Specialist Subject: The Bleeding Obvious

Spotted two items of interest to writers on television recently...

Fawlty Towers Reopened

Last weekend there was a terrific new documentary about Fawlty Towers on (what used to be called) UK Gold. Knowing cable I'm sure there will be opportunities to catch this again if you missed it. It's well worth keeping an eye out as there were a lot of insights into the genesis of the programme, and how John Cleese and Connie Booth wrote it.

Says (not) UK Gold...

To help celebrate its 30th anniversary, G.O.L.D. is throwing open the doors of TV's most famous hotel once more after a lengthy absence.

New and exclusive, Fawlty Towers: Re-opened gathers cast and crew together to retrace the history of the sitcom from a rarely seen insider point of view. The one-off special leaves no English Riviera stone unturned in its search for trivia and nuggets of information from the Fawlty Towers guestbook, together with in-depth interviews with John Cleese, Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales, as well as Connie Booth talking about her memories from the show for the first time in 30 years. Just don't mention the war.

Meanwhile, on ITV3...

There's a series called Beyond a Joke looking at how the British sitcom has reflected society over the years, with insights from the writers and actors (plus some irrelevant pundits). You can catch up on this with ITV's catch up telly widget here.