On what date was the Fawlty Towers pilot episode recorded?

The Fawlty Towers pilot episode was recorded on 24 December 1974.

The pilot was made before the sitcom’s regular episodes, which were recorded later in 1975. The series was created and written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, with Cleese playing the famously exasperated hotel manager Basil Fawlty.

Fawlty Towers was set in a dysfunctional seaside hotel in Torquay, Devon. Although production began in 1974, the first episode was not broadcast until 19 September 1975 on BBC Two. This gap can make the recording date easy to confuse with the premiere date.

The programme ultimately consisted of just two series and 12 episodes. The second series arrived in 1979, with the final episode broadcast on 25 October that year. The dates in the wrong options—1971, 1975 and 1979—refer either to years before production, the wider recording period or the end of the original run, not the pilot recording itself.