Line #114 Characters/FawltyTowers


1	!Basil Fawlty
2	[[quoteright:153:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/FawltyTowers.jpg]]
3	[[caption-width-right:153: TranquilFury summed up in one image.]]
4	-->'''Played by''': Creator/JohnCleese
5
6	The main character of the series. A rude, pompous, pretentious, bullying, hostile, misanthropic, classist and unpleasant man who hates pretty much everyone he interacts with, Basil has inexplicably decided to open and run a hotel. He's not very good at it.
7
8	* AccidentalPervert: He became this in "The Psychiatrist", in which his efforts to prove that one of his guests broke the rules by sneaking his girlfriend into a room lead him into one NotWhatItLooksLike after another.
9	** Also happens in "The Wedding Party" when Basil keeps getting caught by the guests in NotWhatItLooksLike situations [[HoYay with Manuel]].[[invoked]]
10	* TheAllegedCar: His Austin 1100 Countryman. When it refuses to start, he proceeds to scream at his car before giving it a "damn good thrashing" with a tree branch.
11	* BadBoss: He is incredibly verbally abusive and demeaning to his employees, and even gets physically violent with Manuel.
12	* BerserkButton: Whenever anyone suggests that he's incapable of running a hotel, his behavior goes from rude to insanely vindictive.
13	* BlatantLies: Basil's go-to solution for nearly everything. Attempts to sustain the ''original'' lie with a handful of new ones frequently lead to FawltyTowersPlot.
14	* BritishStuffiness: Has an absolute aversion to the merest hint of anything involving sex.
15	--> "Batteries eh? You know something? You ''disgust'' me"
16	* CassandraTruth: His tendency to lie about anything at all that might get him in trouble (see BlatantLies above) causes most people to not believe him when he ''is'' telling the truth. Of note, he tries to explain to his wife that he wasn't peeping on a a female guest, but rather trying to bust another guest for sneaking someone in. His wife's reaction?
17	--> "You've had eight hours to think of something. Is that really the ''best'' you could come up with?"
18	* TheChewToy: Fate really likes to dump on Basil Fawlty. Unusually for this trope, Basil tends to set ''himself'' up for the trouble he gets into, thanks to his compulsive lying, miserliness, penchant for crazy schemes despite being nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is, and other numerous character faults.
19	* TheComicallySerious: The character himself was designed with this trope in mind. John Cleese has mentioned in interviews that his guiding principle when designing Basil Fawlty was: Someone having something embarrassing happen to them? That isn't funny. But someone having something embarrassing happen to them, and then trying to ''press on'', as though everything is ''normal''? That's '''''hilarious'''''.
20	* CuttingCorners: One of Basil's more notable vices is his obsession with doing things as cheaply as possible; for this reason, he continually is willing to employ notorious CrookedContractor Mr. O'Reily despite the man's ineptitude -- indeed, the only reason that Manuel ''has'' a job in Fawlty Towers is that Basil has decided the low wages he can pay Manuel due to his immigrant status compensates for the fact Manuel's pathetic grasp of English makes him a completely unreliable worker. He persists in this behavior despite the fact he is repeatedly hit over the head with the fact that [[YouGetWhatYouPayFor low price for low quality is not a good trade]].[[invoked]]
21	* CryingWolf:
22	** He works so hard to set up a fire drill and gets into a spat about it (you have to see the whole conversation to understand), where Manuel is supposed to yell "Fire!" and then they all calmly walk out. Then Manuel screws it all up by starting not one, but two ''real'' fires in the kitchen. [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments Basil then calmly ushers Manuel back into the burning kitchen as he tries to explain that it's just a drill]].
23	** His compulsive lying also leads to a huge problem in both "The Anniversary" and especially "The Psychiatrist", wherein he actually is in rare situations involving maintaining a farcical-sounding position that happens to be the exact truth.
24	* DeadpanSnarker: Probably one of the most sarcastic characters in history. Almost 80% of what he says is sarcastic and rude. There are a lot of [[DeadpanSnarker deadpan snarkers]] in this comedy series, but Basil just takes it up to a whole new level.
25	* EvilVersusEvil: Downplayed. ''Evil'' is far too strong a word for any character in this series (the closest it comes is a confidence trickster in the first episode, and that the ultimately unmade story for TheMovie would have featured a terrorist as an IneffectualSympatheticVillain), but Basil against his wife and 90% of the guests is usually a case of Jerkass vs Jerkass.
26	* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: All twelve episodes see him completely and utterly fail in whatever he tries to do. His greatest success, at the end of the tenth episode, is merely ''escaping'' just before everything goes to pot and making Sybil have to deal with it, but even that doesn't change that everything else before that failed completely.
