With the paucity of worthy viewing offerings on the tube this fall during still-another ”New Season”-mainly inhabited, it seems, by nuns, models, witches and lifeguards-I was browsing in my local video store recently for a reasonably decent movie when I came upon a bit of serendipity: several newly acquired cassettes that had sprung forth from, of all places, television.
Not just any television, however, but episodes from ”Fawlty Towers,”
that estimable series produced in the mid-`70s-only a dozen episodes were made-that has attracted one of those ”cult followings.” Written by John Cleese (of ”Monty Python” notoriety) and Connie Booth, it is one of those broad comedies that only the British seem to be able to pull off. In 1983, ABC trotted out a short-lived, Bea Arthur-starring ”Fawlty” knockoff,
”Amanda`s,” and a while back NBC served up a sitcom disaster called
”Marblehead Manor.”
Aired periodically in the past on WTTW-Ch. 11, the BBC import stars Cleese as Basil Fawlty, who, with his put-upon, canny wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), owns a rather seedy, chaotically run, 22-room seaside hotel in Torquay. Cleese doesn`t just star in the series, mind you, he takes it over, rolling through the half-hour segments like a combination Panzer tank and Zero Mostel`s rhinoceros. With Cleese, every little exasperated movement has a meaning of its own as he proceeds to make ”a complete pudding of things,”
although rarely admitting it. His is a constant battle against his spouse, staff and guests, as well as inanimate objects: ladders, wine bottles, fire extinguishers, even a moose head.
At times, ”Fawlty Towers” seems like that old Don Ameche-Frances Langford radio series, ”The Bickersons.” At one point, Basil accuses Sybil of talking to her friend so much on the phone, ”you didn`t have time to perm your ears.” At another, he yells after her, ”Have a nice day, dear. Don`t drive over any mines or anything.” Calling her ”the tyrant queen,” he tells one of his guests that her laugh sounds like ”somebody machine-gunning a seal.”
Sybil, in turn, constantly puts down Basil for what he is-a prudish, peevish, boorish, blustery, mean-spirited, apoplectic, sexist, asinine bullhead. In an episode called ”The Hotel Inspectors”-all 12 are available on video-she informs her husband that she has been working, then adds, ”You know what working is, don`t you, dear? It`s getting something done-as opposed to squabbling with the guests.”
It is quite true that when Basil isn`t licking the boots of clientele who appear even vaguely aristocratic, he is browbeating or insulting others. Standing over a table of Germans in the dining room, he compulsively keeps mentioning the war (World War II, not the Korean conflict, in which he served- in the catering corps), and then breaks into an impersonation of Hitler.
Other regular cast members include writer Booth, who appears as Polly, a part-time waitress and artist; Andrew Sachs as Manuel, the homesick Spanish waiter/porter struggling with the English language as well as a dyspeptic employer (Fawlty sarcastically calls him ”the admirable Crichton”); and Ballard Berkeley as dotty Major Gowen, a more or less permanent guest.
The comedic timing is superb, the dialogue rapid-fire and crisp. (When Basil-who despises fresh flowers in the dining room because ”they stink up the place”-asks Polly where the plastic ones are, she replies, ”Being ironed.”)
Along the way, there is plenty of sight-gag silliness, traces of vaudeville (one scene involving a patron`s ordering a cheese salad seems like an old Victor Moore sketch), endless foul-ups, errant pies, airborne grapefruit and lots of head-bashing and umbrella-thwacking.
Although the farce does get a bit out of hand sometimes, Cleese, the master of mugging, is always ready to follow it up with still-another hilarious exercise in outrageousness. A worthy antidote for prime-time pap,
”Fawlty Towers” is simply-as the British themselves would say-spiffing.