Just over a year after a hugely popular West End debut, it appears that a Fawlty Towers sequel production is in the works. John Cleese, who co-wrote the original programme with his then-wife, Connie Booth, has confirmed that his West End production will be getting a second iteration. The news comes a year after the success of the sitcom’s initial West End revival, which opened at the Apollo Theatre in May 2024. As per The Standard, John explained: "In the West End, we took favourites such as Mrs Richards, The Germans and The Food Inspectors and put those together to make the show."
John also confirmed that the new stage production would not run alongside the existing Fawlty Towers play. However, when pressed about a potential release date, he confirmed that fans could expect the production to launch within the next 18 months. He continued: "But [the play] has been so successful that I said, 'Let's put together three other shows.' There is no reason we cannot do it again but we wouldn’t want to have it on at the same time so maybe in a year and a half's time?"
The original production, which premiered May 2024, adapted John Cleese's original 1970s scripts that he co-wrote alongside his ex-wife, Connie Booth. Despite the programme being hit with banned episodes and warnings about "offensive content and language", the stage production made minimal changes to the original scripts.
John touched on this during the production's opening night where he hit out at previous attempts to censor the show. "There's been too much change", he declares. "Everyone is getting very anxious, and people behave in a ratty sort of way and more likely to become more literal-minded".
© GettyThe TV legend continued: "Literal-minded people don't understand metaphor, irony, or comic exaggeration", he explained. "And that means if you take them seriously you get rid of a lot of comedy."
Fawlty Towers controversies
In 2020, a 1975 episode titled The Germans was taken off UKTV's streaming platform because of "racial slurs". In the episode, the Major character used highly offensive language, and John Cleese's hotel owner Basil Fawlty declares "don't mention the war", which prompted UKTV to temporarily remove the episode while it carried out a review.
The move was quickly criticised by Cleese, who took to X (then Twitter), writing: "I would have hoped that someone at the BBC would understand that there are two ways of making fun of human behaviour. One is to attack it directly. The other is to have someone who is patently a figure of fun, speak up on behalf of that behaviour."
© Ian West - PA ImagesA UKTV statement said: "We already offer guidance to viewers across some of our classic comedy titles, but we recognise that more contextual information can be required on our archive comedy, so we will be adding extra guidance and warnings to the front of programmes to highlight potentially offensive content and language.
"We will reinstate Fawlty Towers once that extra guidance has been added, which we expect will be in the coming days. We will continue to look at what content is on offer as we always have done."
