Earlier this week, we reported that John Cleese was rebooting what is, in the aggregate, probably the second-most illustrious comedy project of his long and legendary comedy career: Fawlty Towers. (The first, of course, being his long-running commercial campaign on behalf of Schweppes Tonic Water.) Now Cleese has revealed that the series won’t be returning to its old home at the BBC, and will instead (aided, presumably, by the help of co-producer Rob Reiner) be shopped elsewhere. Also, the word “woke” gets worked in there, although to the credit of Cleese—who’s settled pretty comfortably into the “they don’t let you say things like they used to” portion of his elder comedy statesman status—only in response to other people bringing it up.
This is per Deadline, itself reporting on an interview Cleese gave this week to GB News, a U.K. outlet that’s usually described in Fox News-ish terms. Talking about the rebooted Fawlty—which will see him return to the role of pompous hotel manager Basil Fawlty, now living in the Caribbean—Cleese stated he had no interest in working with the BBC on the series because, “You wouldn’t get the freedom.”
The interviewers then brought up a recent Guardian piece that alleged that the new series would be “an anti-woke nightmare,” which Cleese responded to in typically withering fashion:
They obviously know better than I do what’s going to be in it. Maybe they should write an episode for me that they would find acceptable. Might not be very funny, but I’m sure it would really please some of their readers. The idea that it’s all going to be about wokery hadn’t particularly occurred to me.
The Fawlty Towers revival was developed by Cleese and his daughter, Camilla Cleese, working with producer and Reiner associate Matthew George.
