Fawlty Towers reboot not headed back to the BBC due to lack of “freedom”
John Cleese pushed back on assertions that the rebooted comedy series would be "an anti-woke nightmare"
Aux News Fawlty Towers
Earlier this week, we reported that John Cleese was rebooting what is, in the aggregate, probably the second-most illustrious comedy project of his long and legendary comedy career: Fawlty Towers. (The first, of course, being his long-running commercial campaign on behalf of Schweppes Tonic Water.) Now Cleese has revealed that the series won’t be returning to its old home at the BBC, and will instead (aided, presumably, by the help of co-producer Rob Reiner) be shopped elsewhere. Also, the word “woke” gets worked in there, although to the credit of Cleese—who’s settled pretty comfortably into the “they don’t let you say things like they used to” portion of his elder comedy statesman status—only in response to other people bringing it up.
This is per Deadline, itself reporting on an interview Cleese gave this week to GB News, a U.K. outlet that’s usually described in Fox News-ish terms. Talking about the rebooted Fawlty—which will see him return to the role of pompous hotel manager Basil Fawlty, now living in the Caribbean—Cleese stated he had no interest in working with the BBC on the series because, “You wouldn’t get the freedom.”
The interviewers then brought up a recent Guardian piece that alleged that the new series would be “an anti-woke nightmare,” which Cleese responded to in typically withering fashion:
They obviously know better than I do what’s going to be in it. Maybe they should write an episode for me that they would find acceptable. Might not be very funny, but I’m sure it would really please some of their readers. The idea that it’s all going to be about wokery hadn’t particularly occurred to me.
The Fawlty Towers revival was developed by Cleese and his daughter, Camilla Cleese, working with producer and Reiner associate Matthew George.
96 Comments
I feel like this reboot is destined for disaster. Without the original cast, an older actor who cannot do the physical comedy as much, and pre-show buzz that is hitting all the wrong politically-charged buttons.
Plus, does anyone want to see an elderly Basil Fawlty still suffering day and night while making a complete hash of everything? It’s one thing when it’s a guy in his late thirties or whatever, but seeing that he’s learned nothing over the course of his life and is still miserable isn’t funny, it’s just depressing.
it will hit it’s targeted quadrant.
Of course it is, even Cleese knows that. He’s spent the past 50 years going on and on about how they had to leave it at two series.He’s probably just doing this to get his daughter a start in television.
…aaand cue the nepo-baby discussion!
But cancelwokerectness. In fact now it MUST be made, for speech freedom, now more than ever and if by some chance the comedy is not funny or interesting, that’s just something you snowflakes have to deal with.
no fucking shit!
We should also remember that the show was co-created and co-written by Connie Booth, it wasn’t a 100% John Cleese creation, and she wasn’t involved in this reboot idea.
It will probably be better than Velma though
AT least I still have my complete set of Fawlty Towers on VHS tape. If only i had a way to play them…..
I’m afraid that Cleese has devolved into an upper class twit.
Not sure if it’s really devolved. I’m a big fan of Monty Python and while it’s never directly said, I always got the impression that the rest of the guys thought Cleese was a twat. He wrote the most with Chapman so maybe they got along, which is a bit ironic given his conservative streak late in life. Or maybe Cleese is why Chapman drank so much those days.
Well, he was always difficult but at least his politics were ok in the 60s and 70s. Seeing him parrot stale conservative talking points these days as if they were some brilliant insight is just sad.
“Parrot” HA! I see what you did there!
He’s politically quite liberal and half his twitter is making fun of conservatives and boosting liberal voices. Unfortunately he hopped on Rowling’s TERF train.
If you read Michael Palin’s diaries, especially the Python years, it is very clear that they all kind of thought that. Chapman and Cleese seem to have more of a similar writing style and their connection seemed to come from that over anything else – the same is true of Palin and Jones. They were without a doubt close friends, but Palin’s diaries also make it clear they were different people.
I can see that. I’ve had great creative collaborations with people I wouldn’t hang out with outside those collaborations, or even in cases where I actively didn’t like that person (those are a little harder to pull off).
“They were without a doubt close friends, but Palin’s diaries also make it clear they were different people.”
So in other words his diaries don’t, IN ANY WAY, support the claim that “the rest of the guys thought Cleese was a twat”.
Because guess what? “close friends but different people” is nowhere near the ballpark of “everyone else thought he was a twat”.
