The first episode of Fawlty Towers was broadcast on 19 September 1975. We are now half a century distant from that point; as far away as the first episode of Fawlty Towers was from John Logie Baird’s first successful transmission of greyscale television pictures in 1925. And, while the creation of Fawlty Towers wasn’t a technical breakthrough on quite the same level, Fawlty Towers does feel almost as fundamental and foundational to the medium. Like the music of the Beatles, it’s become part of the dominant cultural language of the era.
In a 2019 list compiled by the Radio Times, the show was named the greatest ever British sitcom. Has anyone ever done it better? Fifty years seems a reasonable point at which to assess the show’s legacy and conclude that they probably haven’t. And even if anyone has, they were almost certainly following a template that John Cleese and Connie Booth’s English Riviera romp established.
