Almost half a century after it was created, fans still arrive in Torquay searching for traces of Fawlty Towers. They visit the site of the hotel that inspired the sitcom, hoping that their B&B hosts might have a bit of Basil and Sybil about them, and savour that melancholy feeling of fading British seaside grandeur that pervades the show and can still be felt in the Devon resort.
The announcement this week that John Cleese is to reboot the 1970s sitcom was greeted with a mixture of excitement and concern on the English Riviera. Excitement that it may give a boost to tourism, concern that the legacy of one of Britain’s most revered shows could be tarnished if Cleese doesn’t get it right.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Peter Bland, who runs The Somerville B&B. “Anything that puts the focus back on Torquay has to be a good thing.”
Bland admits that his guests think of him as a Fawlty character. “I know I’m a bit quirky. I like a bit of fun with my guests, I think that’s why you come to a small hotel or B&B rather than a soulless chain hotel.”
He pays his own tribute to the famous Fawlty Towers scene in which a guest complains about her view, prompting Basil to ask if she expected to see herds of wildebeest. Two of Bland’s rooms face brick walls so he livened them up with murals of seascapes. “I make a big deal of showing guests in and pointing out the view. Most don’t get it and look at me as if I’m a lunatic.”
Up the hill from The Somerville is the site of the Gleneagles Hotel, where Cleese and Fawlty Towers co-writer Connie Booth stayed in 1971 and came across hosts Donald and Beatrice Sinclair, whose chilly hospitality led them to create Basil and Sybil.
The Gleneagles is no more, replaced by retirement apartments named Sachs Lodge in tribute to Andrew Sachs, who played Spanish waiter Manuel.
“Fans still come and have a look,” said Margaret Cunniffe-Smith, one of the residents who loves her view of Lyme Bay and does not regret the lack of wildebeests. “They have an open bus tour and wave at us as they go past. I’m looking forward to finding out what Basil is up to now. It will make us famous again.”
Down on the seafront, Kia Zarezadeh, who runs a souvenir shop, said he often had visitors – especially Germans – asking where the hotel was. “There’s so much affection for the show. But I do worry about how they’ll update it. It’s a different world, different attitudes to comedy.”
Over at the Grand Hotel – the sort of upmarket hotel that Basil wanted to run – they are staging a Fawlty Towers Weekend later this month. Guests are checked into their room by actors playing Basil, Sybil and Manuel and join them for afternoon tea, dinner and breakfast.
Carolyn Custerton, the chief executive of the English Riviera BID company, said she was delighted there was going to be a new series. “We share the Fawlty Towers story with our visitors, many of whom come to visit Torquay because of the Fawlty Towers connections. I wonder where the new hotel will be?”
Actually, Cleese has suggested the show may be set not in the Devon resort but perhaps in a “bijou” hotel in the Caribbean.
Tony Lidington, a Devon showman and expert on British seaside entertainment, said: “The real question is how might the new series be different. God forbid that they try to recreate the original characters, or their original prejudices. It simply did not work when Oliver Parker tried to recreate Dad’s Army in the 2016 film because the Home Guard, the characters and their relevance to 21st-century society was nonexistent, so it became a sort of homage or impersonation of the original.”
Lidington said there would be ample subject matter if it was set again in Devon. “There is so much rich material to be mined for comedy in the world of the contemporary British seaside and how it has changed since the 1970s: the impact of global warming, Brexit, social media and computerisation, the employment of different cultures and of course the impact of a new generation of guests and staff on an aged proprietor, who by now will be as archaic and moribund as the Major in the original.”
Phil Wickham, curator at The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter and an expert on the British sitcom, said the series would always be associated with the English Riviera and the new incarnation should be given a chance.
“But there will be disquiet at the news of its return. Some will ask whether it is wise to add to something that never outstayed its welcome and will wonder whether it will work uprooted from its time. It will be fascinating to see how it unfolds.”
