dehumour1-7, Exercise 2: Loriot and Basil Fawlty

Model answer (check the details):

Shared:
- A concern for correct behaviour and appearances, and a horror of embarrassment.
- Comedy built on a small incident that grows into a disaster.
- Failed communication: people talk without understanding one another.
- Settings of ordinary respectability: the breakfast table, the hotel dining room.

Differences:
- Basil explodes: he shouts, panics and hits the car. Loriot's characters stay calm and polite, and the comedy comes from their control.
- Fawlty Towers is a farce with plots that interlock and a main character who is also a snob and a bully; Loriot's sketches are often self-contained, gentler studies in manners.
- Basil's target includes class and the English attitude to foreigners, while Loriot's is the general form of bourgeois conduct.

What each suggests about his country: Fawlty Towers laughs at English awkwardness and snobbery, and Loriot laughs at German correctness and the difficulty of expressing feeling. Both suggest that each country can make fun of its own stereotype, and that the stiff upper lip and the stiff formality share a good deal.