Back in 2005, several of us had the good fortune of producing a special for PBS to celebrate the 30th anniversary of, perhaps, the greatest British comedy of all-time, Fawlty Towers. Hosted by Andrew Sachs, who brilliantly played Manuel, Fawlty Towers Revisited was both an unbelievable joy and a daunting challenge to produce. The daunting challenge? Creating a documentary interview/clip show about brilliance and interviewing the likes of John Cleese, Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs. The unbelievable joy was getting to spend quality time with the likes of Andrew Sachs, the late John Howard Davies, who produced and directed the first series, Bernard Cribbens, Luan Peters, Nicky Henson and the late Bob Spiers, who directed the second series. Biggest disappointment? Easy. Not getting to interview Connie Booth, who co-wrote Fawlty Towers with, then husband, John Cleese.

It’s hard to believe that in 2005, it was the early days of blogging on the Internet. Not sure the word ‘blog’ officially existed yet but we created a companion site to the show in an attempt to share our experiences as we went along with photos, articles and even a early-day podcast with author Lars Holger Holm, who swore there was a never-before-broadcast 13th episode of Fawlty Towers. After reading his account of the episode in Fawlty Towers – A Worshiper’s Companion, I think we were all convinced that indeed such an episode existed somewhere deep in the bowels of Television Centre.

Producer/Director, John Howard Davies on filming Fawlty Towers
 

 
We have now migrated the original content of the Fawlty Towers Revisited site over to Tellyspotting so you can enjoy photos from the interview shoots, enjoy episode by episode suggested recipes for your FT watching parties, listen to the podcast and determine for yourself if there is a 13th episode floating around, understand just why Fawlty Towers is perfection from a scientific perspective and much more.

For all Fawlty Towers Revisited content, Tellyspotting has all 24 FT-related posts housed in the archive section under Categories on the right side of the homepage. Hope you enjoy reading about it and seeing the photos as much as we did making it.

In: Comedy

Related posts:

Fawlty Towers Revisited? Andrew Sachs dies at age 86 – R.I.P. Manuel from ‘Fawlty Towers’ Connie Booth checks out of Fawlty Towers – for good