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The show was picked over at considerable length on G.O.L.D., the comedy cable channel, in Fawlty Towers: Re-opened. This was billed as a huge exclusive, though it has never proved difficult to get John Cleese to talk about past triumphs. He was generous to Connie Booth, the wife who was his co-writer on both series and played Polly, the only sane person in the hotel. They divorced between the two series, but that didn’t reduce the painstaking quality at all. Later an American broadcaster bought the formula and remade it, but without Basil, on the grounds that he was too unsympathetic. By the same token you would remake Macbeth without Macbeth. Some people say that Fawlty Towers has dated, and it has — how could it not over 30 years? But if anything that adds to the charm. If they can revive Rookery Nook in the West End in 2009, I suspect we’ll be watching Basil 30 years from now.
Some programmes sneak up on you. You ignore them, then suddenly find half your friends and colleagues all talking about them. Take Come Dine with Me (Channel 4, passim), the antidote to cookery shows, Masterchef meets Big Brother. This has just ended, but will be back soon. Each week individuals cook meals in their own homes for the other competitors, who rate them out of ten. The winner gets £1,000, served on a silver platter — a suitably naff touch. What makes it hypnotic is that the dinner parties are dreadfully embarrassing. Often the food is inedible. It is served hours late. Either there is no booze at all, or far too much (one recent winner won by getting the others drunk before they ate. Her apéritif was a bowl of sangria: ‘It’ll take yer face off,’ she mused as she mixed).
The contestants are encouraged to bitch about each other — though it’s clear that the real mood is friendlier than the TV company wants, so it’s heavily edited to imply constant loathing. But if the contestants are barbed about each other, they are as nothing to the voice-over by someone called Dave Lamb, who is horrible to them all in a squeaky voice which relishes each disaster. The shows are cunningly edited to permit Dave his snappy comebacks. So it’s a daily dinner party from hell, an event which would appal Mike Leigh characters. No wonder it’s so popular.
There has been much hand-wringing about the cancellation of The South Bank Show. But there are still some terrific arts programmes on television, of which The Birth of British Music (BBC2, Saturday) is one. The first was about Purcell. It didn’t treat him as a 17th-century ’sleb — it actually included lots of his music. Classical music, on TV! There are three more, and I shall catch all of them.
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