Fawlty Towers
After Monty Python, John Cleese,
along with his wife at the time, Connie Booth, created and wrote twelve episodes
of a series called Fawlty Towers. The show was about Basil (Cleese),
the owner of a quaint hotel in the English countryside. Basil was a
cheap, rude and snobby owner, who wasted no time in being cruel to his unconcerned
and easy-going wife, Sybil, the maid Polly (played by Booth), his guests,
and most especially the immigrant Manuel, who did both bellboy and waiter
duties at the hotel. This series was recently re-released on
home video, and each of the four tapes includes bits of a lengthy interview
with John Cleese in which he talks about his career, the generalities of
this series, and each individual episode.
This series, unlike Monty Python, which was sketch comedy,
is structured as a fairly typical sitcom. In fact, I wonder if perhaps
a lot of the reason for its fame is because it was devised and starred John
Cleese, because certainly, if it weren’t, the show probably wouldn’t get
as much acclaim as it has. The show is a standard farce; being
such, it is very hit-and-miss. Some of the material is amusing; the
rest is often clichéd and tired. Or, maybe it’s because
I can’t withstand six hours of sustained craziness. I imagine Cleese
and company were mighty exhausted at the end; certainly I was!
The stuff that I liked the most from the show was the
verbal content; the nasty jabs that Basil gave to everybody unlucky enough
to get in his way. Even the portions that would normally be seen as
cruel were often very funny. Some of this may be offensive, especially
Basil’s treatment of Manuel (Basil even calls him a “dago”, a word more fit
for Archie Bunker’s mouth, and Manuel himself is not exactly depicted with
politically correct sensibilities), but Basil’s comments to him are so mean
that they become very funny (one moment where Basil makes a naturally confused
Manuel look really stupid: “That’s Basil’s wife, this is Basil, this is a
slap on the head.” Slap! ). The relationship between Basil
and Sybil is also pretty funny, in the long tradition of horrible marital
mismatches (like Archie and Edith, for instance), but in this case, Sybil
is a reasonably sensible person, and really, absolutely, doesn’t give a damn
about anything he says. Basil is more a nuisance than a monster to
her, and Basil ends up making himself look stupid even as he says the most
appalling things behind her back.
The bad stuff is when the show just gets too stupid for
words; when it overuses the typical comic clichés. Many of the
episodes use such things as mistaken identity, misunderstandings, or what
Roger Ebert would call the Idiot Plot, in which the plot can only exist because
one person fails to say what a reasonable person would say. One major
example of this is when Basil actually attempts to throw a surprise anniversary
party for Sybil. Sybil naturally assumes that his act of forgetfulness
is just typical of this insensitive jerk, and so storms off in anger for
the day. Basil is left attempting to explain where Sybil is,
but of course, he has to save face, so he tries to convince everyone that
she is sick in her room, and can’t be bothered. Of course, lie upon
lie is said, until Basil forces Polly to dress up as Sybil and lie sick in
bed for the curious guests! While some of the crazy situations
are funny, sometimes they just go on and on and on, and I more often than
not cringe rather than laugh. I’m not sure if I’m embarrassed or if
I’m just ticked off, or what, but sometimes this overuse of farce is too
much.
The show is shot in the classic 1970’s style -- shot on
videotape, with cheap sets, and in front of a live, as opposed to canned,
audience, exactly how a sitcom ought to be presented. Unfortunately,
this show doesn’t bring in me the same sorts of feelings I got with shows
like
All in the Family,
Maude, or Barney Miller, shows which were more than just sitcoms, but shows
with good writing, important subjects, and good actors. I guess I shouldn’t
really make such a comparison; Fawlty Towers isn’t meant to be serious, unlike
those other shows, which were edgy and atypical to begin with.
But then again, I like shows like WKRP in Cincinnati, and Newhart, which
are certainly not “serious” or “important”, but are still funnier and complex
than anything in Fawlty Towers. All these shows I’ve mentioned, however,
are more about character than slapstick, and people are certainly more interesting
and rich than a couple of overused concepts of farce.
But then again, maybe this is the type of show that works
better when you have more than one viewer, that is, yourself. Certain
sorts of comedy work best in a crowd, apparently; last night, I was with
a few people who watched Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, and while
I wasn’t laughing non-stop, I enjoyed myself far more than I did watch Fawlty
Towers all by myself (I also must admit I was enjoying myself during Scary
Movie 2 (!) that same night). Maybe if I were to have watched the adventures
of Basil Fawlty in a room with others, I might have found it much more funnier.
Discuss the film itself or the subject matter of the film.
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Fawlty Towers