by Rhodri Marsden, MSN TV |  |
Fawlty Towers: Why We'll Never Better It
Thirty years after its first broadcast, classic sitcom Fawlty Towers is still loved and respected; why can't modern productions, such as My Family, live up to its legacy?
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Most of us know the twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers inside out. They've been repeated so many times that John Cleese's harrassed, bewildered expression is etched indelibly on our collective consciousness.
The resounding slap of Sybil's palm on Basil's face is as familiar a sound as our front doorbell. You could probably re-enact the entire restaurant scene from The Germans – Colditz salads and all – without having to think too hard.
But if you hear the string quartet intro music playing in the next room, it's worth sitting in front of the TV and having a refresher course. If you think it unlikely that you'll crack up after seeing Basil thrash his broken-down car with a tree branch for the thousandth time, think again. If you're drinking, you will snort your beverage up your nose laughing. And that's after 30 years. Comedy isn't supposed to age well – but in the case of Fawlty Towers, it's like a Dalmore '62 Single Highland Malt. It's the most perfect sitcom the British have ever made – and probably ever will make.
No surprise then that to help celebrate its 30th anniversary, digital channel G.O.L.D. re-opened the doors of TV's most famous hotel. Fawlty Towers: Re-opened gathered cast and crew together to retrace the history of the sitcom. The one-off special left no English Riviera stone unturned in its search for trivia and nuggets of information from the Fawlty Towers guestbook. It included in-depth interviews with John Cleese, Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales, as well as Connie Booth talking about her memories from the show for the first time in 30 years. Just don't mention the war.
In addition, Basil's Best Bits looked into the Fawlty archives to find some of the series' funniest and best-remembered clips. Reminiscing alongside the cast and crew were Fawlty fanatics and followers such as Michael Palin, Hollywood director John Landis, Frasier's John Mahoney, Terry Jones, David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Eddie Izzard, AA Gill and the owners of Gleneagles Hotel (the real-life inspiration for Fawlty Towers).
Great British TV
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A few years back, the British Film Institute conducted a poll of 1600 industry professionals who voted Fawlty Towers the greatest British television programme. It was up against a slew of dramas, documentaries, natural history programmes and children's shows. Four years later, the BBC flung a vote open to the general public, asking them what the best British sitcom was, and we inexplicably placed Fawlty Towers fifth.
What did we put ahead of Cleese & co? The cartoon-like predictability of Only Fools & Horses... The fluffily inoffensive Vicar Of Dibley... Dad's Army – a wonderful show, but whose vote was undoubtedly boosted by wistful nostalgia – and Blackadder, which had a distinctly patchy history until the stunning fourth series cemented its place in our affections. None of these shows even come close to Fawlty Towers in terms of laughs per second, misunderstandings per minute or quizzical raisings of eyebrows per half-hour.
Yeah, of course there are things that make it look slightly dated – not least the theatrical presentation which dictates that everyone on screen is often standing in a row, facing the camera. But it still has a faultless choreography: every sideways glance, every attempt to attract someone's attention, every blow about the face and neck that Manuel receives for no other reason than the fact that he's Spanish – they're all timed to perfection.
Of course, this is probably all making me sound like some 1970s derelict who has a misguided fondness for gaudy wallpaper, stiff-upper-lip Englishness and consistently awful food.
Where's Today's Fawlty Towers?
I'm not denying that, since Fawlty Towers, we haven't made fantastic sitcoms that stand up to the test of time. Yes Minister was perfectly conceived and expertly executed. Father Ted and Alan Partridge were brilliantly absurd comic characters who both provided jaw-dropping moments of inventive humour. The Royle Family and The Office showed what you can do without a laughter track: either make gorgeously sentimental comedy, or toe-curlingly excruciating comedy.
But you could pick certain episodes of any of these, and think: "Well, this one wasn't so good." And you can't do that with Basil, Sybil, Polly and Manuel. Their show was magnificently concentrated. Like neat Ribena, but not as sickly.
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Why won't we ever come up with anything as good again? Because the Americans have finely honed the art of sitcom writing to a point where it's inconceivable that we could ever catch up.
They've produced faultless episode after faultless episode of sitcoms such as Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show, written by teams of writers who pushed each other to the limit, conceiving elaborate plot twists and sharp dialogue. But when the British try to do something similar, what do we do? The limp and uninspiring My Family.
So we revert back to the one-or-two-writers format, which occasionally produces something brilliantly original, like Peep Show. But more often than not, it generates the humourless drivel of Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps – a programme that has managed to crawl its way into an eighth series, despite the fact that no-one I've ever spoken to has admitted finding it remotely amusing.
When Fawlty Towers was commissioned, the BBC's Head of Light Entertainment didn't think the scripts were funny, but reluctantly gave the go-ahead regardless. You can't imagine that happening today, where viewing figure projections are paramount, and where commercial considerations rule supreme. But thank god that a gamble was taken on a preposterous farce set in a hotel in Torquay. It's given British comedy something to be proud of for decades to come.
The views in this column/blog are those of the author alone and not of MSN or Microsoft.
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