Fawlty Towers stars reunite

The 4 lead stars of Fawlty Towers have reunited for the first time in 30 years to promote a documentary for TV channel GOLD, but John Cleese says (thankfully) they will never make another episode.

Cleese, 69, said “everyone would be excited if we did” but that the “bar has moved so high” that a remake would be “good – not very good”.

Prunella Scales, Connie Booth and Andrew Sachs reunited with Cleese to celebrate the 1970s sitcom which only ever made 12 episodes.

Cleese, who wrote the tales of Basil Fawlty with ex-wife and co-star Booth, said he had to work for 43 weeks – “writing, performing and filming” – to make each of the two series.

Cleese said: “I think everyone would be excited if we did it [a new series].

“The problem is, when you do do something that is generally accepted as being very good, a horrible problem arises which is, how do you top it?

Cleese said it took six weeks to write the script for each half-hour episode of the BBC sitcom, which usually ran to 140 pages – compared with the “average sitcom’s 65 pages”.

Sachs, 79, said that, when recording Fawlty Towers, “we only had one go with the audience”.

“Regularly I’d come in and think, ‘oh, let’s do it again one time’ and I often feel when I watch it, which isn’t often, I’m usually shaking my head.”

Source: BBC