Fawlty Towers

Fawlty Towers is a British television sitcom written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, originally broadcast on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979. Two series of six episodes each were made. The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a dysfunctional hotel in the English seaside town of Torquay in Devon. The plots centre on the tense, rude and put-upon owner, Basil Fawlty (Cleese), his bossy wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), the sensible chambermaid Polly (Booth), and the hapless and English-challenged Spanish waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs). They show their attempts to run the hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding and eccentric guests and tradespeople.

Fawlty Towers was inspired by the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, where Cleese and the rest of the Monty Python group stayed in 1970. The snobby and eccentric owner, Donald Sinclair, was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty. He is not to be confused with the eccentric Yorkshire vet Donald Sinclair who was the inspiration for the character Siegfried Farnon, in the semi-autobiographical books of James Herriot, adapted for television as All Creatures Great and Small.