"I'm sick to death with you..." or External Character Conflicts in Fawlty Towers (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Passau, course: English Comedies, 1500 to 2000, language: English, abstract: Even 30 years after its first debut on BBC 2 Fawlty Towers is still "a high-water-mark in television comedy" (Perry 1994: 75). The show won various prizes, for example the Award for Best Comedy Series in both years when it was broadcasted, in 1975 for the first series and in 1979 for the second. As further proof of its popularity one may take a look at the high viewer rates of the repetitions still shown and the presence of catch phrases (e.g. "He's from Barcelona" or "Don't mention the war") within the British public's mind. The reasons for the success are various: well written scripts with dialogs that show a clear Monty Python tradition and unpredictable plots that give no clue of the end up to the final scene. Furthermore, the performance and comedy timing of John Cleese as Basil Fawlty or the extraordinary character of the waiter Manuel make Fawlty Towers unforgettable. Another source of success are the numerous conflicts within the series. These conflicts fuel the plot and the conflict between Basil and Sybil is the main theme of many episodes. Therefore analyzing and categorizing the conflicts is of great importance to understand the motives and aims of the characters in Fawlty Towers. The question that arises then is: what kind of conflicts are shown in Fawlty Towers?

The answer to this question cannot be found in any secondary literature but has to be looked for in the series itself. Some little help can be found in Reinhard Gratzke's epilogue in a printed version of John Cleese's Fawlty Towers or in Robert Langston's book about John Cleese. But with only twelve episodes produced there is not much academic literature available about Fawlty Towers. A closer look at the constellation of the characters, their conflicts and the interaction of the characters that takes place will therefore be the main basis of the analysis. The following categorization of conflicts is the result of the effort to structure the material into conflicts that are essentially of the same type, although they may appear in numerous variations throughout the series. These categories are defined within each paragraph. To facilitate further research the episode the conflict appears will be listed in parenthesis after a quotation.