Fawlty Towers (1975) - 71 mistakes in entire show

Deliberate "mistake": In nearly all the episodes that the front door of the hotel is open we see a painted board that is meant to be bushes or something outside. Yet whenever we see scenes from the outside of the hotel there is no sign of any trees or bushes.

Revealing: Whenever somebody closes a door, leans against a wall, or goes up/down the stairs and brushes against the wall, it wobbles, revealing that the walls are lightweight stand-up props.

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.

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.

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

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 is pretending to be a duck and quacking, you can tell it is false because the quacking stops a second after Basil stops pretending to quack.

Continuity: When Basil's car breaks down for the final time after reversing away from the van, watch closely on the garden path of the house right next to the car. The garden gate is open, and you can see it swing shut (look at the black shape just above the hedge) just as Basil says "One, two three." The gate was shut when he first reversed around the corner, but was open again after the shot cuts back to the car (after it's moved to the right along the pavement).

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

Visible crew/equipment: At the end, the stage lights can be seen in the silver lid.

Visible crew/equipment: At the start of the episode, when Basil follows Manuel into the hotel, the shadow of a crew member holding a boom mic can be seen bottom right as the camera follows them across the terrain.

Continuity: When Basil is driving home the second time, he is turning into a street where a van is parked. When he turns the street is dry. In the next scene where he is backing away from the van, the street is all wet.

Visible crew/equipment: When Basil runs to change the menu and Sybil says "why?" you can see a shadow of the boom on the pigeon holes at the side.

Visible crew/equipment: Just after Basil gets the duck from Andre, he tells Manuel to get the trolley. Basil then walks into the door, and the duck goes flying. You can briefly see the arm of the crewman holding the door closed. A few seconds later, Manuel comes through the door and stands on the duck. For about 5 seconds you can see the crewman's face.

Revealing: When Basil is turning the fire alarm on and off, he puts the key next to the red box and turns it. However, there isn't a slot for the key to actually go in; he's just holding it close and turning it.

Revealing: When Basil goes from clapping his hands in the hotel reception area (just after the first hospital scene), he goes from standing completely still showing a clear 'action' cue.

Visible crew/equipment: After Basil has turned the fire alarm off, a boom mic is very clear in the top corner of the screen.

Other: When Basil shuts Manuel in the burning kitchen and slams the door, the walls shake.

Audio problem: When Basil has lost the key to the fire alarm he decides to throw the typewriter at it. The typewriter sound hitting the (hidden) floor is a sort of scraping sound. Surely the typewriter would have crashed down or smashed.

Deliberate "mistake": When Basil asks Manuel to pull the hose on the fire extinguisher, the top of the hose falls off easily, resulting Basil to be squirted in the face. The bit where the hose is attached to squirts water out diagonally, but this would cause water not to go down the hose. This fire extinguisher was especially constructed to make sure the water was directed at Basil's face.

Visible crew/equipment: When Basil runs from the restaurant and into the office, as the door opens to the hallway you can see a monitor in the office, showing what we can see. The director must be watching the action from in there.

Audio problem: When Basil claps at the end of the opening hospital scene, the sound happens just before he actually claps.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Polly tells Manuel to go and fetch toilet paper for Mrs Richards, the boom microphone shows up at the top left for a few seconds.

Continuity: During the opening scene where Polly is arguing with Mrs Richards over "giving change", the loose papers on the reception counter keep disappearing and re-appearing between shots.

Revealing: When Basil is climbing up the ladder to view the inside of Mr Johnson's room, he accidently peers inside Dr Abbott's room. When he starts doing his "checking" routine on the window before he falls backwards, the pane flexes, indicating that it's made of clear perspex.

Visible crew/equipment: After Mr. Johnson refers to the Torquay guide as the 'world's shortest book' and leaves the hotel, you see a boom mic coming in at the top of the screen for about 3 seconds.

Revealing: There are noticable disparaties between the locations of rooms and the windows on the outside of the building. This is particularly noticable in this episode when Basil climbs a ladder to look through the window.

Visible crew/equipment: When Basil's trying to persuade Sybil about the woman in the guest's room, the shadow of a boom mic appears on the top wall.

Revealing: When Basil sneaks into Raylene's room to listen for the "extra guest" in Johnson's room, Raylene wakes up screaming. When Sybil comes in, turns the light on and Basil says "I didn't know she was there, I just came in to check the walls", look at the extreme right of the screen. You can see the shadow of a boom light on the wall.

Continuity: After the woman screams, Sybil knocks the wall and you can see it move.

Continuity: In this episode, Basil hides in a closet to try and trap a girl staying the night in a guest's room. However, in other episodes ("Wedding Guests," "Communication Problems," and "The Kipper and the Corpse"), there is a room in the same spot the closet is in this episode.

