Dated or Delightful? 'Fawlty Towers'
For this installment of Dated or Delightful I went back to 1975 to re-watch a famous farcical sitcom about an ill-tempered hotelier and his overbearing wife. Throughout the twelve episode binge, my main goal was to ascertain whether Fawlty Towers was still funny and relevant four decades later.
Inspired by an unhospitable stay in Torquay, John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth modeled legendary British curmudgeon Basil Fawlty after Gleneagles Hotel owner Donald Sinclair who Cleese later described as “the rudest man I've ever come across in my life.” After a shaky start getting commissioned by the BBC, Fawlty Towers has since found itself at or the near the top of a number of Best Comedy polls and lists garnering admiration and affection around the world.
If you aren’t familiar with this British comedy classic, however, the gist is that a constantly squabbling married couple named Basil (Cleese) and Sybil Fawlty (Prunella Scales) own and operate a hotel in an English resort town. Sybil fancies herself the people person while Basil, who is constantly trying to raise the tone of his clientele, is simultaneously the frantic yet begrudging jack of all trades. Along with their skeleton crew of porter/waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs) and waitress/reception/maid Polly (Booth), the staff at Fawlty Towers faces constant mayhem and misadventures which usually ends with Basil getting his just desserts for all his effort.
As for my assessment, I found that while the surface elements had a drab and dated look, the more important components of the show were still fresh.
Fawlty Towers’ comedy comes from a place of confusion. Coincidences, misunderstandings and crossed wires abound which is still an integral part of sitcoms to this day.
