Basil the Rat Redux

Last time, we talked about how “Basil the Rat” was unique among Fawlty Towers episodes, in that it had two days in the studio. But there is another thing which makes it unique: the episode was also shot in front of two separate studio audiences.

Both of these audience sessions were on the second day of recording: the 20th May 1979. A matinee, followed by the evening performance. Bob Spiers gives full details on the DVD commentary:

“I think we were able to actually get it together by something like 4 o’clock on the second day, and consequently we showed this I think to two audiences, which gave the actors to really play two separate performances, which they were delighted to do. So I think mainly this is the second performance, but again we used bits of both performances.

I don’t think any actor would turn that down. They know the first performance is like a proper dress rehearsal with an audience, so they can sense the timing and can sense where the laughs are coming.”

Note that the above is different to the famous example of dinnerladies, which was also recorded in front of two separate audiences. But dinnerladies had one audience recording on the first day in the studio, and then the other audience recording on the second day, which gave Victoria Wood a chance to rewrite parts of the script based on the audience reaction of the first recording. “Basil the Rat” did both one after the other. Well, with a dinner break in-between.

It’s a point which is worth hammering home: “Basil the Rat” having two days in the studio had many advantages, rather than simply being useful for recording live rodents. The gang got both extra time for rehearsing the main show, and two bites of the cherry into the bargain.

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Bob states above that while most of the episode was taken from the second recording, a few moments were taken from the first. The obvious question is: which ones?

Oh, how I’d love to write that article. I’m sorry to disappoint you. Details of that are lost to the mists of time, and I doubt even the darkest depths of Caversham could shed light on it. If I had a time machine, I’d spend most of my life going through Bob Spiers’ bins.

Also lost to the mists of time are the studio tapes of both performances. Very little unbroadcast footage of Fawlty Towers is known to exist; the bloopers ripped from the Christmas tapes are about your lot. Sure, in an ideal world, the BBC would have been aware that they were making something so special, that they should save every last scrap of material recorded for the series for posterity. But my brain is corrupted by years of DVD extras, and it’s unreasonable to expect the Beeb in 1979 to share my stupid brain. They were too busy making the next piece of great television.

But just imagine. “Basil the Rat” is one of the best half-hours of sitcom ever made. And for an indeterminate period of time, there existed two complete versions of the episode… just played in a slightly different way. All the same lines, all the same beats. Like a version of the episode which slipped in through a wormhole from a parallel universe. I’m imagining the DVD menu. “Basil the Rat: Alternative Version”.

Tell you what, though: considering the raw footage dragged up for the Gold documentary in 2018, I bet you could do it for dinnerladies. And that would have the added interest of seeing all of Victoria’s rewrites. Someone commission me, quick.

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