In my college creative writing class, I watched two episodes, “The Kipper and the Corpse” and “Basil the Rat”, of the British comedy TV show Fawlty Towers starring John Cleese. Fawlty Towers is about Basil and Sybil Fawlty, a couple that owns a hotel in England. In each episode some sort of trouble occurs.
In ” The Kipper and the Corpse “, Mr. Leeman one of the guests dies in his sleep. Basil Fawlty takes the Mr. Leeman’s breakfast to his room as the man requested the evening before. Basil does not realize that Mr. Leeman is dead; he simply thinks Mr. Leeman is not in a talkative mood. Minutes later when Polly takes Mr. Leeman his milk, she discovers that Mr. Leeman has died. The rest of the episode consists of Basil and Manuel carrying Mr. Leeman’s body around the hotel and hiding it so guests will not find out that a dead man is inside the hotel. Guests begin to complain about how they have been neglected, and Mr. Leeman’s friends come back to the hotel to fetch him. When the guests and Sybil Fawlty see Mr. Leeman’s body sitting up on the hat and coat rack, Sybil calls for Basil, but he has been taken away in the laundry truck after hiding in the laundry basket.
In ” Basil the Rat “, the Health and Safety inspector is threatening to close down Fawlty Towers if a long list of violations are not fixed by the time the Health and Safety inspector returns the next day. While the hotel staff fixes the violations, Basil Fawlty finds out that Manuel has a pet rat ironically named Basil, or as Manuel naively refers to it, a Siberian hamster. In fear that the Health and Safety inspector will find the rat, Basil instructs Manuel to get rid of the rat. Manuel refuses and hides the rat away in a shed near the hotel. Unfortunately, the rat gets out of the shed and returns to the hotel, while the Health and Safety inspector revisits the hotel for a follow up inspection to see if the violations have been fixed. Basil poisons a piece of veal in an attempt to catch the rat, yet the inspector orders veal as his meal and Basil fears the inspector received the poisoned piece. Basil brings the inspector several different pieces of veal at different times because he cannot figure out which piece has the poison. Manuel and Polly are both searching for the rat, which has been spotted in the dining room. Eventually, the rat ends up in a box of biscuits. Basil offers the inspector a biscuit, only to see the rat sitting in the biscuit tin looking right at the inspector. The episode ends shortly after with Manuel dragging a fainted Basil out of the room.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching Fawlty Towers. The show is hilarious! Slapstick comedy is something I have always enjoyed watching, whether it is in a TV show or movie. I found the episode ” Basil the Rat ” to be the better of the two episodes. It seemed like a more relatable and realistic event, and an easier occurrence to make comedic. In The Kipper and the Corpse, I did not understand why Basil did not keep Mr. Leeman in the room where they found him. It created less rooms in the hotel for new guests, but it disrespected Mr. Leeman by transporting him all over the hotel. I thought it was a funny episode, but had some bad taste. Over all, I think Fawlty Towers is a funny TV show, but some of the things that occurred in these two episodes seemed forced in order to provide comedy.
