Fawlty Towers to return with John Clees

[cakeorwine]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64563839

John Cleese, who played Basil Fawlty, will be returning to write and star alongside his daughter Camilla Cleese.
The new series will explore how the dramatic and cynical Basil navigates the modern world.
Castle Rock Entertainment announced on Tuesday it had closed a deal with Cleese to bring back the television series.
The revival will also see Basil and a daughter he has just discovered is his, team up to run a boutique hotel.

Interesting to see how it is - I can see lots of potential targets for him, lots of misunderstandings..and maybe a potential audience.

The original was a classic - maybe classics should be left alone.

I wonder who the target audience will be - and who we are supposed to feel sympathy with?

Will he have issues with gay couples, trans people, bureaucracy, taxes? Will there be potential racism? Xenophobia?

I am sure there are a lot of potential plot lines.

This is such a bad idea.

HA! 😄

I don't know if it will be worth a watch he can't be slapping tiny waiters like the good old days.

I don't like the new open all hours. Some things should be left alone.

I don’t want to dismiss it entirely, as despite not coming across as the nicest of people, John Cleese is still a great talent. But it’s hard not to feel that this is simply the last card he has available to play. He’s said countless times he’d never want to tarnish its legacy. What’s changed, apart from needing the cash?

No Sybil, no Manuel… I can’t see Connie Booth wanting to be involved either. The whole thing could simply end up an unnecessary footnote to something great.

🙄🙄🙄

Is there any thread that someone won’t turn into “The problem with this country is…”?

Worth noting that Castle Rock is an American company.

So JC is giving himself a platform to perform his anti-woke, political-correctness-gone-mad agenda?

I’ll give that a swerve. It’ll be even less funny than the massively overrated original.

The funniest thing about John Cleese is that his real name is John Cheese.

Why would you change it? It’s the perfect name!

Cleese was a young ish man when he did FT, it was very funny, he is now 83.

If he tried a silly walk now, he'd break his hip, maybe the new Faulty Towers will be about a cantankerous old man in a Care home off the coast of south devon?

There are many brilliant young comedians in the UK, can't we show case these?

Yes the Yanks do like English nostalgia

After reading some of his latest rants, I think it may be difficult to distinguish between him and his character in an updated FT.

I grew up loving FT, but no. It couldn’t be done nowadays and be funny.

Id watch new episodes based on the old ones created by ChatGPT, though.

That would seal the deal for me. Anything Piers thinks, I usually think the opposite.

It might be good. I enjoyed the original a load. I agree that bits have aged and I've not seen it recently. I'll wait and see.

I used to watch this as a child with family. I’ll certainly watch it.

Does anyone know where I can watch the original? It’s been years since I watched it as a child and found it so funny. I’d like to rewatch it with my kids to see if it’s stood the test of time but I can’t find it anywhere.

Totally agree with this

The minute I heard this, I thought it was a terrible idea for all the reasons others have posted. I assumed that he was doing it to try to get his daughter a break into showbiz.

Dreadful idea.

Watched an episode of the original quite recently. It was awful.

I loved Fawlty Towers and I think it worked well because it didn't run for years and years. However, some of the funniest characters were Sybil, Manuel and the chef. Without those, I cant see it working for the modern age.

This! The original fawlty towers & others like only fools & horses sadly have no place in our offended, zero SOH world.

thank goodness we still have Ricky Gervais😁

I can't really see it working without Sybil, but who knows.

Also, it wasn't a solo thing, it was co-written by Connie Booth..who presumably isn't involved.
Just leave it alone John.

Is it not on Iplayer?

Reviving classics just doesn't work. Leave it alone.

No, I’ve checked iPlayer, Amazon Prime, Netflix and Apple TV