Don't go to this Hotel expecting Great Service... or even mediocre Service!

After Monty Python, John Cleese, along with his wife at the time, Connie Booth, created and wrote twelve episodes of a series called Fawlty Towers. The show was about Basil (Cleese), the owner of a quaint hotel in the English countryside. Basil was a cheap, rude and snobby owner, who wasted no time in being cruel to his unconcerned and easy-going wife, Sybil, the maid Polly (played by Booth), his guests, and most especially the immigrant Manuel, who did both bellboy and waiter duties at the hotel. This series was recently re-released on home video, and each of the four tapes includes bits of a lengthy interview with John Cleese in which he talks about his career, the generalities of this series, and each individual episode.

This series, unlike Monty Python, which was sketch comedy, is structured as a fairly typical sitcom. In fact, I wonder if perhaps a lot of the reason for its fame is because it was devised and starred John Cleese, because certainly, if it weren’t, the show probably wouldn’t get as much acclaim as it has. The show is a standard farce; being such, it is very hit-and-miss. Some of the material is amusing; the rest is often clichéd and tired. Or, maybe it’s because I can’t withstand six hours of sustained craziness. I imagine Cleese and company were mighty exhausted at the end; certainly I was!

The stuff that I liked the most from the show was the verbal content; the nasty jabs that Basil gave to everybody unlucky enough to get in his way. Even the portions that would normally be seen as cruel were often very funny. Some of this may be offensive, especially Basil’s treatment of Manuel (Basil even calls him a “dago”, a word more fit for Archie Bunker’s mouth, and Manuel himself is not exactly depicted with politically correct sensibilities), but Basil’s comments to him are so mean that they become very funny (one moment where Basil makes a naturally confused Manuel look really stupid: “That’s Basil’s wife, this is Basil, this is a slap on the head.” Slap! ). The relationship between Basil and Sybil is also pretty funny, in the long tradition of horrible marital mismatches (like Archie and Edith, for instance), but in this case, Sybil is a reasonably sensible person, and really, absolutely, doesn’t give a damn about anything he says. Basil is more a nuisance than a monster to her, and Basil ends up making himself look stupid even as he says the most appalling things behind her back.

The bad stuff is when the show just gets too stupid for words; when it overuses the typical comic clichés. Many of the episodes use such things as mistaken identity, misunderstandings, or what Roger Ebert would call the Idiot Plot, in which the plot can only exist because one person fails to say what a reasonable person would say. One major example of this is when Basil actually attempts to throw a surprise anniversary party for Sybil. Sybil naturally assumes that his act of forgetfulness is just typical of this insensitive jerk, and so storms off in anger for the day. Basil is left attempting to explain where Sybil is, but of course, he has to save face, so he tries to convince everyone that she is sick in her room, and can’t be bothered. Of course, lie upon lie is said, until Basil forces Polly to dress up as Sybil and lie sick in bed for the curious guests! While some of the crazy situations are funny, sometimes they just go on and on and on, and I more often than not cringe rather than laugh. I’m not sure if I’m embarrassed or if I’m just ticked off, or what, but sometimes this overuse of farce is too much.

The show is shot in the classic 1970’s style -- shot on videotape, with cheap sets, and in front of a live, as opposed to canned, audience, exactly how a sitcom ought to be presented. Unfortunately, this show doesn’t bring in me the same sorts of feelings I got with shows like All in the Family, Maude, or Barney Miller, shows which were more than just sitcoms, but shows with good writing, important subjects, and good actors. I guess I shouldn’t really make such a comparison; Fawlty Towers isn’t meant to be serious, unlike those other shows, which were edgy and atypical to begin with. But then again, I like shows like WKRP in Cincinnati, and Newhart, which are certainly not “serious” or “important”, but are still funnier and complex than anything in Fawlty Towers. All these shows I’ve mentioned, however, are more about character than slapstick, and people are certainly more interesting and rich than a couple of overused concepts of farce.

But then again, maybe this is the type of show that works better when you have more than one viewer, that is, yourself. Certain sorts of comedy work best in a crowd, apparently; last night, I was with a few people who watched Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, and while I wasn’t laughing non-stop, I enjoyed myself far more than I did watch Fawlty Towers all by myself (I also must admit I was enjoying myself during Scary Movie 2 (!) that same night). Maybe if I were to have watched the adventures of Basil Fawlty in a room with others, I might have found it much more funnier.