Prunella Scales

Prunella Scales, 30 years on from Fawlty Towers

One of Britain's best character actresses, Prunella Scales will inevitably be remembered for one character above all.

It may have only been 12 episodes, but more than 30 years after its debut Fawlty Towers remains one of our favourite sitcoms. This documentary looks at how the show came into being and why it turned out a classic. Michael Palin suggests it's survived because its "precision comedy" and Basil Fawlty's hysterical character were a symptom of the times. Not everyone was enamoured with it though - a BBC executive described it as "dire". Cast members John Cleese, Connie Booth, Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales all contribute their recollections of making the programme.

Prunella Scales Interview

Prunella Scales answers various questions about the show.

This joyous look back at John Cleese's benchmark sitcom delivers everything you could hope for. For the first time, Cleese, ex-wife Connie Booth, screen wife Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs, together with producer-director John Howard Davies, re-call how the shows came about.

Cleese's anecdotes about the Torbay hotelier who inspired the monstrous Basil are as funny as the gold-plated clips. And that's saying something, since Fawlty Towers' slapstick violence has tremendous impact in short bursts.

Add interviews with many of the sitcom's guest stars, including Bernard Cribbins, Una Stubbs, Geoffrey Palmer and David Kelly and you have real depth and detail. If only the start of each section wasn't delayed by unnecessary come-ons, it would be the perfect documentary for the perfect sitcom.

The comedy returns for five episodes. Vera (Patricia Routledge) is preoccupied with the recession, and experiences a slow-down of her own: her computer isn't working and she resorts to pen and paper. In her response, Irene (Prunella Scales) recounts "the solar panel episode", in which Vera mistook her device for a sun lounger, with shattering consequences. Vera has stopped watching the news for fear of hearing about financial catastrophe, too. "Even the Today programme has a question mark over it," she says. "I listen with earplugs at the ready."

Lou Wakefield and Carole Hayman's gloriously comic creations Vera and Irene return, exchanging missives and misunderstandings that produce some glorious comedy. Patricia Routledge and Prunella Scales return to the roles - ITV3's versions in the form of Anne Reid and Maureen Lipman were fun, but pale shadows of the original.

Ladies of Letters, the second part of whose 10-part adaptation from the radio show of the same name was shown last night, starred Anne Reid and Maureen Lipman as the letter-writing widows who keep their spirits up with sherry, shared recipes and long-distance one-upmanship. As with the radio version, the material is slightly thin, but you could watch (or in Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge's case, listen to) the actors involved all day. Clever, that.

Fans of the long-running Radio 4 series will be delighted to see this way overdue TV version that retains all the polite suburban snobbery of the original - and then some.

Maureen Lipman and Anne Reid slide gracefully into the roles of Irene Spencer and Vera Small - created in the series of books by Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield and immortalised on the airwaves by Patricia Routledge and Prunella Scales.

And that's it as far as cast goes, apart from a glum Jack Russell and a flatulent poodle who are the ladies' only visible companions. These two widows meet at the wedding of Irene's daughter and strike up a sprightly correspondence: "Thank you so much for your thank you letter, thanking me for my thank you letter," etc.

Played out as deliciously interlocking monologues, their missives in this first series (before they discovered email) are dotted with recipes for taramasalata and a barely veiled cattiness as Irene worries that she may have accidentally divulged too many dark secrets when she was ever so slightly merry.

It all harks back to a more well-mannered era which now only lives on in the sherry-hazed memories of comedy scriptwriters, if indeed it ever existed at all.

It's a proper little gem and if ITV's intention is to tempt more mature viewers over to ITV3 where they'll find this tucked comfortably between repeats of Pie In The Sky, Miss Marple and Shirley Valentine - its spiritual home you might say - then it should be mission accomplished.

Maureen Lipman and Anne Reid pull off something of a triumph in this wonderfully observed adaptation of the books by Lou Wakefield and Carole Hayman. Previously a hit on Radio 4 (with Patricia Routledge and Prunella Scales), the series revolves around the chaotic, indiscreet and often very funny lives of Irene (Lipman) and Vera (Reid), two elderly widows who met at the wedding of Irene's daughter. Revealing their exploits - and dodgy recipes - to each other in caustic letters, they begin by speculating as to what really did happen at the wedding.

ITV3, never previously a destination channel, looked as if it might have a hit on its hands with Ladies of Letters, a TV adaptation of Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield's popular series of books of the same name consisting of letters between two fictional friends. It had previously been made into a popular Radio 4 series starring Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge, and the television version had secured the equally redoubtable Anne Reid and Maureen Lipman. But, sadly, the transition proved an unhappy one.

During yesterday's opener, the sight of the two actresses speaking the letters to camera while engaged in a bit of cooking or a surreptitious sherry was far from enough to hold the attention. The letters bore only the minimum of narrative momentum and the subtleties of the occasional malapropism and shift in tone were overwhelmed by one's sheer desperation to see an actual event take place on screen. Perhaps the prosaic lesson of it all is that Ladies of Letters may be very jolly and wry on the radio but when it comes to TV, unless you've got a writer of the calibre of Alan Bennett on board, it's just too boring to watch talking heads for half an hour.