Fawlty Towers - Complete (DVD 2001)

Perhaps the most striking thing about "Fawlty Towers" is that, with so few episodes, it remains irrepressibly funny. No matter how often you watch, even should you become word perfect in the scripts, the action remains hilarious, not to mention outrageous. John Cleese and Connie Booth produced a masterpiece of comedy. Packaged here in three discs, the two series are accompanied by some less than memorable extras - a couple of interviews and a commentary - but, frankly, you don't buy a package like this for the extras, you buy it for the hours and hours of rib-breaking laughter.
"Fawlty Towers" does more than expose the incompetent, amateurish pomposity and rigid morality which seemed to characterise so many English hotels in the 1970's … particularly those of the seaside variety - 'Kiss Me Quick' hats and saucy postcards, but be back in your room by ten, no hanky panky, and breakfast is at eight!

Basil Fawlty runs his hotel the way some people run a private prison. The patrons are there to do as they are told … unless they can prove a certain social cachet. Cleese satirises the 'Englishness' of the seaside hotelier - racism in his treatment of Manuel and middle class consciousness in his treatment of the Irish labourers, the xenophobia and dreams of imperial glory in his attitude to the Germans, the prim outlook on sex, the cloying efforts to move up the ranks and mix with the upper classes while patronising American money, the horror of illness and death, the sheer terror in the face of psychiatry or even bureaucracy.

The ensemble cast are outrageously funny - incisive wit parallels slapstick comedy and farce in the finest traditions of the English stage. "Fawlty Towers", although a television programme, has that sense of live performance, that aura of being performed on stage for your delectation and delight. Perhaps that's what makes it watchable again and again - even in the latest technology of DVD it still appears as a live stage act. The humour remains somehow spontaneous.

But the humour isn't passive, it actively infects your consciousness. You can't pass a leylandii without wanting to uproot it and thrash a small car. You can't open a tin of biscuits without wondering if there will be a rat within. Every time I see a Waldorf salad on a menu, I snigger. Every time I reach round a corner to switch a light on … well, I live in hope.

You'll find all twelve episodes here - "A Touch of Class", "The Builders", "The Wedding Party", "The Hotel Inspectors", "Gourmet Night", "The Germans", "Communication Problems", "The Psychiatrist", "Waldorf Salad", "The Kipper and the Corpse", "The Anniversary", "Basil the Rat". The very titles are cue for laughter. Sound and picture quality are excellent. The quality of the writing and performance is timeless. The only thing wrong with both series appearing in one package is that you are emphatically reminded how few episodes there were. This really is a case of leave 'em wanting more!