Snavely

Inspired by the other review on here I decided to give this a go, and tho it doesn't reach the heights of the original, it made me laugh. Since this was a pilot episode I can only imagine that it would have gotten better. The guy playing the new Basil was good without being a carbon copy of John Cleese, but Betty White could perhaps have drawn on Prunella Scales a bit more as she lacks a bit of character here.

I was surprised to read there was only one episode broadcast of this show as I can still recall seeing the pilot back in 1978. My local PBS station had been running repeats of Fawlty Towers about the same time. I liked Harvey Korman from the Carol Burnett Show so I thought I'd check it out.

What surprised me is how faithful they were to Fawlty Towers. They recreated the same set and the pilot episode was basically a Fawlty Towers script (the first episode of Three's Company also follows the first episode of Man About the House pretty faithfully as well, including Jack Tripper waking up in the bath). Even Frank LaLoggia's "Petro" successfully captured Andrew Sachs "Manuel" to the point that I thought Sachs was performing the character at first! While keeping in mind that I haven't seen this show since 1978, I'm not sure it's even been rebroadcast since then, but I can remember laughing quite hard at Korman's portrayal of the title character, capturing Basil Fawlty's perpetual exasperation and near insanity.

Harvey Korman was perfectly cast as the American version of Basil Fawlty. It would be interesting to see the pilot episode packaged as an extra as part of a DVD set in the future. One can only hope.

It's unfair to judge this episode strictly against the British sitcom. Objectively, it is still poor but doesn't deserve a 4 IMDb rating. I'm very surprised there isn't a law against "stealing" a script! It's so much like the Fawlty Towers Hotel Inspectors episode! John Cleese simply cannot be matched! He's one of the greatest comedic actors of our time! Also Betty White doesn't have that "snotty", "stuffy" air of Prunella Scales. How many times have we as viewers seen failed American attempts to duplicate a foreign TV show or Movie? Too many. One more thing, Cleese's height and physical humor is without rival!