Richard Curtis has said Blackadder was "written out of fear" of Fawlty Towers: he and Rowan Atkinson knew any modern sitcom they wrote would be rubbish beside it, so they set theirs in the past.
TV Series· 1975· Comedy
Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers: 2 recorded works trace back to it, and it draws on 1 recorded source.
What Fawlty Towers influenced
Works that record this one as a source, with the evidence a contributor gave.
From a list. Sam Bain names Fawlty Towers among the British sitcoms that shaped them: a furious, snobbish man whose schemes to save face always make things worse.
Real-world influences
Events, places, movements and ideas outside fiction that this work is recorded as drawing on.
Personal Experiences
Real world
Real-world influenceHIGH
- A Stay at the Gleneagles Hotel, Torquay (1970)
Basil Fawlty is a real man. In 1970 the Monty Python team stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay while filming, and the proprietor, Donald Sinclair, was so spectacularly rude that the rest of the team moved out and John Cleese stayed on to watch him. The documented incidents are in the series: Sinclair threw Eric Idle's briefcase over a wall in case it contained a bomb, criticised an American guest's table manners, and told another that guests were expected to eat at the time stated. Cleese and Connie Booth built the show on him. His widow denied the portrayal for years; the team have named him repeatedly as the source.