Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
But Basil just had to be shown to be the loser he was - he was a sympathetic character in that episode, but he really was the worst kind of snob and there is a lot of laughs to be garnered out of debunking pomposity.
I did a sitcom writing course a number of years ago and we looked at this episode and came to similar conclusions. It's the very essence of British comedy for the main protagonist to be a failure, and the episode was quite rightly (and expertly) written to follow this trend.

But I still wish that Mrs. Richards could've had more of a comeuppance...