Characters / Fawlty Towers

Basil Fawlty

Tranquil Fury summed up in one image.

Played by: John Cleese

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.

• Accidental Pervert: 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 Not What It Looks Like after another.
  • Also happens in "The Wedding Party" when Basil keeps getting caught by the guests in Not What It Looks Like situations with Manuel.invoked
• The Alleged Car: 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.
• Bad Boss: He is incredibly verbally abusive and demeaning to his employees, and even gets physically violent with Manuel.
• Berserk Button: Whenever anyone suggests that he's incapable of running a hotel, his behavior goes from rude to insanely vindictive.
• Blatant Lies: Basil's go-to solution for nearly everything. Attempts to sustain the original lie with a handful of new ones frequently lead to "Fawlty Towers" Plot.
• British Stuffiness: Has an absolute aversion to the merest hint of anything involving sex.
  "Batteries eh? You know something? You disgust me"
• Cassandra Truth: His tendency to lie about anything at all that might get him in trouble (see Blatant Lies 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?
  "You've had eight hours to think of something. Is that really the best you could come up with?"
• The Chew Toy: 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.
• The Comically Serious: 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.
• Cutting Corners: 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 Crooked Contractor 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 low price for low quality is not a good trade.invoked
• Crying Wolf:
  • 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. Basil then calmly ushers Manuel back into the burning kitchen as he tries to explain that it's just a drill.
  • 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.
• Deadpan Snarker: Probably one of the most sarcastic characters in history. Almost 80% of what he says is sarcastic and rude. There are a lot of deadpan snarkers in this comedy series, but Basil just takes it up to a whole new level.
• Evil Versus Evil: 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 The Movie would have featured a terrorist as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain), but Basil against his wife and 90% of the guests is usually a case of Jerkass vs Jerkass.
• Failure Is the Only Option: 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.
• Fatal Flaw: Basil's failures are brought upon his insane temper and snobbishness.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: 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.
• Henpecked Husband: As bad as Basil can be, it's made very clear that being married to Sybil isn't particularly fun either.
• Historical Villain Downgrade: 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.
• Jerkass: One of the most iconic in British comedy. Basil is an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist 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, the niceness to rich people is only skin-deep.
• Jerkass Has a Point: 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.
• Large Ham: When he's upset (which is often), he'll resort to screaming at the top of his lungs and Chewing the Scenery. 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
• Lean and Mean: His wife calls him an "an aging, brilliantined stick insect".
• Motor Mouth: Has a tendency for fast-paced rants when he's upset.
• Never My Fault: This is basically the core of his entire personality.
  Basil: (muttering) I'm so sorry I made a mistake, I'm so sorry I made a mistake...
  (opens door to guest's room)
  Basil: I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but my wife has made a mistake.
• No Accounting for Taste: He and Sybil actively hate each other. Her mother has no idea how they even ended up together, suggesting black magic.
  Basil: Well she'd know, wouldn't she? Her and that cat.
• One Head Taller: Basil towers over Sybil, but hilariously, he still jumps a mile whenever she barks "BASIL!" at him.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: 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.
• Punny Name: It's no accident that his surname sounds like "Faulty".
• Psychopathic Man Child: 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.
• Sexless Marriage: 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?!)
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: 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 Hair-Trigger Temper and 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 any attempts to dig beneath the surface show how petty and shallow he is, and any lessons he learns are quickly forgotten. Creator John Cleese has said that, were Basil a good person, Fawlty Towers would be the greatest tragedy ever made.
• Villain Protagonist: 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.

Sybil Fawlty

Played by: Prunella Scales

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.

