Lord and starts to fawn over him shamelessly. In Gourmet Night , it is the moment where the new gourmet chef is discovered dead drunk just when Basil's select guests have arrived. It is telling that two of the weakest episodes, The Builders and The Anniversary , sin against these principles. In The Builders , there is no second plotline to speak of. Basil hiding the fact from his friends that Sybil has stormed out before he could spring his surprise party on her, and Manuel wanting to make paella for said party, yet they hardly interact with each other.
Every episode starts off slowly and keeps building to an expertly managed crescendo.
That is almost ten jokes per minute. The downside to this abundance of riches is that sometimes intended gags are not registered by the audience because of the great speed at which they follow one another. Once the plot takes off, the audience is taken on a roller coaster of laughter, with a number of carefully conceived set pieces of increasing intensity serving as the comedic highlights of the episodes. Between these set pieces, Cleese and Booth make sure to insert breathing space for the audience. These 'lows' in the roller coaster do not stop the momentum, however, they are used to set up the next big gag scene.