Alas, a Painful Turn in Larroquette's Career

By Joel Stein Sunday, Mar. 21, 1999
    • John Larroquette's character is named Royal Payne. He works at a hotel that is called "A Payne Inn." You need no more information to form an opinion about this show.

    A remake of John Cleese's classic '70s British sitcom, Fawlty Towers, Payne (Wednesday, 8 p.m. E.T., CBS) stars Larroquette as a cranky, stingy hotelier undermined by his dominating wife (JoBeth Williams) and his own incompetence. If Payne serves any purpose at all, it's to show what a genius Cleese is. In the wrong hands the characters are badly drawn cartoons, the jokes offensive stereotypes and the plots a bad cross of the Keystone Kops and Three's Company. Sure, Fawlty Towers was also based on silly misunderstandings and coincidences, but it carefully built toward a manic, slapstick conclusion. In the original show you felt bad about laughing at the mistreated bellboy's broken English; now you just feel bad.

    In the past Larroquette has excelled at showing the depth of irredeemable characters, but here he plays a one-dimensional villain, and he lacks the comedic skill to pull it off. Though to be fair, Charlie Chaplin couldn't pull off these jokes. Larroquette's last show at least aimed for smarter laughs--and got script suggestions faxed in from Thomas Pynchon. It's unlikely he will make any for Payne. If he does, he'd better submit them within the next few weeks.