Interesting. There are only 12 episodes, and by my count, among all of you you’ve dismissed 7 of them as “worst”! My personal favorites are among them, but it’s hard to say because every one I watch (generally for the 5,983th time) I’m pretty much ready to declare my favorite.
Except one. I totally agree with the OP that The Anniversary is uniquely substandard compared to the others, as if Cleese and Booth were just uninspired for that one. It’s more sad than funny, really, and the humor seems forced. The rest of them IMHO are some of the finest comedy to ever appear on television.
The always great Geoffrey Palmer. He is what made the episode great.
Cleese definitely has some odd ideas about comedy in general and his own work. He’s always been cranky and even more so in his old age. He has no trouble telling fans they are wrong about liking some of Python.
Pretty much my opinion too. Although every episode, including The Germans, is full of laughs it remains my least favorite for structural reasons. The whole hit on the head by a moose as an excuse for Basil’s behavior makes it kind of pointless. You can get away with any type of humor when it is not driven by character and has no real world consequences.
I first saw Fawlty Towers when I was living in London in the 70s and thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. When I returned to Australia I watched it all again and it was still hysterical. A few years later after repeated exposure to, by then, both series I started watching another airing and, for some reason, Basil Fawlty was no longer weak and human and funny. He was just an asshole. I simply couldn’t enjoy the show at all he angered me so much. So I stopped watching. A few years later I saw it again and he was back to being the great comedy character he is. Weird.
And Alfred Hitchcock made a whole movie based around the premise of a corpse that keeps popping up in the wrong place (The Trouble with Harry). That said, I disagree with you about the episode. Old concept or not, I rank it among the funnier ones.
Least funny ep: Anniversary Party is draggy at times.
I have to agree with the OP; The Anniversary is the weakest of the bunch, with The Wedding Party and The Psychiatrist as the runners-up for ‘least good’.
The berating and thrashing of the car is very instructive comedy. Note how the camera doesn’t follow him when he goes to get the branch. Here Cleese describes how it turned to be very important to get the right stick to make the comedy work.
And at the end, where he has a trifle instead of a duck, he paws inside it hoping that there is still a duck there.
I think I’d put Communication Problems as my least favorite. The woman is really too annoying and Basil trying to hide a single bet he made on a horse race is almost too small a lie to begin with.
Though it did give us “Is this a piece of your brain?” and “If you give us any more trouble I shall visit you in the small hours and put a bat up your nightdress!”
“The Anniversary Party” is probably my least favourite, although “The Psychiatrist” and “The Wedding Party” are less memorable to me, to the extent that I’m not sure which is which.
Have you ever seen Sybil make toast?
Basil Fawlty: Well, may I ask what you were expecting to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeasts swinging majestically…
Mrs. Richards: Don’t be silly. I expect to be able to see the sea.
Basil Fawlty: You CAN see the sea. It’s over there, between the land and the sky.
I love the wide differences/preferences expressed in this thread and I find them fascinating.
Growing up “pre-internet”, I figured everyone agreed that “The Builders” and “The Germans” were the best episodes. My mind was blown that Cleese thought Builders was the worst and that he is not alone.
Is there any episode no one thinks is the best one?
I can’t believe anyone(except John Cleese) could think Gourmet Night is the best. Does anyone?
Bruce Boa was one of the two all-purpose-American actors in Britain in the 1970s (the other was Ed Bishop). If you wanted a convincing American, but you couldn’t afford a Hollywood name, you hired one (or both) of these two, and they cropped up again and again.
And, yes, he was actually Canadian, but we can’t tell the difference.
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