27	* FatalFlaw: Basil's failures are brought upon his ''insane'' temper and snobbishness.
28	* HairTriggerTemper: It doesn't take much provocation in the slightest to set Basil off on anything from a sarcastic quip to an angry tirade, depending on how personally he takes it.
29	* HenpeckedHusband: As bad as Basil can be, it's made very clear that being married to Sybil isn't particularly fun either.
30	* HistoricalVillainDowngrade: He was based on a real hotel owner named Donald Sinclair. You might think his flaws were exaggerated for comedic effect, but at least one of his former employees says he was ''even worse'' than Basil. At the very least Sinclair's wife complained it was an exaggeration and it was Cleese's team that were rude and unreasonable.
31	* {{Jerkass}}: One of the most iconic in British comedy. Basil is an UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist by virtue of the fact that he openly hates his wife, his guests, his staff, and just about everyone who isn't rich that could put Basil in a better social standing. And even then, [[JerkWithAHeartOfJerk the niceness to rich people is only skin-deep]].
32	* JerkassHasAPoint: He does have a point when he complains about the guests, as some of them really are as obnoxious and unpleasant as he is. It's just that even though Polly and Manuel find themselves in agreement with Basil a lot of the time, he's still such an ass that they can't help but root against him.
33	* LargeHam: When he's upset (which is often), he'll resort to screaming at the top of his lungs and ChewingTheScenery. At one point, Basil got so upset with his car refusing to start that he started hitting the car with a tree branch. No one else at the hotel even comes remotely close to Basil's level of chaotic energy when he's upset.[[invoked]]
34	* LeanAndMean: His wife calls him an "an aging, brilliantined stick insect".
35	* MotorMouth: Has a tendency for fast-paced rants when he's upset.
36	* NeverMyFault: This is basically the core of his entire personality.
37	-->'''Basil:''' ''(muttering)'' I'm so sorry I made a mistake, I'm so sorry I made a mistake...
38	-->''(opens door to guest's room)''
39	-->'''Basil:''' I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but ''my wife'' has made a mistake.
40	* NoAccountingForTaste: He and Sybil actively hate each other. Her mother has no idea how they even ended up together, suggesting black magic.
41	-->'''Basil:''' Well she'd know, wouldn't she? Her and that cat.
42	* OneHeadTaller: Basil towers over Sybil, but hilariously, he still jumps a mile whenever she barks "BASIL!" at him.
43	* ProfessionalButtKisser: He quickly adopts a much more reverential attitude in the presence of authority figures, which is most pronounced with "Lord Melbury" and the men he believes to be hotel inspectors.
44	* PunnyName: It's no accident that his surname sounds like "Faulty".
45	* PsychopathicManChild: He can throw extremely child-like tantrums or get caught up in the silliest schemes, but his mad-eyed viciousness towards whoever he feels has slighted him can honestly be kind of scary.
46	* SexlessMarriage: Given how little Basil and Sybil actively like each other, it's made pretty obvious that their marriage involves absolutely nothing sexual at all. (Perhaps that's for the best-- could you ''imagine'' being a child raised by these two?!)
47	* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: He desires to move up in social standing and attract a better class of customer to his hotel, but he's also verbally abusive to the help, only superficially nice to his guests, and his HairTriggerTemper and [[FawltyTowersPlot persistent zany schemes built on webs of lies]] keep getting him into all kinds of trouble. Were Basil simply more honest and maybe a little cooler-headed, most of his problems would disappear, but [[JerkWithAHeartOfJerk any attempts to dig beneath the surface show how petty and shallow he is]], and [[AesopAmnesia any lessons he learns are quickly forgotten]]. Creator Creator/JohnCleese has said that, were Basil a good person, ''Fawlty Towers'' would be the greatest tragedy ever made.
48	* VillainProtagonist: In some episodes, Basil's jerkass behaviour makes him out to be the bad guy, such as when he begins to antagonize an American tourist because he's an American.
49
50
51	!Sybil Fawlty
52	-->'''Played by''': Creator/PrunellaScales
53
54	Basil's wife, who coexists in a relationship of warm mutual loathing with him. While generally horrible to Basil himself, she has much better people skills than him but balances this with a general disinclination to help out around the hotel.
55
56	* AnnoyingLaugh: Basil compares it to "somebody machine-gunning a seal".
57	* BeehiveHairdo: Which Basil refers to as a "rat's maze" during a row.
58	* BrilliantButLazy: Perhaps "brilliant" is too strong a word, but she's a far more competent hotelier than Basil on the rare occasions that she stops gossiping and actually does some work.
59	* CatchPhrase: "Oh, I knooow!"
