“Fawlty Towers” is Being Revived

Cleese tells BBC to go fuck itself.

sounds goods, a reboot I want to watch.

Sorry, but this is one of those gems that shouldn't be touched.

It has every chance of actually being good. Cleese is a great sketch writer.

Prunella Scales is 90 and has dementia.

Jesus, the BBC guy in R1 's photo looks like a crazy asshole. Something about the eyes actually made me jerk back from my phone. MARY! me all you want, but something's not right with him. He sounds like he's full of shit too. No wonder BBC comedy sucks so badly right now. I don't blame Cleese for not wanting to work with him.

Fawlty Towers is perfect, and might translate well into our time, also because the paving of a sitcom stayed more or less the same over the decades. It definitely still holds up.

I’m not so sure this is a good idea. Original was an untouchable classic.

Hotels & B&Bs aren’t run anything like they used to be, even on a local level. Travelodge & AirB&B reign supreme nowadays. Plus most people in Britain can’t afford hotel stays or holidays, let alone to board. And the upper-middle class that the originally show delighted in lampooning is shrinking fast. So how can they write any more? The premise isn’t realistic or applicable to the way we live now.

He's 83...retire already!

R10 = Jane Fonda

I think a reboot has the potential to be a gas! There's plenty of lunacy in the hospitality industry to exaggerate and lampoon.

R12 is there wacky lunacy enough to raise a smile? I feel like it's just a lot of depressing slave-wage labour...

I would say so!

I hope they keep the sight gag with the sign.

So since Brex!t has banned and deported all migrant workers, does the Manuel character have to be Welsh or Irish or something?

R5 Pru was the star of the show imo. It simply won't feel right without Sybil.

It's like trying to do 'The Good Life' without Margot.

Oh, I know!

My god, just rewatched both seasons and this has to be one of the funniest sitcoms ever produced. The writing is superb! It’s a shame there were only 12 episodes but this does not need to be revived.

I was in an American version of it called Amanda's By The Sea. It was a disaster. Not because of me, of course.

Amanda’s is on YouTube!

Without Prunella, I’m not at all interested. She was and remains the secret weapon and the star of that show. Her timing and delivery were exquisite and reboot without her would be like The Wizard of Oz without Garland or Lahr, the Manchurian Candudate without Lansbury, Absolutely Fabulous without Lumley, Sex & The City without Catrall — what would be the point?

I thought Prunella had already died

I saw a stage version of Fawlty Towers in London last summer. The stitched together two or three of the episodes. The actors did dead-on imitations of Cleese and Prunella, and it was hilarious. The audience was laughing so hard I thought the theater would have to call medics.

R25 were they working with the original scripts, or were they rewrites?

They were the original scripts adapted slightly for the stage and neatly integrated as one show.

Any progress on this. The announcement was two years ago. Have they began production?

Slightly off-topic, but Cleese was an integral part of my sexual awakening as a young gayling

He's 85, now. Will it now take place in a rest home?

Lightning does not always strike twice in the same place. The Murphy Brown and Frasier reboots fizzled.

Since Fawlty Towers used to involve a lot of frenetic novement and slapstick for John Cleese, I can't see him doing that at his age. Kind of like Life With Lucy.

Only if Karen Walker is a permanent hotel guest.