Fawlty Towers Celebrates 50 Years + Prunella Scales, RIP

Hello everybody,

So I’ve had a busy month, following another fairly busy month. My friend from China recently returned, so we’ve been having a catch-up. So I shall keep this month’s post brief.

Last year, I wrote a review of Mary Poppins, considering the movie’s 60th anniversary. I’ve been planning to write some similar reviews for Thunderbirds, Jaws and Fantasia – I’m aware that I’ve been a little bit late with the first two.

With that said, the BBC sitcom, Fawlty Towers, celebrated its 50th anniversary last month. This is a show I fondly remember watching in my youth on BBC1, and it’s one I still personally enjoy to this day.

Despite only running for two seasons and with just 12 episodes in total, I can see why Fawlty Towers is still celebrated. It was inspired by the time when John Cleese and his fellow Monty Python members experienced the antics of a rude hotel manager. I can recall this one time when I was studying my masters in Creative Writing, where one of our lectures centered around how to write a sitcom. Fawlty Towers was one of the examples brought up, and our lecturer described the character of Basil Fawlty as a “monster”, but relatable, which I tend to agree with. We were showed a clip from the season 1 episode Gourmet Night where Basil is having technical problems with his car. When Sybil tells him to take the car into the garage, Basil exasperatedly responds that he will. I remember the lecturer stating, “This means that he won’t”. We then saw the results later on.

Basil aspires to attract a “better” atmosphere in the hotel, but easily gets stressed through a variety of situations, i.e., in Gourmet Night when his car breaks down, so much so that he often even ends up taking his frustrations out on the guests. As someone who has worked in hospitality, I can understand the pain he goes through, which is one of the reasons behind my admiration for the show.

Basil’s also a rather conservative character. This is noted how in A Touch Of Class, when he tries to attract a “better class of person and refers to most of his guests as “riff-raff”. Of course, then he’s betrayed when one of his upper-class guests turns out to be a criminal, and another two express disgust with the hotel. Another justification is in The Germans, when a fault with the fire extinguisher puts him in hospital and blames the problems of then Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Of course, I feel I should also talk about Basil’s wife, Sybil, who is played by Prunella Scales, following the actress’ recent passing. Many would agree that the part of Sybil Fawlty is the first character to come to mind when it comes to Prunella’s filmography, and she played the part splendidly.

Sybil is known to have bossed her husband around, even with her famous exclamation towards him (“Basil”) and to demonstrate more common sense when it comes to work and interacting with guests. But one particular element I found really awesome can be found in the episode, The Builders, where Basil hires a builder named O’Reilly to make some improvements to the lobby, only for things to go haywire for the staff when they lose the dining room door. Known especially to Sybil, the builder appears to have a track record of causing further chaos each time he commences building work. This clip, I feel, justifies her character.

Sybil demonstrates that she’s a very strong woman not to be patronised or messed with, and much like her husband, can sometimes take her anger out on others, i.e., when Basil attempts to calm her down, only for her to smack him, and then when she attacks O’Reilly with the umbrella for messing up the lobby.

Prunella Scales’ passing comes some time a year after the loss of Timothy West, with whom they seemed to share a very happy marriage with. So I close this post by wishing a show a belated happy 50th anniversary and stating that may Prunella (1932-2025) rest in peace.