60	* GossipyHens: Fond of tying up the phone line chatting with best mate Audrey.
61	* HairTriggerTemper: Much like her husband, she is easily provoked, constantly snapping off rude comments and quickly rising to actual clench-fisted rages.
62	* {{Hypocrite}}: Always quick to bollock Basil for apparent laziness, flirtatiousness, rudeness etc, but is ''certainly'' NotSoAboveItAll herself.
63	* {{Jerkass}}: Nowhere near the same level of Jerkassery as Basil, but that's not saying much.
64	* NotSoAboveItAll: She's obviously had enough of Mrs Richard's too "Communication Problems", for whilst she tells Basil not to pretend the hearing aid is broken, she does so in a whisper and makes no attempt to tell Mrs. Richards herself.
65	* OnlySaneWoman: Downplayed: while Sybil is horrible to Basil and frequently demonstrated to be NotSoAboveItAll, her approach to business and hospitality is presented as efficient, reasonable, and respectful and she's frequently vindicated by the story when Basil's schemes go against her directives and backfire. Generally speaking, if Polly isn't around, Sybil will be the voice of reason in a situation.
66	* SexlessMarriage: Given how little Basil and Sybil actively like each other (and the fact that they sleep in separate beds), it's made pretty obvious that their marriage involves absolutely nothing sexual at all.
67	* TheTease: Some of the male guests (particularly Mr Johnson in "The Psychiatrist") definitely grab her attention, and she enjoys a spot of shameless flirting.
68	* {{Tsundere}}: Nice to guests, hostile to her husband ([[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome and Irish builders]]).[[invoked]]
69
70	!Manuel
71	-->'''Played by''': Creator/AndrewSachs
72
73	The hotel waiter, porter and general dogsbody, Manuel -- a recent arrival from Barcelona -- has only a minimal grasp on either the English language or his duties at the hotel. While helpful and well-meaning, he generally causes more trouble than he helps with, leading to him suffering the bulk of Basil's wrath.
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75	* BumblingSidekick: He often gets dragged into whatever mad scheme someone else at the hotel has cooked up.
76	* ButtMonkey: To an extent. Basil ''does'' [[ComedicSociopathy slap him around a lot]], but the way Manuel is treated seems quite tame in comparison to [[HumiliationConga what Basil himself goes through]].
77	* CatchPhrase: "¿Qué?"
78	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Even given that his grasp on English is far from adequate and so he is constantly misunderstanding the English his companions speak, Manuel is prone to extremely strange ideas and behaviors.
79	* FunnyForeigner: He can speak In-gul-eesh! He learned it from a boo-ook!
80	* GratuitousSpanish: Being from Barcelona, he speaks an almost incomprehensible mixture of Spanish and English.
81	* MassiveNumberedSiblings: In "The Wedding Party", he says he has five brothers and four sisters.
82	* NiceGuy: The most innocent of the staff.
83	* NoNameGiven: His last name is never revealed.
84	* ObfuscatingStupidity: Both "The Germans" and "The Builders" imply that Manuel's English isn't actually quite as bad as he lets on, and that he pretends to speak barely any English so that Basil won't expect too much from him.
85	* PhraseCatcher: "He's from Barcelona", which is the excuse Basil and in one situation, Sybil invariably trot out to "explain" Manuel's latest cock-up due to his pathetic grasp of English.
86	* YouNoTakeCandle: Much of the humour in his character comes from his poor understanding of English.
87
88	!Polly Sherman
89	-->'''Played by''': Creator/ConnieBooth
90
91	The hotel's waitress and receptionist, and quite possibly the only person present with any kind of common sense, maturity, competence or willingness to help. While this doesn't help her avoid any of the chaos, it does at least give her sufficient wit to be able to cope.
92
93	* ButtMonkey: While Manuel suffers the worst direct abuse from Basil, Polly, being more reliable, is always first to be PressGanged into some degrading and ill-devised scheme to cover up his incompetence.
94	* DeadpanSnarker: Given that she is well aware that she seems to be the only person in the hotel who has her head screwed on right, she is prone to making cutting remarks about the absurdity and stupidity that surrounds her.
95	* HiddenDepths: She works as a simple domestic in Fawlty Towers, probably to help fund her college degree, but as well as being proficient in art, she is able to pick up foreign languages extremely well and [[IKnowKarate knows karate]].
96	* HypercompetentSidekick: She always manages to conjure up a career and livelihood-saving lie for Basil in the heat of the moment. Notably, in "The Germans" when both Basil and Sybil are in the hospital, Polly not only manages to run the hotel by herself, but according to Sybil, is doing a good job doing it. She's still a pretty lousy waitress though.
