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Reviews
Inside No. 9: The 12 Days of Christine (2015)
A small masterpiece
Quite simply the best short-format TV script ever written. A masterpiece.
An Inspector Calls (2018)
Professionally filmed but Am-Dram cast
This is well-produced and the crew know what they're doing, but the cast is out of its depth. Looks like a vanity project and isn't worth your time.
Fawlty Towers (1975)
The greatest sitcom until The Office came along
This is a truly great situation comedy. It is a sitcom on two levels - the macro situation (a crummy hotel in a crummy English "Rivierra" resort town, Torquay) and the micro situations, which changed for each of the 12 episodes and included dead guests, Germans, rats, hotel inspectors, amorous lovers, dodgy builders, awful snobs etc etc.
The writing is perfect, the characterisations spot on and the acting was of the highest order: you could almost believe that the dysfunctional marriage of Basil and Sybil was real (it is rumoured to be based on the real-life experiences of (the recently divorced) John Cleese (Basil Fawlty) and Connie Booth (Polly, the maid)).
But one should not forget great turns by the likes of Andrew Sachs, Ballard Berkeley, Bernard Cribbins and Prunella Scales, unforgettable as Basil's lazy, snobbish, social-climbing wife (a perfect foil for Basil, who was identical but in total denial).
Like The Office (its rightful successor), just when you think that it's too awful to watch, something happens to raise the humour beyond mere cringe-making, toe-curling embarrassment.
To think you know about comedy and to not have seen Fawlty Towers is like thinking you know about physics, but decided to skip the bit about Newton...