ADVERTISEMENT

Episode of British Icon ‘Fawlty Towers’ Is Pulled for Racist Content

Episode of British Icon ‘Fawlty Towers’ Is Pulled for Racist Content

(Bloomberg) -- A well-known episode of British comedy “Fawlty Towers” has been pulled from a U.K. streaming service for containing racist slurs, in a move that highlights how broadcasters are reassessing their archives.

The show’s 1975 episode “The Germans” has been temporarily removed from UKTV, a broadcaster owned by the U.K. state-funded British Broadcasting Corp. The episode features a scene that shows a character use racial insults in a conversation about the West Indies cricket team.

“The episode contains racial slurs so we are taking the episode down while we review it,” a UKTV spokesman said in an emailed comment. “We regularly review older content to ensure it meets audience expectations and are particularly aware of the impact of outdated language. Some shows carry warnings and others are edited. We want to take time to consider our options for this episode.”

The take-down by UKTV comes after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis ignited worldwide protests led by the Black Lives Matter movement against racism and police brutality, which have in turn set off reappraisals of cultural artifacts from statues to on-screen entertainment.

Protesters and local authorities have removed statues associated with slave-owners in Britain and the U.S., while TV companies have pulled 1930s movie “Gone With the Wind”, police reality TV show “Cops” and 2000s TV show “Little Britain”, citing their controversial portrayals of race and policing.

The episode of “Fawlty Towers” was famous for showing the owner of its titular dysfunctional British hotel, played by Monty Python actor John Cleese, repeatedly failing to avoid bringing up the Second World War in front of his German guests. Netflix still hosts the episode in the U.K. and did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

John Cleese was quoted opposing the decision in an interview with Australian publication The Age.

The controversy drew responses from U.K. lawmakers. On Friday morning, U.K. health minister Edward Argar told Sky News “it’s absolutely right that we debate our history and we debate it openly, warts and all as it were,” but added “we’ve got to be very careful about airbrushing that history, because as has been said by a number of people, if you as a country forget your past, forget your history, and aren’t willing to examine it, including the bad bits, you suffer the consequences and you forget.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.