Fawlty Towers

Then couple John Cleese and Connie Booth refined twelve intricate scripts about a poorly ran hotel in Torquay and in doing so set a benchmark for situation comedy. Cleese, Prunella Scales, Booth, and Andrew Sachs were manager Basil, his wife Sybil, maid Polly, and waiter Manuel respectively, with Ballard Berkeley, Gilly Flower, and Renee Roberts as permanent guests, Brian Hall as Terry the cook in series two, and several other players in stand-out one-off roles (Joan Sanderson as hard-of-hearing Mrs Richards in the episode "Communication Problems" perhaps the prime example).