John Cleese Clarifies Details of "Fawlty Towers" Return

Earlier this year, news of a most unexpected sitcom’s return to the airwaves began to circulate. This led to a little more trepidation than normally accompanies such announcements. Why? Because in this case, the series was the much-loved British sitcom Fawlty Towers, starring John Cleese. And while Cleese’s influence on comedy is undeniable, he’s also spent the last few years venting about all things “woke,” which can be frustrating to witness.

It sounds like Cleese is at least somewhat aware of this. As Deadline reports, Cleese addressed the show’s return in an interview with GB News. “The idea that it’s all going to be about wokery hadn’t particularly occurred to me,” Cleese said — in this case, in response to commentary from The Guardian on the tone of the Fawlty Towers revival.

Cleese also explained that the new season of Fawlty Towers would be set at a hotel in the Caribbean. “If you put it in the Caribbean, it becomes very multi-racial,” he said in the interview. “People in the hotel business come from everywhere, so you can bring lots of different people together.”

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Cleese also said the series would not air on the BBC over concerns about “freedom.” It sounds like the Fawlty Towers reboot/revival/return is still being written; once it’s aired, we’ll see how accurate Cleese’s commentary on it ended up being.