One of the most acclaimed comedy series of all time is returning to TV more than four decades later. “Fawlty Towers,” the beloved British sitcom starring John Cleese, is getting a revival, with the “Monty Python” star set to return.
The show is being developed at Castle Rock Entertainment, with Matthew George, Rob Reiner, Michele Reiner, and Derrick Rossi executive producing for the studio. Cleese will write and star in the revival with his daughter, Camilla Cleese.
Cleese is coming back as Basil, with his real-life daughter Camille Cleese to play Basil’s “newly discovered daughter”. No indication of where, when or how it will appear (network? streaming? )
One reason to worry:
It’s unlikely the rest of the original series cast will return; Sachs died in 2016, Scales retired in 2020 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and Booth quit acting in the ’90s.
In addition to Booth not returning as Polly, she was also then-husband Cleese’s writing partner on all 12 original episodes. Will a new writer be able to recapture the magic?
I’m cautiously optimistic, as I felt the second series was even better than the first. 3 of my top 4 episodes were from the second season (“The Psychiatrists”, “The Kipper and the Corpse” and “Basil the Rat”, with “The Germans” sliding in at #3). On the other hand, it’s been over 40 years since the last series and so many of the ingredients will be missing this time around.
There’s a thousand ways this could go bad. Basil was only 1/4 of the formula that made that show work. It’s like Paul McCartney decided to do a Beatles reunion…without Ringo.
Besides Cleese himself, all of those characters were so good as to be irreplaceable. Andrew Sachs was my particular favourite.
Anyway, the odd thing about this is that Cleese once said that the second series was harder to do than the first and much less fun, because instead of just feeling that they were doing the show for laughs, everyone was working hard to try to maintain the standard of the first series. Cleese also said that the reason they didn’t do more was that they felt it would be impossible to maintain the high standards for yet a third season. I can see that; personally, I think Fawlty Towers was the best TV sitcom ever made anywhere.
I wish I could be cautiously optimistic about this, but I’m not. I’m more perplexed that Cleese is doing it, especially without any of the original cast. I wonder how much of this might just be due to Cleese’s rumoured financial troubles, much of it stemming from the divorce settlement with Alyce Eichelberger.
I actually hadn’t realized John Cleese has two adult daughters by different marriages. I initially thought this was going to be Connie Booth’s daughter Cynthia (which would make some familial sense), who I knew from small roles with her father in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures and who is now in her early 50’s. But it’s actually Cynthia’s much younger half-sister Camilla who is in her late 30’s.
No, but I remember the American remake from about 40 years ago that starred Bea Arthur and lasted about 10 episodes before getting cancelled. I think I watched one and decided to pass. It seemed like they tried to combine Basil and Sybil into Bea Arthur’s character and it didn’t work at all.
Camilla is a stand up comic and has been touring with her father the last few years. It makes sense that they are working together. She’s 6’1” and was raised in America so she has an American accent.
I watched it and honestly, a couple scripts weren’t to bad imitations of Fawlty Towers, but the show is more than its scripts. It was just stiff and unfunny.
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