

Cleese stars as Basil Fawlty, the owner of a hotel in Torquay, located in the southwestern part of England. He's completely neurotic and high-strung, a terrible combination for the manager of a hotel who must put up with the aggravations of demanding patrons as well as supervising a staff. The staff consists of Basil's wife Sybil (Prunella Scales); Polly, an art student who manages the front desk, cleans room and does whatever else is needed (Connie Booth); and Manuel, a bell-hop/gofer from Barcelona, who never learns to speak or understand proper English (Andrew Sachs).

It's Basil's interactions with these three, along with a few other hotel and series regulars, that keep the show moving through some truly zany plots. The plots usually center around the hotel guests. Basil's attitudes toward the guests vary according to his own manic moods and according to his sense of how "important" they are. He admires wealthy people and anyone smacking of even minor nobility, so he tends to fawn on anyone who he thinks might fit that bill, sometimes with very funny results. On the other hand, he has a bizarre sense of moral outrage regarding any behavior he considers crass or lower-class, and he'll go to terrific lengths to uncover such behavior. Of course, he's the one who always ends up looking ridiculous.

His wife Sybil is a tiny woman who nonetheless rules him like a tyrant. The fact that he's afraid of her ruthless tongue-lashings is comic in part because he towers over her. But where's she calm, cool and efficient, he's bumbling, nervous and inept. Little love is lost between the two and they argue almost constantly.

Don't Mind Him...He's From Barcelona

Polly is far more long-suffering. She may not always like Mr. Fawlty, but she tries to be a good employee, and she seems to feel at least some sympathy for how overwhelmed he can get. She often becomes unwittingly involved in his various schemes and cover-ups. She's also a good friend to Manuel, the very long-suffering and rather endearing bell-hop from Barcelona. Poor Manuel does look up to Mr. Fawlty, though it can be hard to see why since he suffers so much abuse at his hands. Cleese's trademark physical comedy, especially his windmill arms and stork legs, gets highlighted in many of the scenes between Basil and Manuel. The "violence" looks very slapstick-ish in a three stooges kind of way.

All of these ingredients add up to madcap mayhem in every episode. The show is paced almost frantically, deriving its energy from Cleese, but it never seems completely out of control. That's because the witty writing is so well-scripted and the plots, though zany, actually written quite tightly. Cleese co-wrote the scripts with Connie Booth, who was also (at the time they filmed the show) his real-life wife.

On the Cleese interview included in the DVD extras, a much older and calmer Cleese looks back and speaks lovingly of their creative collaboration and how hard they worked and reworked their scripts. He also admits that they crammed in a ton of dialog, about twice as much as most shows their length (each episode runs about a half-hour). He says they also chose to basically ignore the studio audience, in terms of not worrying if audience laughter stepped on a next line, etc., in favor of playing it all at a faster pace that the television audience could keep up with.

Fawlty Towers' brand of humor is not for everyone. It's even not for me all the time...but when I'm in the right mood (a bit overtired and silly) it can feel spot on and truly make me laugh. The acting is excellent and the situations much more over-the-top than most of the bland, trite situations that pass for comedy these days, at least in the U.S. I love that Cleese is willing to take a joke just as far as it can go, stretching out a situation or repeating a gag more times than might seem called for.

Once in a while, the show "misses" or takes things just a little too far, but that's rare. Whether it's something as small as Basil being constantly interrupted while he tries to hang a picture, or something as bizarre as Basil and the staff trying to smuggle out the body of a hotel guest who died overnight ("The Kipper and the Corpse") the gags are superbly played. Basil is never nice; he can in fact be downright rude, but it's impossible to take him seriously. I think my favorite scenes almost always take place in the dining room! Cultural conflicts also make for some of the best gaffes, whether we're watching Basil (who just suffered a concussion) offending German customers about WWII ("The Germans") or freaking out when the cook takes a night off and he finds himself needing to make some American guests a dish he's never heard of ("Waldorf Salad"). The cook always seems to get Basil in trouble. In "Gourmet Night," Basil desperately wants to impress some of the guests with the hotel restaurant's delicious duck, only to find the chef drunk and the dinner burned to a crisp. Then there's "Basil the Rat," a marvelous episode where Manuel's pet rat gets loose on the day the health inspector makes his visit to the hotel. The antics that go on as they try to catch the rat -- and oh yes, try to make sure that the inspector isn't served rat poisoned veal -- are hysterical, in a "you have to see this to appreciate it" kind of way!

In general, I think that's just true of Fawlty Towers. Of course I recommend it, but you need to see it for yourself to judge whether or not its really to your taste. It was ground-breaking and hugely popular in England and has influenced many comedic actors and writers for over thirty years now. But it's hard to capture its flavor and even harder to know whether or not someone might actually enjoy it. If you've enjoyed Cleese's work in Monty Python or in films, likely you'll appreciate the show. So if you find yourself in need of a good laugh, check into Fawlty Towers if you dare! Just duck into the kitchen and hide if you see Basil coming. No doubt he's in a towering temper.

~befus, 2008