Sunday 19 September 2021

watery fowls

Despite airing for only two series of six episodes each, the BBC2 sitcom written and starring then-couple Connie Booth and John Cleese looms large in the pop cultural conscience of British and American audiences, and was first broadcast on this day in 1975 with the pilot, “A Touch of Class.”

Set in the fictional town of Torquay on the English Riviera, the show’s couch gag was having the letters of the hotel’s sign rearranged in rude anagrams by the paperboy as an establishing shot. The co-creators’ decision not to produce a third-series despite drafts for later stories was precedent-setting for British television with other successful and iconic shows bowing out after a short-run.