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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Friday Funny — DYI with Basil Fawlty and Mr. O’Reilly

With a majority of Planet Earth still in some form of lockdown or, at least, a sheltering-at-home mode, many people are turning to a variety of different DIY projects to stay busy, remain sane or just pass the time in-between the seemingly endless number of Zoom calls that populate the daylight hours. For today’s Friday Funny […]

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Social distancing — The Torbay way! 2 metres = 1 Basil Fawlty!

If our new normal of social distancing still has you confused as to what actually constitutes a ‘safe social distance’, consider this from one, John Cleese, with the ultimate in visual explanations for those thick of mind, courtesy of the Torbay Council. Going forward if I see you too close to one another I shall […]

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R.I.P. Nicky Henson; From ‘Fawlty Towers’ to ‘Downton Abbey’ and everything in-between.

Unfortunately, these posts are getting way too frequent and are hitting too close to home as they involve friends that we’ve made over the years. This time, with great sadness, we report that our friend Nicky Henson, passed away Monday at the age of 74. One of the absolute nicest individuals on the planet, Nicky used to tell us that even after all the theater, stage and film work he has been a part of in over 50 years of professional acting, he expected to see on his tombstone “Here lies Nicky Henson – he was in one episode of Fawlty Towers”.

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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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And Now for Something Completely Different — Fawlty Towers, Down Under

Fawlty Towers, the quintessential British sitcom and, perhaps, the best all-around television sitcom of all-time, is headed down under courtesy of series co-creator/writer, John Cleese. Uneasy about the reception the show might get from UK audiences and critics, more than 40 years after the original was aired on the BBC, Cleese has chosen an all-Australian cast for the […]

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Basil Fawlty earns an “A” in the Science of Great Comedy

Fawlty Towers has to be the greatest 12 episodes of comedy ever. The UK version of The Office is a close second (much better, I think, than the American version, but that’s a debate for another day). In 2000, the British Film Institute selected Fawlty Towers as the best British television show. After a year-long poll looking for Britain’s Best Sitcom, the BBC […]

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Basil Fawlty enters the 21st century with tree branch in hand!

It has been (gulp!) just over four decades now since John Cleese (a.k.a. Basil Fawlty) last gave an automobile a ‘damn good thrashing’ for not starting. It was a cold October night in 1975 when Basil, in yet another attempt to climb the Torquay social ladder, left his friend Andres’ restaurant with duck in hand during […]

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1979 – The year ‘Fawlty Towers’ crossed paths with ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’

Not the Nine O’Clock News, the late 70s/early 80s television sketch comedy series designed as a comedic alternative to the Nine O’Clock News on BBC1, featured satirical sketches on current news stories and popular culture. Produced by John Lloyd (best known for his work on such comedy television programs as Spitting Image, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Blackadder and QI, Not the […]

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