Fawlty Towers - The Complete Collection (Remastered) [DVD] [1975]

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I'm also going to come off like a stick-in-the-mud, because it's just a comedy TV show, but many of the Basil/Sybil relationship scenes are distracting to me. All twelve episodes of John Cleese and Connie Booth's highly successful comedy series, set in a Torquay hotel.

The other new feature is 2009 Interviews (38:32), which gathers Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs, Series 1 director John Howard Davies, Bernard Cribbins (the spoon salesman, "The Hotel Inspectors"), Geoffrey Palmer (Dr. In 'A Touch of Class', Basil's quest for a better class of clientele seems to have succeeded with the arrival at the hotel of Lord Melbury. Remember to watch the opening credits of each show to spot the creative misspellings on the hotel sign (our favorite: "Fatty Owls").The Cheap Tatty Review is an odd sketch of John playing Basil talking on the phone at the FT reception in which he insists to the unknown person on the other end that the series is finished. Highlights of this third disc are the interview with John Cleese (who is showing his age a bit ;-)) and the “Torquay Tourist Guide” which is more of a “how it all started” filmed in a documentary style, it is around twelve minutes duration. Together they run their hotel, Fawlty Towers, with a little help from the unflappable Polly, and Manuel, the trainee waiter from Barcelona with marginally more intelligence than a monkey.

Cast to perfection the series found Cleese playing much put-upon Torquay hotel owner Basil Fawlty, Prunella Scales as his domineering wife Sybil, Connie Booth as Polly, the dependable maid and Andrew Sachs in the role of Manuel, the non-comprehending, tyrannized waiter from Barcelona. The other first impression is that the box set and inner box is made of cardboard (albeit rigid and laminated) so might get a bit tatty after a while — especially if yours is going to get a lot of handling — a rigid plastic case would have been much better. His screen wife, Sybil (Prunella Scales), put it best in the episode "The Psychiatrist": "You're either crawling all over them, licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some Benzedrine puff adder. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.The friendly, even wistful discussion includes plenty of praise for the actors with smaller roles, discussion of he and Connie Booth's writing process, and some perfectionist criticism of the little things that could have been done better. In ‘Waldorf Salad’, some newly-arrived American guests’ request for transatlantic cuisine does not go down well with Basil in the kitchen. The Germans' sees Basil failing to cope with a fire drill and the arrival of some German guests while Sybil is in hospital.

I get a small commission on purchases made after following the links above which pays for the hosting, etc. The Extras disc in the DVD box set contains a "hidden" short film clip, this page has more details and shows exactly how to access this item. To mark its 30th anniversary, all 12 episodes of John Cleese and Connie Booth's highly successful comedy series, set in a Torquay hotel, have been remastered. Fawlty Towers" is far from my favorite sitcom (or even my favorite British sitcom), but it still has plenty of top-notch writing, sharp dialogue and brilliant physical comedy packed into its short run.The Builders' sees Basil in hot water with Sybil when he employs the unreliable Irish labourer Mr O'Reilly (David Kelly) to do some work in the hotel lobby. However, a couple of years later, I bought the DVD set to finally see the whole series, and it was a markedly different experience.