The main thing I remember about Fawlty Towers was how they came up with a funny anagram every single episode… “Flowery Twats” being the one I remember. That, and the ‘don’t mention the war’ episode.
Warty Towels
Anagram?
Yeah, the sign out front of the hotel had a sign that a kid would rearrange the letters on each episode… So Fawlty Towers became Flowery Twats, Warty Towels, etc.
Only on ITV can you call Irish people the N-word these days.
As if he’s even watched any BBC comedy in the past decade.
Man, it stings seeing him be such a pathetic fucking creep. So… he’s doing a Fawlty reboot, a “documentary” on his insipid PC bullshit, AND a show on a right-wing network? In his 80s?I doubt any of it happens. Rob Reiner will take a look at those scripts and it’s off to development hell.
Even back when I first watched it, I found the parts where he beats the help troubling.
You’re obviously not management material.
That’s the joke. Basil’s a fucking loser.
I’m looking forward to the new Fawlty Towers starring Gina Carano and James Woods. Special appearance by Kevin Sorbo.
Produced by JK Rowling and that weird Australian guy obsessed with Hooters.
FYI it has come to my attention that the weird Australian guy obsessed with Hooters, Nick Adams, is apparently a deep cover satire account.
“What about meeeee?” — Dean Cain
Did we suddenly forget about Antonio Sabato Jr. as well?I mean, I did. I was just confirming we’re all on the same page.
Get Graham Linehan on the writing staff to insert references to “healthy breast tissue” and steal jokes from Seinfeld and the Simpsons
Too bad Kirstie Alley has passed. She was pretty funny. Luckily he can pick from either Quaid brother. Or why not both?
Cleese isn’t politically conservative. Most of his tweets are making fun of conservatives or retweeting liberal politicians and activists. Unfortunately he also hopped on Rowling’s TERF train
Somehow becoming a Terf just makes that your personality up to ignoring other political issues.
Interesting that Michaela Coel found it very freeing. Certainly more than being at Netflix. Plus she was able to keep her IP, didn’t have to deal with interfering network suits, and got a bunch of awards. So I suspect this mofo is a lying liar who lies.
Channel 4 lets you do a lot more than the BBC, to be fair.
well i imagine michaela coel and john cleese are going for different things when they say they want creative freedom.
Every headline related to this makes me feel worse and worse about its prospects…
Why do you care? At all?
Basil Fawlty is now living in the Caribbean? Damn, who would have thought Cleese wanted to say the N-word that badly?
That one kind of surprised me. I can see Cleese — to put this all in the best possible light — as a control freak who just wants final say on what goes into the script. Like a lot of white people, being told “you can’t really say that because you’re white and that’s the way it works” might rankle him, even though there are things you can’t say — and be loved for it, anyway — in any situation, depending on who or what you are. Maybe he didn’t want to be intentionally offensive. Maybe he just didn’t want to be told what offensive was.But if they move it to the Caribbean, this is just not going to work at any level. Good comedy depends on a fairly deep knowledge of the dynamics of any social situation, and I’m pretty sure that Cleese simply doesn’t know enough about modern life, black people, or the Caribbean to make any jokes that even land in the same vicinity as “funny” or “insightful.” Assuming it ever gets made, it’s going to be supremely tone deaf.
“Assuming it ever gets made, it’s going to be supremely tone deaf.
Whoa, what an insight that not every single person in the comments section has had!
No group owns a word. Either all can say it or nobody can
Oh, gosh, I didn’t realize. Maybe “own” isn’t the verb we’re looking for here. But I’m an American who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And I can say anything I want! But if I express my opinion that the Falklands basically belong to the people who live there and that Argentina was wrong to invade them in 1982, I know that I’m going to make a lot of enemies real quick. And so that’s a subject I don’t touch. I think this is all a bit ridiculous, but them’s the way things work, and I have to go along or pay big time. I’m not an Argentine, so I don’t really have grounds to complain.Similarly, if you’re a white person in a customer facing job and you use the dreaded n-word, currently the most outrageous word in English, in front of a customer, you can more or less expect to lose your job. And I’m not going to feel so sorry for you if you do! People ought to have the basic professionalism not to do that when they’re on the job. This doesn’t mean that black people “own” the n-word — white people have certainly made free use of it for a couple of centuries, and many still do. It’s a free country, after all. But words have connotations that depend heavily on context and speaker, and if you can’t see that, you’re probably one of God’s innocents.
