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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 198630" data-attributes="member: 23">As I've nothing new lined up to watch, I've given myself a little breathing space with a re-watch of something small but perfectly formed...<img src="https://deff.com/image/magictoolbox_cache/feabb61ae2a71c1844359f7cbe8b5d82/6/5/65229_product/original/2147290805/fTKOovgHdxAjukqFLC0iXA.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />It's quite some time since I last watched Fawlty Towers. Probably around a decade. It hasn't cropped up in this thread. Nor, as far as I can remember, did it form part of my viewing on the previous British Sitcom thread. I'm not sure I'll have anything new to say about the series. Someone, somewhere might do so someday. But an awful lot has been written about this series over the years. Rightly so, I think. I was saying in the Golden Globes thread how off-putting it can be when a project or person is so acclaimed, and that I want to rebel against it. Fawlty Towers is different. Perhaps because it's been the sitcom benchmark for as long as I've had an awareness of the genre. And one of those reassuring constants. Looking back at my childhood, it feels like it was repeated on BBC2 every Sunday evening. Even though it probably wasn't. It's difficult to imagine watching Fawlty Towers without a pre-existing awareness of Basil Fawlty, the lines and the awkward situations. Last night, while watching the first episode, I played a little game: trying to imagine I was one of those watching it during its very first airing. Seeing if I could be critical and objective. It's easier said than done, and within five minutes I was just letting the comforting familiarity wash over me. During those first five minutes a few things struck me. Firstly, there's a really interesting juggling act going on between the broad and the subtle. The characters are all larger than life, eccentric caricatures. So's the delivery a lot of the time. But there are lots of tiny brush strokes in between the paint roller application. The long scenes, static camera shots and limited sets contrast nicely with the running back and forth and the machine gun delivery of dialogue. There seems to be a lot of dialogue per episode. Many of the setups are around things not happening: alarm calls aren't made; pictures aren't hung; drinks aren't served... This is nicely at odds with so much happening in each scene. My memory of the pattern is that each episode starts slow and builds the frustration and chaos to a frenzied ending. But watching the first two episodes last night, it felt fast paced from the first scene. The appearances of the characters helps with the timelessness of the series. There's very little in there that says "1975". Yes, there's the Austin Maxi used in the location work, but in the confines of the set there's little to date this. In terms of wardrobe, the most Seventies thing was Mr Brown's gorgeous jacket. It's a given, really, but I still marvel at just how unpleasant Basil and Sybil are. With each re-watch I seem to underestimate just how awful they are. Great as the writing is, the delivery is everything. The line that made me laugh hardest of these first two episodes is an extremely innocuous one from Basil, but delivered by John Cleese to show such barely suppressed hatred wrapped in British phlegm. There was no mistaking his darkest hope when he told Sybil to: "Drive carefully, dear."</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?