Polly Sherman

Polly is the waitress and general dogsbody at Fawlty Towers, and the only person on the premises with any sense. An art student earning her keep, she types, serves, smooths over disasters and talks Basil down from his own worst ideas, all with a dry, unbothered competence that suggests she's seen it all before.

Connie Booth co-wrote the show, and it shows in how precisely Polly is built: the calm centre that lets the chaos around her register as chaos at all. She underplays everything, which makes her one deadpan line land harder than Basil's whole flailing performance, and gives the farce somewhere steady to stand.