John Cleese has the last laugh as BBC offers him a new sitcom
JOHN CLEESE is in talks to make a shock return to the BBC after being offered a starring role in a new sitcom, the corporation’s comedy chief has revealed.
The comedian, 76, who was behind Fawlty Towers and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, said last year that he would never work for the BBC again because its commissioning editors had “no idea what they’re doing”. But Shane Allen, the BBC’s head of comedy, said Cleese was in talks to star in a sitcom that had been written specifically for him.
Mr Allen told The Daily Telegraph: “We’re in discussions about a piece that he might be in. It’s a sitcom and it’s very early days. He’s a comedy god, and the door is always open to him. There are certain people who have earned their badges, who have got the right to do what they want.”
The executive was speaking before the BBC’s landmark sitcom season,
which begins tomorrow night with modern remakes of Porridge and Are You Being Served?
Mr Allen, who has also enticed Eric Idle, another former Python, to make a new, one-off musical comedy, said the BBC had been guilty of an “obsession with the new” that had led to it neglecting some of its older stars.
Citing the example of Tracey Ullman, who recently returned to the BBC after 30 years away, Mr Allen said: “Someone said to her, ‘Why have you come back to the BBC after all this time?’ She said, ‘Because they asked me’. That’s the truth. Often times there were a lot of very, very talented elder statesmen, who just don’t get asked.”
The sitcom season will also include a prequel to Keeping Up Appearances, by its original writer, as well as verbatim remakes of lost episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour, Steptoe and Son, and Till Death Us Do Part. Mr Allen said: “These are great piec- es of work that endure. This is a chance to try to reclaim that and say, these are titles and writers and pieces of work that are proven, and hallowed, and it’s a chance to introduce them to a new generation. But it’s a chance to celebrate these brilliant writers, and give them some dues and respect, as well as doing a load of new stuff too.”
But he insisted it was “insulting” to suggest that the corporation’s modern comedies were not as good as those from its past. He said: “That idea that there was a golden era of comedy and now it’s over, I think it’s --------. There are enough brilliant hits now.”
Mr Allen said modern comedy writers were often not given enough time to succeed, because of social media. He added: “Within 14 seconds of something appearing you’ve got people on social media going, ‘whoever commissioned this should be shot in the face, and their family’. You think, steady on. You need to give things a chance, and support them; let them grow.”