Fawlty Towers

From Zanecorpwiki

Look up sitcom and comedy polls and you're almost guaranteed to find Fawlty Towers on the list. It's at the top of mine. If it's pure comedy that you want, this is the archetype, the Platonic form.

Of course, to reach this apogee, the acing, directing, and editing has to be strong, but it's the writing that makes this show superb. The quality of Cleese and Booth's writing is excellent, but the quantity is simply astounding. Cleese himself makes the point (interview, 3rd disc) that the script itself was twice as long as the average BBC half hour show at the time, and by any standards 120+ page scripts for a half hour show is tremendous. It's fast, and jammed packed. As Mrs. Scales (Sybil) points out in her interview, the show doesn't have the same dowdy pace that older comedy often does. Even Monty Python lacks the sheer velocity of Fawlty Towers. In fact, I can't think of a show live action show--comedy or otherwise--that has this pace. Yet for all that, it's still so well structured and timed that it's never rushed.

If I seem like I'm downplaying the acting, it's only in comparison to the writing. It's good. Probably as good as it gets as far as comedy goes. Cleese is perhaps the greatest comedic actor of any generation. I would say it's amazing that he's also a writer and editor, but the truth is that he's so good because he's all those things. When you listen to Cleese give an interview, you see that he understands what comedy is in a way that few do.

This is one of those very rare occasions where I can't really think of any criticism. About the only thing I can say is that not everyone is going to like this show. It's too much for some, and I think that comes from the sheer speed of it. And also the fact that Fawlty is such a selfish, wound up man that I think some people find it hard to sympathize with him. For those people, Fawlty crosses over from funny to grating. The fact is, though, that the greatest art is always going to have detractors, and it should. I'm going to see problems in other people's top sitcoms of all times. That's why their not on my list.

For me, however, this show is one of those rare things that I like so much that I know I can't even try to talk about it in objective terms. It's rare in any field for me to find something that I think is just so good. Fawlty Towers is not only my favorite sitcom of all time, it's one of my favorite things of all time.