Fawlty Towers (1975) - 34 mistakes in series 1

Continuity: When Basil brings in Lord Melbury's cases, they swap hands between the exterior and interior shots.

Visible crew/equipment: At the end of the end of the episode where everyone is cleaning up, there is a shadow of the boom mic on the wall.

Visible crew/equipment: Near the start of the episode, after the guest has told Basil that he will only be staying until Sunday, Basil walks from the dining room to the office, and the shadow of the camera following Basil can be seen in the reflection of the studio lights in the picture above the Drawing Room door.

Visible crew/equipment: When the bald hotel guest asks Basil for his drinks and slams his hand on the table, in the next shot a boom mic can be seen briefly as it is pulled away.

Audio problem: Throughout the episode the picture Basil is distracted from putting up has no glass covering on it. However, when he smashes it at the end you can hear the distinct sound of glass breaking.

Continuity: The newspaper boy and the couple in a hurry leave the lobby and turn left outside the hotel. However we see later that the drive is on the right as you leave the lobby.

Visible crew/equipment: When Basil asks the family sitting by the window to move, a boom mic can be seen in the top right hand corner.

Deliberate "mistake": When Basil is arguing with Polly and eventually decides to call O'Reilly, he trips over the gnome. However when we see Basil come out from behind the desk, he takes the gnome out of a side gap in the desk, perfectly out of reach of Basil tripping over it.

Continuity: Towards the end of the episode, a couple of scenes before Mr Stubbs arrives, we see Basil start up the tape player prior to hiding in the kitchen. The garden gnome on the desk is right next to the tape player at this point. When Sybil turns the tape off the player has rotated 45 degrees or so (despite nobody else having come into reception in the intervening time) and the gnome is now further along the desk towards the camera as we look on the wide shot. The gnome in the next shot is seen beside the checking-in book when Basil wanders out of and back into the office a couple of scenes later, yet when Mr Stubbs is asking about the lintel for the new door shortly after that and we see Sybil writing in the book, the gnome has moved out of shot altogether.

Revealing: In the scene where Polly brings Mr O'Reilly a cup of tea, it is obvious on several occasions that there is nothing at all in the cup. Not only does he hold it in such a way that you can see inside, but when Basil snatches it away nothing spills out.

Continuity: When Sybil catches Basil with the closed-off dining room and they start an argument, the door to the rooms upstairs is closed, two shots later it is open, but nobody came or went that way during their conversation.

Revealing: In the part where John Cleese is smacking Manuel's head against the place where the dining room doors are supposed to be, you can see very that Manuel is kicking the wall right when his head is supposed to hit it, creating the sound of his head hitting the wall. Check it out because it's very obvious and hard to miss.

Plot hole: The man would like a taxi at 14:00. The clock, however, says 18:30. It can't be 06:30, as they have had breakfast.

Revealing: When the Major first meets Basil, the same shot is used twice of the Major twitching.

Audio problem: In the first scene when Basil is trying to repair his car, when he tries to start the engine, the engine sounds are totally out of sync with Basil turning the ignition key.

Continuity: When Basil goes to fetch the branch to give the car a thrashing after it breaks down, the car manages to move onto the pavement all by itself.

Revealing: When Basil is out of the car and shouting at it after its final breakdown, you can see a crew member reflected in the right hand side of the windscreen giving John Cleese cues. It's not Cleese himself, as the reflection remains after he runs out of shot to get the tree branch, and the reflection doesn't mimic every action performed on screen.

Continuity: There appears to be a very obvious splice edit in this episode. When Basil manages to get Kurt off him after being pinned to the kitchen table, he pushes Kurt against the wall knocking him out. Before this Basil is lying flat on the table and we never see him get up to a standing position beforehand.

Continuity: When Manuel fetches Basil from outside, Basil enters the building first in the exterior shots, but Manuel gets to reception first in the interior ones.

Audio problem: When Basil impersonates the duck, the sound effect used continues when his mouth is closed.