I get you and I agree there is some nuance. Here is my take: I think obviously we are free to say what we want, but there can be consequences. We could be fired from our jobs for using the N word.I realize how things are, but I think more about how they SHOULD be: if the word is so bad then nobody should use it.Context is also key. Obviously a white person calling a black person the N word is bad, but what about a white person singing along to a rap song that uses the word?
You make some good points here, honestly. As for the “singing along” thing, I’m not sure how white hip hop fans (or black hip hop fans) feel about that. Most of the hip hop I listen to these days is instrumental anyway. Or made by hippie backpack types. There have been some pretty good takes — on the left, no less — arguing that “quoting isn’t saying,” which is something I can get behind. Honestly, I think we can agree that no word is so terrible that no-one can use it. As a white person, I don’t care what black people say to each other. Actually, I don’t care what white people say to each other in private much either — if you’re a white guy with the sorts of friends who drop the n-bomb unironically, well, that’s who you are. We probably shouldn’t party together, because we may not have a lot of values in common. But I’m not going to be like, a speech policeman for convos where I’m obviously not invited. Most scandals of this sort happen after somebody screws up and uses it on an email or on Slack or something. An ounce or intelligence or compassion would usually prevent that, but some people lack even that. Including a few Boston cab drivers I’ve met. I dislike the word — even when used in an all-white setting — because I think it signals real disrespect for a whole group of people. I’d think less of a white person who used it in front of me, even if black people weren’t present. But there are still lots of places in the US where it passes muster. I don’t hang out there, but it is what it is. Oh, and I was thinking: a black person would probably also be fired for using the n-word at work — if it’s the sort of joint where you have to show up in a tie — not for being offensive but probably for being unprofessional. I figure that black people who use the word with me — and it’s only happened once or twice — are either out of their minds or trying to intentionally jar me with an end to hustling me somehow. That’s a big-time cue to leave. Nice chatting in a civil manner about a difficult subject, hey.
I had white acquaintances that used it when I was in high school. But here is the funny thing: it wasn’t aimed at black people. It was never “oh that black guy is a (insert word)“. These people were, for lack of a better term, “wiggers”. White people who acted black, they referred to each OTHER as the N word, not with a hard ER at the end, but with an A. Were they racist or just super confused?For me: if I was part of a group that was saying something like “using this word is wrong” then I would also refrain from using it and would encourage others in the group not to do so either. It’s a better way to set an example than saying “we can say it because we are taking back the word, but nobody else can”. It muddies the waters.As for the rapping, I was thinking about this story:https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44209141
Is that word Nevis? Because that’s where Cleese lives now. I could see him understanding all too well what a shithead living in the Colonies would be like.
I’m guessing you both have plenty to say about how England was ruined when all the nevises moved into your neighbourhoods…
You’ve misunderstood me. I mean that Cleese is probably living in Nevis as Basil Fawlty: a clueless old guy who thinks everyone else is stupid when he’s just an asshole.
Of course I misunderstood you; I’m bet all your nevis friends think the world of you as well.
Oh, you’re just dumb.
Says the guy pretending the N-word I was talking about was the name of a town Cleese and/or his character lived in.
Says the guy who took it seriously.
How convenient for you that you were joking; I’m sure Cleese will say the same if this reboot sees the light of day.
Dumb.
Dumb as saying the N-word I was talking about was the name of a town Cleese and/or his character lived in?
Move on.
Any actual evidence he wants to use the word?
How about his old person battle against woke culture? That’s the excuse most of these performers use.
I guess one problem is that it varies what a person means when they say “woke”. Not everyone who is “anti woke” is racist. The original meaning of woke was more or less “aware of injustice”. These days, it has changed. Now woke is making the little mermaid black or getting upset because Gwen Stefani says she is Japanese.
I’m guessing Cleese’s definition of woke means to be able to use racial slurs whenever you want just because you want to. I guess we’ll find out.
But what are you basing this on? Did he ever rail against the idea that is wrong for a white person to use the word? Or is this just another cliche “he’s conservative so he must be racist”?
I don’t know or care about his conservatism, I’m basing this on Cleese’s insistence that he’s been cancelled despite all evidence to the contrary. Cleese desperation to say the N-word just say it is one way to not go gentle into that good night of irrelevance I guess.
Leaving aside the question of whether this will or won’t continue Cleese’s recent conservative bent, an article I read the other day pointed out a larger problem with a ‘Fawlty Towers’ reboot: the show relied extensively on physical humour, and Cleese is presumably just not in the kind of shape to do that now. I mean, you could farm out the pratfalls to a younger cast member, but the lack of physical comedy from Cleese himself would be conspicuous by its absence.
