Fawlty Towers: John Cleese to revive series with daughter Camilla
The UK TV sitcom Fawlty Towers is set to be revived after more than 40 years.
John Cleese, who played Basil Fawlty, will be returning to write and star alongside his daughter Camilla Cleese.
The classic show ran for two series on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979, following the lives of Torquay hotelier Basil and his wife Sybil as they tried to keep their business and marriage afloat.
The new series will explore how the misanthropic Basil navigates the modern world.
Castle Rock Entertainment announced on Tuesday it had closed a deal with Cleese to bring back the television series, but it’s not yet clear which channel or streaming service it would appear on.
The revival will also see Basil and his daughter, who he has just discovered is his, team up to run a boutique hotel.
Fawlty Towers was originally written by Cleese and his then wife and co-star Connie Booth.
Set in a fictional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay, it found Cleese’s snobbish protagonist, Basil Fawlty, struggling to run his business, despite the help of Booth’s character, chambermaid Polly, his wife and the hapless Spanish waiter, Manuel, played by Andrew Sachs.
Basil is shown trying and often failing to keep his struggles – induced by farcical run-ins with hotel guests, inspectors and tradespeople – secret from Sybil, played by Prunella Scales.
Classic episodes included Basil “thrashing” his own car with a tree branch, out of frustration, and Manuel’s pet rat running round the hotel when the health inspector visits.
Who is Camilla Cleese?
Camilla Cleese is the daughter of John Cleese and Barbara Trentham, the late American model and actress.
The UK-born American actress, writer and producer has credits on the One Show, as well as on the US TV shows @Midnight and the Bachelorette Weekend.
She has also written and performed stand-up comedy for the likes of the Laugh Factory in Hollywood and the Just For Laughs International Comedy Gala in Sydney. Her writing credits include her father’s live show in 2011 called John Cleese: The Alimony Tour.
In a stand-up performance seven years ago [which carries a warning for swearing], she joked about her parents having been married several times. “I would like to get married one day,” she told the audience. “I’d like to be like my parents: it’s really impressive, they’ve been married almost 42 years… I mean to seven different people! Not at the same time.”
The new series will see actor Rob Reiner, his wife and actress Michelle Reiner, director and producer Matthew George and Derrick Rossi all act as executive producers.
Cleese – one of the original members of Monty Python – said when he first met George “he offered an excellent idea” which led to “one of the best creative sessions I can remember”.
“By dessert we had an overall concept so good that, a few days later, it won the approval of Rob and Michele Reiner,” he said.
“Camilla and I look forward enormously to expanding it into a series.”
George said he was “obsessed with Fawlty Towers” and meeting Cleese and his daughter was one of the “great thrills” of his life.
“I’ve watched the first two seasons so many times I have lost count,” he said. “I dreamed of one day being involved in a continuation of the story. Now it’s come true.”
Reiner, who is also currently working on the sequel to the cult 1984 rock mockumentary Spinal Tap, described the Fawlty Towers star as a “comedy legend”. “Just the idea of working with him makes me laugh.”
When Fawlty Towers was broadcast in the 70s, it won several Baftas, including for best scripted comedy, with Cleese also picking up the award for best entertainment performance.
Four decades on, the show is still seen as one of the best of its kind, and in 2019, it was named as the greatest British sitcom of all time by a panel of TV comedy experts for Radio Times magazine.
The show was remade in the US three times, but all failed; and in 2009 Cleese said there would never be another series with the original cast.
“I think everyone would be excited if we did it,” he said. “The problem is, when you do do something that is generally accepted as being very good, a horrible problem arises, which is: how do you top it? The expectation of what you will do is so high.”
In 2020, Cleese had a criticised the BBC after an episode of Fawlty Towers was temporarily removed from a BBC Studios-owned streaming platform, UKTV, because of “racial slurs”.
In the 1975 episode, titled The Germans, the character Major Gowen uses highly offensive language, and Cleese’s Basil Fawlty declares “don’t mention the war”.
‘Offensive content warning’
Cleese said: “I would have hoped that someone at the BBC would understand that there are two ways of making fun of human behaviour.
“One is to attack it directly. The other is to have someone who is patently a figure of fun, speak up on behalf of that behaviour.”
While the episode is best remembered for Fawlty’s goose-stepping, it also contains scenes showing the Major using offensive language about the West Indies cricket team.
According to reports, his scenes had already started to be edited out by some broadcasters.
After the Black Lives Matter movement returned to prominence in 2020, following the death of George Floyd, broadcasters and streaming services began to re-evaluate their content.
UKTV carried out a review, and the episode was reinstated with a warning about “offensive content and language”.
In October 2022, the Monty Python actor confirmed he would be hosting his own GB News TV show, warning that viewers “may not be used to hearing the sort of things I’ll be saying”.