97	* JackOfAllTrades: Bordering on RenaissanceMan: though ostensibly just a waitress, "The Anniversary" has her point out to Basil that she also acts as receptionist, maid, telephone operator, and electrician when the situation calls for it. Outside of her work, she's also a talented artist and is reasonably proficient in both Spanish and German.
98	* OnlySaneEmployee: Polly is pretty much the only person in the entire hotel staff who has all of her marbles, completely lacking in both the craziness of the Fawltys and Manuel's ineptitude.
99	* OnlySaneMan: Because she's the only sensible person around, Polly's contribution to the comedy is trying vainly to defuse the inevitable chaos when Basil gets one of his cockamamie ideas.
100	* MsFanservice: She’s a slim, attractive blonde, sports a form-fitting wardrobe, and at one point, having just come back from a date, she goes bra-less in a flimsy, revealing top — to [[SourPrude Basil’s horror]].
101
102	!Major Gowen
103	-->'''Played by''': Ballard Berkeley
104
105	A long-time resident of the hotel who, despite occupying the place in physical terms, is definitely not entirely present in a psychological sense.
106
107	* CharacterizationMarchesOn: In the first episode, he wasn't nearly the {{Cloudcuckoolander}} he became later in the series. Only from the second episode onward--in which, for instance, upon hearing that "the dining room door seems to have disappeared" he takes the statement literally and reassures Basil that it will surely turn up somewhere, because after all "these things happen, you know"--does his status as a member of the trope really begin to emerge. By the end of the first season he has ''really'' wandered off into his own little world, [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments thinking that the moose head is talking to him, and therefore must have been made in Japan]].
108	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: The Major is quite the batty old man; by the end of the first season, he can genuinely believe that a stuffed moose head is talking to him.
109	* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: His last name is Gowen, but no one really uses it.
110	* {{Flanderization}}: He wasn't as much of a ditz in his first appearance as he was in the rest of the series.
111	* OnlyFriend: The Major is one of the few people who Basil consistently treats any sort of genuine respect or kindness. Most likely due to the Major's military background and Basil's ProfessionalButtKisser habits.
112	* RacistGrandma: A non-grandparental example. He casually uses racial slurs and expresses dislike for the Germans.
113	* UndyingLoyalty: He leaps to Basil's defence when an American guest declares the hotel the worst in Great Britain... if only because [[DamnedByFaintPraise "There's a place in Eastbourne"]] that he considered worse.
114
115	!Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby
116	-->'''Played by''': Gilly Flower and Renee Roberts
117
118	Two elderly residents of the hotel.
119
120	* ADayInTheLimelight: In "The Kipper and the Corpse", Miss Tibbs has a larger role as she is frequently startled by the deceased Mr. Leeman.
121	* OldMaid: A pair of elderly spinsters. They are often seen clucking at Basil like he's the son neither of them ever had.
122	-->'''Miss Tibbs:''' Mr. Fawlty, we’re concerned about your health.
123	-->'''Basil:''' Well I’ll live longer than you.
124	* ThoseTwoGuys: Well, Those Two Little Old Ladies.
125
126	!Terry
127	-->'''Played by''': Brian Hall
128
129	The rather sketchy but nevertheless surprisingly competent hotel chef.
130
131	* AmbiguousCriminalHistory: WordOfGod was that the character was portrayed as if he was on the run from the law.
132	* BerserkButton: Implying he cannot cook something or having someone besides him do the cooking was enough for Terry and Manuel to come to blows.
133	* ConsummateLiar: John Cleese describers Terry as being "a very easy ready liar who is very good at negotiating." That said he does get caught out about his "karate".
134	* HypercompetentSidekick: Possibly a subversion in that Terry actually stays out of most schemes (being somewhat smart/independent enough to do so), but he's very capable and like Polly is usually a step ahead of Basil mentally when solving problems.
135	* OnlySaneEmployee: Note that it's very rare that the actual food Terry cooks is considered truly bad (though the service tends to wind up causing it to be badly received). He never shirks his duties and is very quick to provide sensible solutions to the problems Basil has such as his quickly solving the rat poison dilemma.
136	* OnlySaneMan: Terry is much cooler headed than the rest of the staff and is generally much more relaxed even during bad situations. Even Polly is more highly strung (though in total fairness, this is also because she's more likely to be entangled in the chaos than he is, as he usually keeps to himself in the kitchens). He's also much less moral about his actions such as simply cutting the chewed (by a cat) part off of a steak to serve.
137	* SixthRanger: He first shows up in the second series and is generally treated as if he's always been there, or at least has been there a while. He's also generally a less central part of the cast or the plots of the episode.
138	* TeamChef: This is his job at the hotel.

Context Characters / FawltyTowers