40 years since Fawlty Towers premiered

Last weekend marked 40 years since Fawlty Towers premiered in the UK.

In 1974, Monty Python star John Cleese and his then-wife, actress Connie Booth were commissioned by BBC to write a pilot. The script, based in a shambolic Torquay hotel, ended up in the hands of script editor Ian Main whose job was to provide an initial verdict on the many scripts received.

Main wasn’t impressed and provided his damning assessment to Gilbert in a memo: “I’m afraid I thought this one as dire as its title… A collection of clichés and stock characters which I can’t see being anything but a disaster.”

But James Gilbert, then Head of BBC Comedy and Light Entertainment, believed in Cleese and Booth’s ability (and no doubt their perfectionism – they spent six weeks on every episode) and wasn’t going to be swayed. “I was interested in anything John wanted to do for me,” says Gilbert, who asked John Howard Davies (who had worked on Monty Python’s Flying Circus) to direct the series.

When the first episode, A Touch of Class, aired on 19th September 1975, many critics hated it or ignored it. However, the audience steadily grew and reluctantly Cleese and Booth (who were soon to separate) returned with six more scripts in 1979.

Famously, only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers were ever made, but it is indelibly etched in the hearts of TV fans the world over.

Express.co.uk has a story on what the cast John Cleese, Connie Booth, Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs have been up to recently.

Source: Telegraph