Fawlty Attempts
During the course of my conversation with Peter Tolan, we talked a bit about his work with John Cleese on a failed pilot called H.M.O. and a short-lived series called either Wednesdays 9:30 p.m. (8:30 Central) or My Adventures in Television. (Yes, Peter knows they’re both terrible titles.) Whilst talking about Mr. Cleese, the words “Fawlty Towers” were briefly uttered, and - as ever - just hearing the title of the series spoken aloud is enough to send me down a rabbit hole of re-watching the show…although this time it took a bit of an odd turn.
Instead of watching the actual series - and I blame this on having just been discussing failed pilots - I found myself watching Snavely, a 1978 pilot which was an attempt to adapt Fawlty Towers to American audiences…and after watching that, I remembered that there’d been another attempt to do an American version of Fawlty Towers in 1983 called Amanda’s, this time - as you may have suspected - flipping the gender of the hotel owner…and then I remembered that there’d been yet another attempt to do an American version of Fawlty Towers in 1999 called Payne, where they took another shot at doing it with a male lead.
Mind you, while both the ‘83 and ‘99 attempts did manage to make it to series, neither lasted for longer than a single season.
Interested in seeing how these various things turned out?
Well, what luck for you, then, that I’ve pulled together all three of them together for your (possible) viewing enjoyment….