If Doctor Who has an ‘indefinable magic’, then Fawlty Towers has a very definable magic to it. It’s easily the most universally loved and acclaimed sit-com in British television history, basically because it’s excruciatingly funny, but its success is not just down to the humour.

If the term ‘sit-com’ is derived from the words ‘situation’ and ‘comedy’, then it’s also the situation aspect of Fawlty Towers which is a major part of its success. The idea of the hotel setting was not one that John Cleese thought up out of the blue; it’s a fairly well known fact that the inspiration came from Cleese’s real-life experience of staying in a Torquay hotel whilst on location filming with the Monty Python team in the early 70’s. The proprietor of the hotel, being as rude and uncivilised to his guests as we know Basil Fawlty is, was an obvious choice of character on which to base a sit-com, but it’s also the characters around Basil that Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth subsequently created and developed which gave the series it’s full-bodied and rounded feeling of reality. Comedy always works best when it’s based around reality; the ridiculing of something we all know or can relate to is an almost guaranteed way of getting a laugh, something which a lot of stand-up comedians are aware of and use in their acts.

Every time I watch an episode of Fawlty Towers, regardless of how many times I’ve seen it, I always laugh but not necessarily at the same things. The depth of characterisation and the clever intertwining of the different plot elements allows for so many things to be happening at once that you’ll nearly always spot something that you didn’t notice before. Another stroke of genius by Cleese and Booth was to ensure that Basil was surrounded by a gaggle of regular characters that were always there to wind him up. If it’s not Sybil nagging him to put the picture up, it’s Manuel and his incapacity to understand anything Basil says. At other times it was the Major who, although a benign figure as far as Basil is concerned, lost most of his marbles years ago and so simply frustrates Basil as he exhausts himself struggling to have a sensible conversation. And of course there’s the many hotel guests who come an go in each episode (mostly go, if Basil has anything to do with it). Most of them are harmless people, in Torquay on business or for a weekend break, but some of them really start pushing it by asking if they can watch television or have breakfast in bed. And some of them are just downright unreasonable, such as Mrs Richards who wants a room with a bath and sea view when she already has both, or the American guests who want a hot meal at 9pm after the kitchen has closed and the chef has gone home.

It really doesn’t matter to Basil; all the guests staying at Fawlty Towers are an annoyance to him by their mere existence. The only character in the entire series that Basil has any time for is Polly – the only sane person in an insane world. Cleese and Booth very cleverly made sure that there was always one character for Basil to be able to relate to with some sort of normality. Polly is not only the faithful but overworked maid, but also acts as unofficial cleaner, waitress and sometimes cook. She’s also someone whom Basil confides in and calls upon for assistance as the situations around him become ever more desperate. He asks her to keep some illicit gambling winnings to one side for him in case Sybil discovers them, he bribes her to impersonate his ‘sick’ wife in order to convince their friends that Sybil has not, in fact, stormed out on their wedding anniversary. He orders her to entertain some hungry local toffs on Gourmet Night (which she does so admirably with a selection of ‘songs from the shows’) whilst he attempts to source another roast duck to replace the one that Manuel has trodden on.

This is the brilliance of both John Cleese and Connie Booth as writers, who covered absolutely every base in order to make Fawlty Towers the flawless show that it was – and still is. But as brilliant as they were as writers, the script was nothing without a cast of consummate actors in conjunction with two extremely capable BBC directors who could bring their characters to life. Fawlty Towers is such a well-loved and fondly remembered series, and the characters so embedded in our consciousness that it’s nigh-on impossible to imagine any other actors in any of the roles other than those who played them. The enormous talent of John Cleese and Connie Booth is reiterated by the fact that they appeared in the series themselves as two of the major characters, and played them with such verve and humanity that they jump out of the screen at you whilst still being completely believable. Sybil would not, I’m certain, be anywhere near as annoying and grating had Prunella Scales not been the force behind the character. And who could forget Manuel, one of my favourite characters in the series, portrayed seamlessly and effortlessly by Andrew Sachs. If you didn’t know who the actor was, you would swear that he really was Spanish, a fact that should be especially applauded when you consider that Sachs initially pleaded with Cleese that he change the nationality of the waiter to German as he felt he couldn’t manage a Spanish accent. The actors chosen to play the ancillary characters throughout the series were all of the highest standard, most of whom were legendary British comic actors such as Bernard Cribbins, Joan Sanderson, Ballard Berkeley, James Cossins, Geoffrey Palmer and Allan Cuthbertson.

