Fawlty Towers: The Complete Collection—Remastered

After leaving Monty Python's Flying Circus, John Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth created a show that remains one of the most celebrated British comedies ever made: Fawlty Towers. Cleese stars as Basil Fawlty, the insolent, hilariously obnoxious hotel owner, and Booth plays Polly, the maid forever enlisted to help him cover up the disasters created by his penny-pinching shortcuts and ill-advised brainstorms. The ensemble—which also includes Prunella Scales as Basil's tart-tongued wife, Sybil, and Andrew Sachs as the perpetually confused waiter, Manuel—is brilliant; but it's Cleese who makes every episode soar to heights of comic genius, punctuating Basil's outrageous faux pas with absurd gymnastics and transforming Three Stooges–style pokes and kicks into a slapstick ballet. The series has been frequently rerun in both Britain (where it originally aired in 1975 on BBC2) and the United States, and its popularity has made it a staple of public TV programming during fund drives. It's hard to believe that this impressive legacy rests on a run of merely 12 episodes, but there's nary a misstep in the bunch. Although previously available on DVD, Fawlty Towers has been newly remastered for this three-disc set, which includes supplements from the earlier release, such as audio commentaries by directors John Howard Davies and Bob Spiers, as wells as interviews with Cleese, Scales, and Sachs. New features include Cleese's commentary for every episode (providing a master class in television comedy—from writing to directing to performing), and interviews, including one with Booth. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)