Editing Fawlty Towers (section)

====Retrospective====
On [[Rotten Tomatoes]], Fawlty Towers has an aggregate score of 100% based on 14 critic reviews. The website's consensus reads: "''Fawlty Towers'' looms large over British comedy with John Cleese's impeccably hapless performance and an endless array of exuberant slapstick—making for a supremely stimulating chuckler."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fawlty Towers |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/fawlty_towers/s01 |access-date=2 September 2022 |website=Rotten Tomatoes}}</ref>

In an interview for the "TV Characters" edition of [[Channel 4]]'s "talking heads" strand [[100 Greatest / 100 Worst|100 Greatest]] (in which Basil placed second, between [[Homer Simpson]] and [[Edmund Blackadder]]), TV critic [[A. A. Gill]] theorised that the initially muted response may have been caused by Cleese seemingly ditching his label as a comic revolutionary—earned through his years with [[Monty Python]]—to do something more traditional.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.itnsource.com/en/shotlist/ITVProgs/2001/05/05/Y22090001/ |title=100 Greatest ... (100 Greatest TV Characters (Part 1)) |publisher=[[ITN Source]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150221233837/http://www.itnsource.com/en/shotlist/ITVProgs/2001/05/05/Y22090001/ |archive-date=21 February 2015 |access-date=13 June 2014}}</ref>

In a list of the [[100 Greatest British Television Programmes]] drawn up by the [[British Film Institute]] in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, ''Fawlty Towers'' was placed first. It was also voted fifth in the "[[Britain's Best Sitcom]]" poll in 2004,<ref name="pnkssn">{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/sitcom/winner.shtml|title=Programmes categorised as Comedy|date=1 January 1970|publisher=BBC|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130430222338/http://www.bbc.co.uk/sitcom/winner.shtml|archive-date=30 April 2013|url-status=dead|access-date=20 September 2016}}</ref> and second only to ''[[Frasier]]'' in The Ultimate Sitcom poll of comedy writers in January 2006. [[Basil Fawlty]] came top of the ''Britain's Funniest Comedy Character'' poll, held by [[5 (British TV channel)|Five]] on 14 May 2006. In 1997, "[[The Germans]]" was ranked No. 12 on [[TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time]].<ref>{{cite journal |year=1997 |title=Special Collector's Issue: 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time |journal=[[TV Guide]] |issue=28 June – 4 July }}</ref> ''[[Empire (magazine)|Empire]]'' magazine's 2024 list of the 100 greatest TV shows of all time ranks it at No. 22. The entry states:

{{blockquote|One of British TV's greatest-ever sitcoms, the central question of ''Fawlty Towers''—why [[Basil Fawlty]], the world's least hospitable man would go into hospitality in the first place—remains tantalisingly unanswered across 12 kipper-serving, Siberian hamster-hunting, German-baiting episodes. A straight zero on TripAdvisor, the very layout of Fawlty Towers itself offers comedy gold as Basil (John Cleese), his wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), waitress Polly (Connie Booth) and poor, benighted Manuel (Andrew Sachs) manoeuvre themselves (and the odd corpse) around its dowdy interior without ruining anyone's stay. Basil, needless to say, fails. Often and hilariously.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.empireonline.com/tv/features/best-tv-shows/ |title=The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time |work=Empire |access-date=5 August 2024 |date=28 June 2024 }}</ref>}}