New Fawlty Towers is doomed to failure – bitter old John Cleese hasn’t been funny since the 80s and PC mob will ruin it
FOR 44 years, the duck was well and truly off. But now Fawlty Towers is set to return to our screens.
While this has made many ask “Que?”, there’s others that are doing the funny walk in glee at the idea of John Cleese’s hysterical hotelier being back behind the front desk.
Here, our TV experts answer whether the reboot - co-written by John's daughter Camilla Cleese - is a good idea, and we see what happened to the original crew.
So grab a Waldorf salad and enjoy. Just don’t mention the war.
No, says Ally Ross, Sun TV Critic
REMEMBER the 2016 reboot of Porridge with Kevin Bishop as Fletch? Hopefully not.
It was written by the geniuses behind the original, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, but in all other respects bore about as much resemblance to the original as Prisoner: Cell Block H.
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After one painful run, it was rightly consigned to history, but it felt like a terrible insult to the memory of one of our greatest ever sitcoms.
That’s why my heart sank with the news that John Cleese is resurrecting Fawlty Towers, a show which achieved immortality with just two 1970s series and 12 of the most perfectly crafted sitcom episodes you may ever have the privilege of watching.
For all eternity, it should’ve sat with a “do not touch” sign in TV heaven.
According to reports, though, Cleese will now reprise his most famous role, with Basil running a boutique hotel alongside his real-life “comedian” daughter, Camilla, and has promised the new scripts are: “Excellent.”
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Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he.
But, while it’s bound to start a bidding war between the likes of Netflix and Amazon, rebooting a show as admired as Fawlty Towers is doomed to failure for many reasons.
The first, unfortunately, is Cleese’s age.
He’s 83 and hasn’t been funny since 1988’s A Fish Called Wanda.
For not only do your comedy and writing powers diminish at this vintage, so do your physical ones, which is a real handicap for a slapstick character like Basil who isn’t going to be goose-stepping past a table of German diners any time soon.
Another, even more obvious, reason is the curse of the woke revolution.
Cleese has said he would never work with the BBC again, but the pox of political correctness is no longer confined to our state broadcaster.
The fun police may be small in number and almost entirely anon-ymous (no one boasts about being the person who invented woke pronouns) but they now have a foothold in every organisation in the Western world.
The fun police
Their livelihoods and egos depend on being offended and ruining everyone else’s fun.
They’ve been incredibly effective at it as well, to the point that the last genuinely laugh-out-loud sitcom British television produced was The Thick Of It, which ran from 2005-2012.
Even though Basil was mocking, rather than celebrating, little-Englander prejudices in the original Fawlty Towers, the subtle differences would’ve been overlooked by the fun police who would’ve drawn a thick red pen through Manuel the Spanish waiter, the Irish builder, the German guests, everything the Major said and anything else that might’ve raised a laugh, until there was nothing left that merited the description “comedy”.
Even in his brilliant pomp, Cleese could not have found a way round the cult of woke.
Now, in his surprisingly bitter old age, a wasteful amount of which he’s devoted to paying off ex-wives and hating the Press, he has no chance of pulling off a miracle and making Fawlty Towers funny again.
And I’m baffled to explain why he’d bother trying, because the best ever description I heard of Fawlty Towers came from US comedian Greg Proops: “British people think Fawlty Towers a comedy. Americans know it’s a documentary.”
He couldn’t have been more right.
In one character, Cleese managed to sum up an entire nation tormented by its class prejudices, insecurities, self-loathing and psychologically ill-suited to working in the service industry.
That’s why Basil struck such a chord with us all.
A judgment that’s as true now as ever, as I discovered in a hotel, just last month, when I politely asked the waiter for a second beer.
A request which made him stiffen with revulsion as he marched away.
Five minutes later he plonked the drink aggressively and barked: “And another one.”
It was incredibly rude, but I could’ve hugged him all the same.
Bring back Basil Fawlty? Why? He never went away.
Yes, says Rod McPhee, Sun TV Editor
IF something was brilliant once, why wouldn’t you do it again?
Cynics will come up with a string of reasons.
They’ll claim greedy, unimaginative execs are desperately exhuming an old show and dressing up the corpse to make it look like it’s still got life left in it.
But those doubtful about a fresh serving of Fawlty Towers are forgetting all the occasions when TV shows had a second coming and were wonderful.
There are more examples out there than you think.
Open All Hours, starring Ronnie Barker and Sir David Jason, ran from 1976 to 1985 and was among the pantheon of great sitcoms which everyone thought was untouchable.
Then in 2013, writer Roy Clarke dusted off his pen and gave us Still Open All Hours, featuring Sir David once more, alongside a cluster of new actors and characters.
And it didn’t just work, it worked for another six series — that’s more than the original ran for.
Similarly, after its main run from 1981-1991, Only Fools And Horses was viewed as a masterpiece that should be preserved like a museum piece.
Then creator John Sullivan worked his magic again on a series of Christmas specials right up until 2003.
Bloody-minded Cleese
It was the same story with ITV drama Cold Feet, which was a huge hit between 1997 and 2003, and then came back in 2016 to enjoy four more series.
And don’t forget that epic Gavin & Stacey Christmas special in 2019, which was loved by the 11milloin who watched it.
It came after the sitcom had been off our screens for almost a decade.
Nobody is arguing that the second outings were quite the same — but would the TV world be better off for these encores not happening?
Is the memory of their first outing really sullied by their second, even if their second turns out to be a turkey?
Of course not.
What’s crucial is that the shows get the original writers and cast involved in their comeback.
And that’s what’s happening with the new Fawlty Towers.
If anyone other than John Cleese was playing hellish Basil or masterminding its creation, we should be worried.
But it will be the same man who made our sides split, eyes roll and toes curl all those decades ago.
If anything, since the show ended in 1979, bloody-minded Cleese has become more like the character he created.
It’s hard to know where the comic ends and Basil begins.
Which is why a comeback for Fawlty Towers might not be just as good as the first time round, it might actually be better.
Where are they now?
PRUNELLA SCALES (Sybil Fawlty): After playing Basil’s long-suffering wife, Prunella, 90, appeared in films including The Hound Of The Baskervilles.
She is married to actor Timothy West, and together the pair presented C4’s Great Canal Journeys for ten series. In 2014 she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
CONNIE BOOTH (Polly Sherman): American Connie, 82, co-wrote Fawlty Towers with then-husband John.
She quit acting in 1995 and became a psychotherapist.
ANDREW SACHS (Manuel): After his turn as the clumsy Spanish waiter, Andrew, who died in 2016 aged 86, played Ramsay Clegg in Coronation Street in 2009.
In 2008, he was the subject of a prank by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, in which they left voicemails stating that Brand had had sex with his granddaughter.
BRIAN HALL (Terry Hughes): Playing easy-going Terry the chef was a change for Brian, who often played hardmen roles and appeared in hit TV series, including Terry And June, Minder and Bergerac.
Brian was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1994 and died from the disease in 1997, aged 59.
BALLARD BERKELEY (The Major): The actor, who died in 1988 aged 83, had roles in series To The Manor Born, Terry And June and Fresh Fields.
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As Major Gowen in Fawlty Towers, his “racist” jokes have led to some of his appearances being edited out from re-runs.
However, John Cleese has defended the jokes, saying: “The Major was an old fossil left over from decades before. We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them.”