• Annoying Laugh: Basil compares it to "somebody machine-gunning a seal".
• Beehive Hairdo: Which Basil refers to as a "rat's maze" during a row.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: 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.
• Catchphrase: "Oh, I knooow!"
• Gossipy Hens: Fond of tying up the phone line chatting with best mate Audrey.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Much like her husband, she is easily provoked, constantly snapping off rude comments and quickly rising to actual clench-fisted rages.
• Hypocrite: Always quick to bollock Basil for apparent laziness, flirtatiousness, rudeness etc, but is certainly Not So Above It All herself.
• Jerkass: Nowhere near the same level of Jerkassery as Basil, but that's not saying much.
• Not So Above It All: 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.
• Only Sane Woman: Downplayed: while Sybil is horrible to Basil and frequently demonstrated to be Not So Above It All, 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.
• Sexless Marriage: 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.
• The Tease: Some of the male guests (particularly Mr Johnson in "The Psychiatrist") definitely grab her attention, and she enjoys a spot of shameless flirting.
• Tsundere: Nice to guests, hostile to her husband (and Irish builders).invoked

Manuel

Played by: Andrew Sachs

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.

• Bumbling Sidekick: He often gets dragged into whatever mad scheme someone else at the hotel has cooked up.
• Butt-Monkey: To an extent. Basil does slap him around a lot, but the way Manuel is treated seems quite tame in comparison to what Basil himself goes through.
• Catchphrase: "¿Qué?"
• 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.
• Funny Foreigner: He can speak In-gul-eesh! He learned it from a boo-ook!
• Gratuitous Spanish: Being from Barcelona, he speaks an almost incomprehensible mixture of Spanish and English.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: In "The Wedding Party", he says he has five brothers and four sisters.
• Nice Guy: The most innocent of the staff.
• No Name Given: His last name is never revealed.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: 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.
• Phrase Catcher: "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.
• You No Take Candle: Much of the humour in his character comes from his poor understanding of English.

Polly Sherman

Played by: Connie Booth

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.

• Butt-Monkey: While Manuel suffers the worst direct abuse from Basil, Polly, being more reliable, is always first to be Press-Ganged into some degrading and ill-devised scheme to cover up his incompetence.
• Deadpan Snarker: 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.
• Hidden Depths: 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 knows karate.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: 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.
• Jack of All Trades: Bordering on Renaissance Man: 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.
• Only Sane Employee: 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.
• Only Sane Man: 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.
• Ms. Fanservice: 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 Basil’s horror.

Major Gowen

Played by: Ballard Berkeley

A long-time resident of the hotel who, despite occupying the place in physical terms, is definitely not entirely present in a psychological sense.

• Characterization Marches On: 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, thinking that the moose head is talking to him, and therefore must have been made in Japan.
• 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.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": His last name is Gowen, but no one really uses it.
• Flanderization: He wasn't as much of a ditz in his first appearance as he was in the rest of the series.
• Only Friend: 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 Professional Butt-Kisser habits.
• Racist Grandma: A non-grandparental example. He casually uses racial slurs and expresses dislike for the Germans.
• Undying Loyalty: He leaps to Basil's defence when an American guest declares the hotel the worst in Great Britain... if only because "There's a place in Eastbourne" that he considered worse.

Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby

Played by: Gilly Flower and Renee Roberts

Two elderly residents of the hotel.

• A Day in the Limelight: In "The Kipper and the Corpse", Miss Tibbs has a larger role as she is frequently startled by the deceased Mr. Leeman.
• Old Maid: A pair of elderly spinsters. They are often seen clucking at Basil like he's the son neither of them ever had.
  Miss Tibbs: Mr. Fawlty, we’re concerned about your health.
  Basil: Well I’ll live longer than you.
• Those Two Guys: Well, Those Two Little Old Ladies.

Terry

Played by: Brian Hall

The rather sketchy but nevertheless surprisingly competent hotel chef.

• Ambiguous Criminal History: Word of God was that the character was portrayed as if he was on the run from the law.
• Berserk Button: Implying he cannot cook something or having someone besides him do the cooking was enough for Terry and Manuel to come to blows.
• Consummate Liar: 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".
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: 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.
• Only Sane Employee: 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.
• Only Sane Man: 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.
• Sixth Ranger: 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.
• Team Chef: This is his job at the hotel.

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