From Fawlty Towers to Chekhov (or Vice Versa)

 A staple of prostration telly – the kind of restful default TV that you (I anyway) end up with when you haven't the energy to watch anything more demanding, still less turn off and do something worthwhile – is the clip show, a compilation of 'best bits' linked by talking heads. These shows are generally dire, with too many talking heads, none of them with anything to say of the slightest interest, and too little actual content. Often, indeed, the talking heads seem to be there only to tell you what you've just seen, perhaps on the assumption that you're periodically lapsing into unconsciousness – which is not too wide of the mark. These clip shows usually take the form either of 'celebrations', often occasioned by an anniversary, or shock-horror compilations designed to show us how jaw-droppingly unwoke we were back in, say, the Seventies (it's usually the Seventies). 
  Last night on Channel 5 there was a clip show of the celebratory type titled Fawlty Towers: 50 Years of Laughs, and Mrs N and I, being suitably prostrated, found ourselves watching it. The surprise was that this particular show was well made and insightful, with talking heads who actually had something to say – Michael Palin, Dave Quantick and Robin Ince among them – and well chosen clips that illustrated just what a great comedy Fawlty Towers was. It didn't matter that the clips were short: this show was so precision engineered that it was packed with comedy content even on the smallest scale. Of course every clip was familiar, but virtually every one still raised an unforced laugh – and of how many 50-year-old (actually 49-year-old) comedy shows can you say that? The key element was that precision engineering, the thought and effort that had gone into crafting those intricate, minutely detailed scripts – oh, and a brilliant cast, all demonstrating perfect comic timing.
 The scripts were the work of John Cleese (Basil Fawlty) and his then wife Connie Booth (Polly), and I was interested to learn that, before Fawlty Towers, they collaborated on a short film called Romance with a Double Bass. This was based on, of all things, an early Chekhov short story (written in 1886). The original story is a slight affair, a three-page tale, but deftly done. It tells how an orchestral bassist, arriving early for a princess's ball, decides to cool off by taking a naked dip in a pond on the estate. As it happens, the princess too has had the same idea, both their clothes are stolen, and, after an embarrassing nude encounter, the bassist tries to smuggle the naked princess into the palace in his double-bass case. In 1974, when the film was made, comedies involving nudity and suggestively placed props were quite the thing, and so this improbable Chekhov adaptation came about. It's available on YouTube, but I can't say I recommend it. An interesting curiosity, though, and it does show Cleese developing the comedy acting skills that would come to the fore the following year in Fawlty Towers. 
  The bad news is that there has been talk of a belated revival of Fawlty Towers, starring Cleese and his daughter Camilla and 'probably' set in the Caribbean. However, it's beginning to look as if, with luck, this might never get made.