More than 4 decades later, everyone’s favourite cocky, sarcastic and misanthropic hotel owner, Basil Fawlty, is set to return in a reboot of John Cleese and Connie Booth’s iconic British sitcom, “Fawlty Towers”.
While the original show only ran for a short-lived two season run, it achieved cult status, topping the British Film Institute’s list of 100 Greatest British Television Programmes in 2000, and in 2019 was declared the best British TV sitcom of all time by a panel of comedy experts compiled by the Radio Times. The show also continues to broadcast on BBC Two and is available to stream on BritBox.
The reboot is now in development under Rob Reiner’s Castle Rock Entertainment banner, with Reiner, Michele Reiner, Derrick Rossi and Matthew George executive producing, and Cleese returning to pen and star in the show, this time opposite his daughter Camilla Cleese.
Plot details are still very vague, but it is understood that the new series will explore the hapless hotel manager’s fraught relationship with the modern world, and also with a daughter he didn’t know he had until recently, as the two tempt fate and form a partnership to run a boutique hotel.
Commenting on the new collaboration, Cleese expressed his respect for George’s “understanding of the ‘creative process'” and recalled their first meeting as being “one of the best creative sessions I can remember”.