Continuity: When Basil is talking to Mr. Hamilton in the dining room there is smoke coming from the kitchen. The next moment he goes into the kitchen and all the smoke is gone.

Visible crew/equipment: When the Hamilton's are talking to Sybil, Basil enters and Mrs Hamilton says 'Harry finds it too gloomy'. At the top of the screen the boom mic is visible.

Visible crew/equipment: When the Hamiltons arrive, Mrs Hamilton says 'May I introduce my husband.' The boom mic is seen at the top of the screen.

Visible crew/equipment: When Basil says to Mr. Hamilton "I'm sorry if it wasn't wide enough for you, a lot of the English cars have steering wheels" the boom mic can be seen in the top left corner.

Continuity: When Basil brings the Hamilton's their bottle of wine, he fills up Mr Hamilton's glass but not Mrs Hamilton's. However, a couple of shots later, we see both Mr and Mrs Hamilton drinking wine from their glasses despite nobody pouring any wine into Mrs Hamilton's glass.

Continuity: The short elderly gentleman and the tall redhead bimbo are leaving the bar. After 15-20 seconds Basil is shown leaving the bar too. But Basil comes through the lobby before them.

Continuity: When Basil, Polly and Manuel are trying to hide the body in the cupboard in the guests' bedroom, the door behind them leading to the bathroom mysteriously opens and closes between shots throughout the scene.

Revealing: In the scene where Basil and Manuel have put the corpse in the room behind the reception, and the Major comes over and speaks to Basil, the actor playing the corpse blinks.

Other: In the scene where Sybil is talking on the phone in the lobby about the short elderly gentleman guest and has tall redhead bimbo, just before the old man and his bimbo come in you can see the bimbo come past the corner of the office wall early, then stop, then start walking again on cue.

Visible crew/equipment: In the kitchen scene with Basil, Sybil and chef, Basil says, "Would you believe it, I give him his breakfast, I take it all the way upstairs." At this point, the shadow of a boom microphone on the wall to the right is visible.

Revealing: The dog's mouth is nowhere near Manuel when he is "bit".

Visible crew/equipment: When Mr. White asks if Basil can clean their room later the boom mike shadow is visible on the door behind Mr. White.

Revealing: Just after Polly comes down to to the kitchen to tell Sybil that Mr Leeman's dead and they leave, Basil wanders back in, to learn the news. Watch the wall on the right on the staircase when Basil shoves past Sybil on the stairs. The wall shakes so much at that point it's virtually impossible to miss.

Visible crew/equipment: When Basil, Manuel and Sybil enter the office and find Miss Tibbs fainted next to the corpse, the boom mic appears on the righthand side of the screen next to the fan on the wall. And when the camera switches back to the full shot of all the characters, the boom mic appears again.

Revealing: When the sausages burn the first time, the smoke comes from off screen.

Visible crew/equipment: When Polly is on the phone with the undertaker and she says "I'm afraid somebody's died tonight", the boom mike is visible to the right of the screen.

Revealing: When Basil, Manuel and Polly are trying to hide Mr. Leeman from the other guests, they put him in a cupboard. While they are talking to the people staying in the room, Mr. Leeman's hand comes out of the cupboard. Watch carefully, and you can see the actor opening the door from the inside, and then putting his arm down, making him look like the corpse.

Visible crew/equipment: When Dr. Price asks who found the dead guest the boom mike is visible above him.

Visible crew/equipment: When they discover that Ms. Tibbs has fainted in the office the boom mike shadow is visible on the wall to the right.

Continuity: When the guest from number 8 is going up, in one shot Basil is looking on his watch when you see him from behind but not from the front a split second later.

Visible crew/equipment: When they are in to see Sybil, as they switch on the light, the boom mike is visible on top of the screen.

Continuity: Near the beginning, when Sybil goes into the office after speaking to Basil about the date, the lights are obviously on in the office, but when she walks out, it can just be seen on the right that the office is in complete darkness, and then when the shot changes back to the regular one in the lobby, the office is lit up again, without anyone going in there in the meantime.

Visible crew/equipment: When Virginia shows the cakes she's brought with her the boom mike is visible above them.

Continuity: When Basil and Sybil are talking to the public health inspector in the kitchen (on his second visit), Basil breaks two bottles of wine. When he removes the second bottle, there are two bottles remaining on the rack, but when the camera cuts away and then back when he breaks it, there is only one bottle left on the rack.

Revealing: When Polly and Manuel are walking down Fawlty Towers drive with Basil the Rat in the box, there is an arch over the front entrance with Wooburn Grange Country Club written on it. This is the name off the building used as the location for the exterior scenes of Fawlty Towers; this is most visible on the DVD.