Product Description

Check in to the most popular BBC comedy of all time, where merriment and madness are on the house. Newly remastered for better-than-ever viewing, this set contains four classic episodes, as well as interviews, behind-the-scenes and cast bios. John Cleese stars as Basil Fawlty, the sharp-tongued, short-tempered owner of Fawlty Towers, a hotel plagued by crisis, chaos and bizarre characters.A Touch of Class: Once Basil decides it?s time the hotel had a better class of clientele he?ll do anything to keep Lord Melbury there-including cashing his sizeable check. Hotel Inspectors: Thinking a guest he has thoroughly offended may be a hotel inspector, Basil fawns all over him to make amends-but has he got the right man? The Wedding Party: Flabbergasted by an outbreak of seemingly loose morals at Fawlty Towers, Basil leaps to wrong conclusions and gets caught in a compromising position. The Builders: Basil goes with the lowest bidder when the lobby needs repairs. He soon discovers firsthand why this crew comes so cheap.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54198 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2001-10-16
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 170 minutes

Amazon.com
John Cleese has always maintained that Fawlty Towers was inspired by a real hotel that was run by a proprietor who treated guests as an inconvenience to running a business. No one in the world, however, can possibly match the sheer insolence and incompetence of Basil Fawlty, perhaps the most brazenly rude character in the history of customer disservice. "A Touch of Class," the series pilot, finds Basil bemoaning the riff-raff he's forced to deal with when he signs in a Lord Melbury. Immediately melting into an embarrassingly obsequious toady, Basil is blinded by nobility and becomes the perfect patsy for the old con man. In "The Builders," Cleese proves there are no limits to what lengths Basil Fawlty will go to save a few quid. Enlisting a resistant Polly in his plot, he quietly fires the respectable carpenters hired by his wife, Sybil, and brings in a cheap crew with a history of disaster. Sure enough, they wind up walling up the entrance to the dining room, sending an insanely outraged Basil into a frenzy as he tries to correct the blunder before Sybil returns. Davis Kelly (Waking Ned Devine) costars as the genial but incompetent O'Reilly. Basil smells hanky-panky in the air in "The Wedding Party," when he signs in an unmarried couple and soon sees foreplay in every innocent kiss and embrace. Meanwhile, a sexy French antique dealer sends Basil into red-faced vexations with her flirtations and Manuel's birthday results in a drunken binge and a morning-after hangover that only adds to the bellhop's usual incompetence at the morning breakfast service. When Sybil overhears that "The Hotel Inspectors" are in the area, Basil makes an about-face in his brusque treatment of a demanding guest, falling all over himself to cater to the guest's every whim while he boorishly insults every other customer. When he discovers his mistake he makes up for lost insolence in a campaign of comic terror. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Faulty towers
John Cleese's "Fawlty Towers" is one of those universally funny TV shows, all about the undignified exploits of a perpetually hostile, repressed and tetchy hotel manager, and the more competant staff who try to keep thngs sane. This DVD contains the first three episodes, which starts off a little wobbly but quckly gains its comic footing.

In "A Touch of Class," Basil Fawlty (Cleese) puts out a snotty ad to attract a "better class of customer," which attracts a pleasant aristocrat. Basil fawns revoltingly over the man, neglecting the other guests. But savvy waittress Polly (Connie Booth) discovers that another guest is a cop -- and that Basil is in danger of handing his coins over to a con man.

"The Builders" are called in for Fawlty Towers, while Basil's wife Sybil (Prunella Scales) is away. But Basil has hired a cut-rate builder, and Manuel (Andrew Sachs) and his broken English are in command at the time. So when Basil arrives, he finds a disaster zone -- and he has only a matter of hours to repair it.

Finally, Basil's prudish sensibilities are offended when a couple stays at the hotel -- and they're not married. Even worse, an older couple shows up and seems to be engaging in hanky-panky with the younger ones -- and even Polly is in on the action. Now Basil is determined to keep it all clean and chaste -- as he dodges an amorous Frenchwoman.

The first few episodes are not quite up to the standards of later ones like "The Germans" and "The Kipper and the Corpse," with some comic timing that just feels a little off. But the first volume of "Fawlty Towers" is still very entertaining, and has lots of legendary comic moments like Basil throttling the gnome. (And no, that is not a wink-wink-nudge-nudge euphemism)

What is really noticeable about this series is that there is always a feeling of barely-restrained chaos, as if peace'n'quiet is an abnormality. The crazy humor tends towards naughtiness (a drunken Manuel embracing Basil in the hallway) and slapstic, while the dialogue is loaded down with witticisms ("She can kill a man at ten paces with one blow of her tongue!").

Basil is a prudish, eccentric, classist manager based on a nightmare hotelier that Cleese met during his "Monty Python" days, and Cleese is brilliant here. Scales is great as his acid-tongued, beehived wife, while Booth and Sachs are great as (respectively) the intelligent waittress and the hapless Spanish waiter who doesn't understand half of what people say, because "he's from Barcelona."

"Fawlty Towers" lacked total brilliance at the start, but by the third episode the series had evened out nicely. A great trio of episodes.

just a minor quibble
yes, these shows are excellent. i can't recommend them enough - so i won't. my quibble has to do with the director's commentary. the director's voice comes across as a phlegmy, watery sound effect. then there's the puntuating of long silences with the sluuurping of whatever he's drinking. i have to admit it was funny for 5 minutes, but i then became nauseous and had to turn it off. the shows are worth the price of admission without the director's commentary.

A Much Needed Laugh
Faulty Towers brings laughter and a great deal of relief from a barrage of news which offers nothing but gloom and doom. John Cleese and the entire company can cheer anybody with their farce and comedy. Highly recommend this series to anyone who wants to get a good laugh.