Fawlty Towers

Fawlty Towers is a British television sitcom written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, originally broadcast on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979. Two series of six episodes each were made. The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a dysfunctional hotel in the English seaside town of Torquay in Devon. The plots centre on the tense, rude and put-upon owner, Basil Fawlty (Cleese), his bossy wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), the sensible chambermaid Polly (Booth), and the hapless and English-challenged Spanish waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs). They show their attempts to run the hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding and eccentric guests and tradespeople.

Fawlty Towers was inspired by the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, where Cleese and the rest of the Monty Python group stayed in 1970. The snobby and eccentric owner, Donald Sinclair, was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty.

While some critics initially derided Fawlty Towers, it soon received general acclaim. In 1976 and 1980, it won the British Academy Television Award for Best Scripted Comedy. In 1980, Cleese received the British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance. The popularity of Fawlty Towers has endured and it is often re-broadcast. The show was ranked first on a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000. In a 2001 poll conducted by Channel 4, Basil Fawlty was ranked second (to Homer Simpson) on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters. In 2019, it was named the greatest-ever British TV sitcom by a panel of comedy experts compiled by the Radio Times. The BBC profile for the series states that "the British sitcom by which all other British sitcoms must be judged, Fawlty Towers withstands multiple viewings, is eminently quotable ('don't mention the war') and stands up to this day as a jewel in the BBC's comedy crown."