‘Fawlty Towers’ set to re-open as a boutique hotel

THE classic British sitcom Fawlty Towers is being revived and developed by Castle Rock Television with original series co-writer and star John Cleese and his daughter Camilla Cleese set to write and star. Filmmaker Rob Reiner, Michele Reiner, Matthew George,  and Derrick Rossi will executive produce the series. According to early reports, the new FT will explore how the over-the-top, cynical […]

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‘Hotel Boss’ sets out to find the next Basil Fawlty

Just when you thought it might be safe to go back into the water, along comes something that gives you pause to where you might say to yourself….maybe not just yet. In this case, we’re talking the bane of good telly existence, the unscripted reality program. The surprising thing, IMHO, is that with a working […]

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RIP — Bernard Cribbins O.B.E. — “….he was in one episode of Fawlty Towers” **

Bernard Cribbins, the rather fussy spoon salesman mistaken for a hotel inspector in one episode of Fawlty Towers, has died at the age of 93. **In spite of a brilliant seven decade plus career, Cribbins will be forever known as ‘being in the “Hotel Inspectors” episode of Fawlty Towers, which is a testament to the greatness of perhaps the best British comedy of all time but speaks more to Cribbins’ brilliant ability to make even a relatively minor role such as Mr. Hutchinson in one episode of Fawlty Towers so memorable.

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Sans ‘Fawlty Towers’, Torquay named the 9th worst place to live in the U.K.

Based around an exceedingly chaotic and poorly run seaside hotel in Torquay, Fawlty Towers has not only provided laughter to British comedy fans worldwide for the better part of four decades, it is widely considered to be the best British comedy of all-time. Unfortunately, sans Fawlty Towers, the same cannot be said for the Devonshire seaside town of Torquay where the sitcom was based, which now has the coveted distinction of being named one of the worst places to live in the UK, actually #9 on the list.

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‘Fawlty Towers’ and Vinyl = ‘Fawlty Towers: For the Record’

Easily the funniest comedy of all-time, the 12 episodes (yes, there were only 12) of Fawlty Towers are nothing short of comedy perfection comprised of brilliant line after brilliant line and unmatched to this day, some 45+ years after its premiere in 1975.  Not only is it a masterclass of comedy writing and performance, the series […]

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Happy belated 45th, ‘Fawlty Towers’!

On Saturday, as Planet Earth quietly celebrated the 45th anniversary of Fawlty Towers, series co-creator/co-writer John Cleese posed a question on Twitter to which the ability to come up with an answer is next to impossible, if not impossible. Easily the funniest comedy of all-time, the 12 episodes (yes, there were only 12) are wall-to-wall […]

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Did the German version of Fawlty Towers ever ‘mention the war’?

As we celebrated the 41st anniversary this past week of Fawlty Towers, I thought it would fun to take a look back at how the greatest situation comedy of all-time made the leap to German broadcaster RTL. The first ever non-English adaptation of the John Cleese/Connie Booth bit of brilliance occurred in 2001 with a pilot set […]

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At 41, ‘Fawlty Towers’ is still the greatest sitcom of all-time

September 19, 1975 — a day that will live on in history as the day one of the most brilliant situation comedies of all-time debuted on the BBC. Born out of a seemingly uneventful trip to the Torquay Gleneagles Hotel by the original members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers is comedy greatness that has not seen its […]

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John Cleese's Romance with a Double Bass

Nearly 40 years ago, in 1974, in the early post-Monty Python’s Flying Circus era, a charming little one-off special, Romance with a Double Bass was written by John Cleese, Connie Booth and Bill Owen. Unfortunately, it is light years apart from the previous Cleese/Booth collaboration of Fawlty Towers opting for a steady diet of physical […]

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Fawlty Towers Revisited migrates to Tellyspotting

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 […]

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