Fawlty Towers was originally released by BBC Video in 1984, with three episodes on each of four tapes. Each tape was edited with the credits from all three episodes put at the end of the tape. A LaserDisc containing all episodes spliced together as a continuous episode was released in the U.S. on 23 June 1993. It was re-released in 1994, unedited but digitally remastered. It also was re-released in 1997 with a special interview with John Cleese. Fawlty Towers—The Complete Series was released on DVD on 16 October 2001, available in regions 1, 2 and 4. A "Collector's Edition" is available in region 2.

Sybil: Rats, doorknobs, birds, heights, open spaces, confined spaces, it's very difficult getting the space right for her... footballs, bicycles, cows, and she's always on about men following her. I don't know what she thinks they're going to do to her; vomit on her, Basil says... and death. The plots occasionally are intricate and always farcical, involving coincidences, misunderstandings, cross-purposes and meetings both missed and accidental. The innuendo of the bedroom farce is sometimes present (often to the disgust of the socially conservative Basil) but it is his eccentricity, not his lust, that drives the plots. The events test to the breaking point what little patience Basil has, sometimes causing him to have a near breakdown by the end of the episode. At first, the series was not held in particularly high esteem. The Daily Mirror's review of the show in 1975 had the headline "Long John Short On Jokes". [50] One critic of the show was Richard Ingrams, then television reviewer for The Spectator, who wrote a caustic piece condemning the programme. Cleese got his revenge by naming one of the guests in the second series "Mr. Ingrams", who is caught in his room with a blow-up doll. [51] Eventually, though, as the series began to gain popularity, critical acclaim followed. Clive James writing in The Observer said the second episode had him "retching with laughter." [52] The series focuses on the exploits and misadventures of short-fused hotelier Basil Fawlty and his acerbic wife Sybil, as well as their employees: waiter Manuel, Polly Sherman, and, in the second series, chef Terry. The episodes typically revolve around Basil's efforts to "raise the tone" of his hotel and his increasing frustration at numerous complications and mistakes, both his own and those of others, which prevent him from doing so.

Ignorant About Fire: In "The Germans", Manuel accidentally starts a fire in the kitchen. He tries to beat it out, but sets fire to his oven gloves, and spreads the fire round the kitchen. When filming this, his actor Andrew Sachs was badly burned, and was paid compensation. Cleese, John; Connie Booth (1988). The Complete Fawlty Towers. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-18390-4. Fawlty Towers is a British television sitcom written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, originally broadcast on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979. Two series of six episodes each were made. The show was ranked first on a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000 and, in 2019, it was named the greatest ever British TV sitcom by a panel of comedy experts compiled by the Radio Times. [2] [3]

In 2000, the British Film Institute declared it the best British television programme ever made. A few years ago, it was voted best UK sitcom ever in a poll, and J. Michael Straczynski said in a book on screenwriting that if an aspiring writer watches Fawlty Towers and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, they will have had the best possible grounding in how to write comedy. Sybil: I didn't think he'd forget our anniversary this year, not after what happened when he forgot last year.In "The Kipper and the Corpse", Dr Price happens to be staying at the hotel, so Sybil gets him to examine Mr Leeman after he dies in the night. The Major, a long-term guest at the hotel, is a Dottore figure: a somewhat-senile, rather racist old man with a pompous attitude and an inflated view of himself. Basil: Well, you should've thought of that before, shouldn't you? Too late now! Come on, out! Raus! Raus! RAUS!

In Name Only: Slightly averted case: In the 1980s, an American production company approached John Cleese with the intention of remaking the show for an American audience. When he asked them about it, they told him they'd only made one slight change from the original; they'd removed the character of Basil Fawlty. They end up making it, without the Basil Fawlty character, but changed the name right before air. It was called Amanda's and it starred Bea Arthur.Greatest TV Characters". Channel 4. Archived from the original on 31 May 2009 . Retrieved 26 May 2019.