No! I want to see some 80-year-old silly walks!
Reminder that Cleese is the biggest asshole from Monty Python. Michael Palin is probably the least assholeish member of the group, but all of them outside of maybe Terry Gilliam are waaaay better thnmen Cleese.
Source: trust me bro
Translation: the BBC took one look at the pitch of an increasingly cash-desperate and past-his-prime 82-year-old reviving his near-universally beloved almost 50-year-old sitcom with absolutely none of the people or elements that made it beloved all those decades ago and were like “Yeah nah, we’re good thanks.”
Counterpoint: The BBC presumably read the script of Hold the Sunset before giving it the go ahead, so there’s no script so dumb it can’t get green lit by the Beeb.
Yeah but they’re British, so I’m sure they were super-polite about it.
“Yeah but they’re British, so I’m sure they were super-polite about it.”
Um….what?
“The first TV broadcast by the BBC had 400 viewers, a number which they only can dream of today.”-Philomena Cunk
They were okay with the awful woke female doctor who, so I doubt they passed based on quality
Didn’t take the old gargoyle long at all, did it?
Is this the right thread for an argument?
Yes, but I only have enough money for the 5 minute.
I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to go on arguing unless you’ve paid!
But I did pay you!
When?
Just now!
No you didn’t!
Yes I did! Just now!
Look, just for context, this quote was given to GB News, where Cleese hangs out these days. It’s worth understanding that he was pandering to the cheap seats when he said it. Literally all they do on that whole channel is moan about wokeness and what the Guardian said. That’s not to say it’s any less annoying but before anyone goes to the effort of offering a serious response to this nonsense just remember it wasn’t intended to leave the echo chamber it was yelled into.Anyway the reason it’s not going back to the BBC is because they co-own some rights with Cleese, and own everything else outright. Every time he’s gone back to Basil Fawlty (eg the play), he’s had to pay them a licence fee.
There is very little financial incentive for them to fund the production of new episodes, and no part of their charter which currently makes it a particularly attractive idea either. They very probably have calculated that it’s better off overall to make money off the licencing.
“It’s worth understanding that he was pandering to the cheap seats when he said it.”
He was pandering to the cheap seats by saying it’s NOT about wokeness?
How is that pandering to his base? They would WANT it to be about how sad and pathetic wokeness is.
Like honestly, what the fuck are you talking about?
“Anyway the reason it’s not going back to the BBC is because they co-own some rights with Cleese, and own everything else outright. Every time he’s gone back to Basil Fawlty (eg the play), he’s had to pay them a licence fee.”
I’m sorry, do you think he *won’t* have to pay a license fee if he takes it to a different channel? That’s not how it works.If the BBC owns even a teeny, tiny part of FT, the BBC will have to be paid to use it. Period.
How is that worse than those whining Cleese is now a grumpy old man? There will be no “our whining is better than their whining” here.This site whines all the time about “anti-woke” celebrities.
I didn’t say it was worse, I was in fact trying to place it in a comparable context to the one you just did. If anything I was arguing for a small shred of empathy for Cleese: he was in his bubble talking to his people, same as us.
“The idea that it’s all going to be about wokery hadn’t particularly occurred to me.”
Uh huh.
Fawlty Towers came out in 1975, 50 years ago. If the BBC were to fund and air this sequel, it as if in 1975 they went with a sequel of a 1925 radio play instead of a show from an upstart comedian.It’s maddening how we’ll never get out of this Baby Boomer world. They’d rather destroy it than let the following generations takes their place.
He was born in 1939, so not a Boomer.
In total fairness, the whole point of this article is that the BBC aren’t funding this. This is going to end up dumped and forgotten somewhere in the streaming deluge.(Also, being a bit pedantic, but Cleese was born in 1939, which would technically make him Silent Generation.)That said, I was curious if there were any mid-1920s radio comedians still going on TV around the 1970s, and it turns out that of all the names I could find not one of them appears to have lived past 1951.
Pretty sure that in the USA these comedians were relegated to variety shows.
John Cleese is a classic ‘dont meet your heroes’ type of celebrity for me. I grew up memorizing all his Python work, I can still quote all of Holy Grail, and most of Life of Brian, Now for Something Completely Different… but once I started learning more about him as a person, I stopped caring about anything new from him. Come on John, “anti-woke nightmare”. Really?