Post by Teddy Bear on May 6, 2009 21:59:12 GMT
Next time you're scrolling through the dismal offerings of the BBC TV listings, or reflecting on the outrageously exorbitant salaries offered to the likes of Jonathan Ross or Graham Norton and wondering when did the BBC become so devoid of creative judgement, then consider this:
Still wondering why your TV programming choice is so dire? The producers haven't got a clue.
John Cleese: BBC rejected first episode of Fawlty Towers
Patrick Foster
John Cleese has said that the BBC originally dismissed Fawlty Towers as dire, as the cast of the popular sitcom were reunited for the 30th anniversary of the show.
As the staff members of the eponymous Torquay hotel came together for the first time since the programme was filmed Cleese said that producers did not think that the programme would appeal to viewers.
The first episode, written with his then wife Connie Booth, was rejected by the BBC.
He said: “There is a famous note which I have a copy of, I think it’s framed. Connie and I wrote that first episode and we sent it in to Jimmy Gilbert.
Times Archive, 1984: In a Fawlty world, Basil is still king
Comedy is a way of making pain bearable: played straight Fawlty Towers would be too harrowing to watch
“The fellow whose job it was to assess the quality of the writing said, and I can quote it fairly accurately, ‘This is full of clichéd situations and stereotypical characters and I cannot see it as being anything other than a disaster’.
“And Jimmy himself said ‘You’re going to have to get them out of the hotel, John, you can’t do the whole thing in the hotel’. Whereas, of course, it’s in the hotel that the whole pressure cooker builds up.”
The 69-year-old Monty Python star, who lives in California, claimed that he had to support himself by appearing in commercials due to the low wage that the BBC paid him for making Fawlty Towers.
Cleese, who was paid £6,000 for 43 weeks’ filming, said: “I have to thank the advertising industry for making this possible. Connie and I used to spend six weeks writing each episode and we didn’t make a lot of money out of it.
“If it hadn’t been for the commercials I wouldn’t have been able to afford to spend so much time on the script.”
Cleese added that he felt Britain had lost its claim to have the “least bad television in the world”.
Cleese, who posed for photographs with his fellow stars Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs and Booth, blamed the slip on writers.
He said: “I think there’s enormous talent but I don’t think the writers work as hard as they used to and I think they may lack experience because I don’t think the writing is as good as it used to be.
“I do proudly say that in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties we did have the least bad television in the world. And that’s quite a claim. I don’t think that’s true any more.”
Patrick Foster
John Cleese has said that the BBC originally dismissed Fawlty Towers as dire, as the cast of the popular sitcom were reunited for the 30th anniversary of the show.
As the staff members of the eponymous Torquay hotel came together for the first time since the programme was filmed Cleese said that producers did not think that the programme would appeal to viewers.
The first episode, written with his then wife Connie Booth, was rejected by the BBC.
He said: “There is a famous note which I have a copy of, I think it’s framed. Connie and I wrote that first episode and we sent it in to Jimmy Gilbert.
Times Archive, 1984: In a Fawlty world, Basil is still king
Comedy is a way of making pain bearable: played straight Fawlty Towers would be too harrowing to watch
“The fellow whose job it was to assess the quality of the writing said, and I can quote it fairly accurately, ‘This is full of clichéd situations and stereotypical characters and I cannot see it as being anything other than a disaster’.
“And Jimmy himself said ‘You’re going to have to get them out of the hotel, John, you can’t do the whole thing in the hotel’. Whereas, of course, it’s in the hotel that the whole pressure cooker builds up.”
The 69-year-old Monty Python star, who lives in California, claimed that he had to support himself by appearing in commercials due to the low wage that the BBC paid him for making Fawlty Towers.
Cleese, who was paid £6,000 for 43 weeks’ filming, said: “I have to thank the advertising industry for making this possible. Connie and I used to spend six weeks writing each episode and we didn’t make a lot of money out of it.
“If it hadn’t been for the commercials I wouldn’t have been able to afford to spend so much time on the script.”
Cleese added that he felt Britain had lost its claim to have the “least bad television in the world”.
Cleese, who posed for photographs with his fellow stars Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs and Booth, blamed the slip on writers.
He said: “I think there’s enormous talent but I don’t think the writers work as hard as they used to and I think they may lack experience because I don’t think the writing is as good as it used to be.
“I do proudly say that in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties we did have the least bad television in the world. And that’s quite a claim. I don’t think that’s true any more.”
Still wondering why your TV programming choice is so dire? The producers haven't got a clue.