Fawlty Towers<\/p>\n
18 October 1975<\/p>\n
Friday night used to be music night for those of us with steam radio memories. Now, it\u2019s comedy night, at least on BBC: this season they have been pumping Dad\u2019s Army and The Liver Birds at us on BBC-1, with Sykes<\/a> and Ronnie Barker <\/a>in Porridge about to take over as the second wave from next week; and a flick of the switch when those are finished have brought us into BBC-2 and the undoubted hit even of a season with a lot of comedy on show: Fawlty Towers.<\/p>\n Fawlty Towers really is something out of a new mould. It hits you the way Some Mothers<\/a> did, as a totally new mix of the bag of techniques available to television comedy. At first there seems the possibility that its zest is derived solely from John Cleese. He is the centre of the action as manic proprietor of a small hotel, and his performance combines all the skills evident in Monty Python, even more sharply honed, thanks particularly to that physical presence, like an octopus with its elastic wound to bursting, and his fist-flying assault on every cue.<\/p>\n But over the weeks it has turned out to be a far richer mix than that. There is Prunella Scales, a smashing actress at any time, having a ball as Mrs Fawlty adopting a refined whine somewhere between Henry Cooper and Twiggy, and attacking Cleese at the level she finds him, which is usually just below the nipples. There is Andrew Sachs<\/a> as the diminutive Spanish waiter; and there is also Connie Booth, who happens to be Mrs Cleese, and co-author with him, but earning her money, without doubt, as the one straight part in a character-actors\u2019 benefit.<\/p>\n Between them, as authors and actors, they cheerfully embrace a range of comic methods that stretches from Pythonesque funny walks, through split second slapstick, to comedy of manners. Some of the best moments come precisely because different styles are in un-anticipated collision: like the one when Prunella Scales seems set for a social-voices send-up on the telephone when suddenly Cleese waltzes in, dragging Sachs by the ear, does a quick \u201cThat\u2019s Sybil, me Basil, this is a slap round the ear\u201d routine, and whisks smartly off.<\/p>\n