That’s right, Fawlty Towers is apparently better than that other British comedy you happen to think is the best
Fawlty Towers, the comedy set in a haphazard hotel in Torquay and starring John Cleese as the eccentric manager Basil Fawlty, has been named the best British sitcom of all time by Radio Times magazine.
Despite only running for two series of six episodes each in the 1970s, Fawlty Towers beat out stiff competition from Only Fools and Horses, Blackadder, Father Ted and I’m Alan Partridge.
Co-writer and co-star (as long-suffering waitress Polly Sherman) Connie Booth told the publication: “Fawlty Towers succeeds, I think, because it allows infantile rage and aggression a field day in a buttoned-down, well-mannered English society.
“It’s unique in being a farce, with all the plot surprises and precision that the style requires. And it doesn’t hurt that the star of the show is a six-foot-five comic genius. If he was shorter I can’t imagine how it would have worked.”
Meanwhile, Cleese added: “I was very lucky to be working at the BBC when decisions were taken by people who had actually made programmes.
“What a cast. I’m proud we are up there with Porridge and Only Fools and Ab Fab and Blackadder and The Office and Reggie Perrin and The Thick of It.”
Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted came second in the list, with I’m Alan Partridge coming third, and Blackadder fourth. Only Fools and Horses was named sixth best sitcom of all time, ahead of Porridge, in seventh.
The list was compiled by a panel of 42 ‘comedy experts’. I put that term in quotation marks because The Office, the actual best British sitcom of all time, came in 12th place. Behind Dinnerladies. Yeah. Yeah.
Let’s put Fawlty Towers at the top of the list and The Office absolutely nowhere because I’m a comedy expert, oooh love me. Pathetic.