What actually is it that sets Fawlty Towers above all others as the greatest sit-com ever, even above other such luminaries as Yes, Minister and Blackadder? I’m a huge fan of both Yes Minister and Blackadder, but where Fawlty Towers is more successful is that it’s based around an everyday situation which we can all relate to. We’re not all familiar with the internal workings of British politics or the life below stairs of a Regency butler, but most of us have stayed in a hotel of one sort or another, and it’s this that tips Fawlty Towers as the most universally acclaimed of all sit-coms.

I’d already started to write reviews for two or three episodes, but I suddenly realised that I’d begun to repeat myself in describing the basis for the humour in each individual episode. What had finally dawned on me after all these years of being such a devoted fan of Fawlty Towers is that each episode actually involves the same basic issues with regards to Basil himself, he of course being the central character around which the stories and other characters evolve. To that end, I’ve decided to write an introductory piece exploring these basic principles instead of making a detailed analysis within each episode, primarily to avoid repetition but also to allow myself to concentrate on the more individual aspects which make each of the episodes so brilliantly funny in their own right.

To whit, the following list comprises the four main motivations for humour as far as the principle character of Basil is concerned:

Social Climbing - Basil’s reaction to people of differing classes is acutely polarised, whether they be guests, friends, staff or other miscellaneous persons who have the misfortune to meet him. The moment he encounters someone who he believes is more educated, from the upper class or has a higher social standing than him, he quickly does his best to elevate himself into their world through the most audacious and cringeworthy displays of fawning, grovelling and toadying of the highest order. Of course he fails miserably every time; all the so-called superior people merely nod and smile in order to humour him, but he’s so caught up in his own ingratiating behaviour that he doesn’t notice. This attitude can also change at a moment’s notice if he happens to realise that a particular person is in fact not what they seem, whether it be an illusion which they have purposely created or is simply a mistake on Basil’s part.

The Lower Classes - The same principle applies to Basil’s attitude towards those whom he believes are common, ignorant or somewhat lower on the evolutionary scale than he is, though of course it is now he who considers himself to be in the upper echelons of society and thus he feels it’s his duty to push those below him even further down the social ladder. Once in a situation where he has to deal with anyone ‘inferior’ to himself, he’ll immediately try to put them in their place with, for example, his supposed skill with a foreign language, or perhaps a few outrageous put-downs with regards to a person’s dress-sense or more common way of speaking. Again, usually he’s soon left flailing in limbo when his current victim turns out to be more sexually attractive to women (including Sybil) or far more fluent in that foreign language than he. In these instances he becomes insanely jealous and tries even harder through his seething rage to simultaneously elevate himself and belittle them.

Sex - Basil is scared stiff of sex in all its forms, basically because he doesn’t get any himself and thus doesn’t really understand it. As an Englishman through and through, and in light of his forced abstinence, he also disapproves highly of anyone else getting any, especially if they happen to be getting it in his hotel. Even the slightest whiff of flirtation both worries and annoys him greatly, and woe betide whoever happens to be unwittingly rubbing his nose in it.

Misunderstandings - Basil seems to constantly misunderstand or at least misinterpret all those around him, and occasionally vice-versa, of course. Sometimes it’s through the deafness of a guest such as Mrs Richards, on other occasions it’s a foreign language which causes the confusion - an everyday problem with Manuel, and sometimes it’s because people just aren’t on his wavelength, a regular occurrence in his day-to-day dealings with the hotel’s longest-serving resident, Major Gowan.

So stand by to be shouted at, insulted, hit on the head with a frying pan, have milk poured into your briefcase, but most of all laugh yourself silly as we revisit the greatest TV sitcom in the world. Ever.