i didn't watch it but i wouldn't be at all surprised if it was awful since the third series was a piece of pish and that was about three years ago. no doubt just like the armando iannucci thread i'll be told i should be grateful for one or two mildly amusing lines.

The original run became stale after the first few episodes, so let's not pretend that it only lost it in the last series.

As a general rule, the first episode of any series is rubbish. This gravedigging expedition at least had a bit of a spark about it. It wasn't as terrible as I had expected it to be, so maybe that's something.

It's the 21st century after all. We're kicking the limbo bar around the floor.

Did anyone else see that Ab Fab is made in association with Comedy Central-The AMERICAN channel that shows it-Its probably one of comedy centrals ratings winners and they paid the beeb and Mrs Edmunson a lot of money to make it again?*


*-Just my theroy!

Have you noticed that there are no actual JOKES in Abfab? Its just people overacting and insulting each other (one of the choice lines was "have you seen her hand"?).The "Celeb" specialguests are just there to act appalled for about 30 seconds. They dont actually do or say anything amusing at all-and what the fuck was the point of having that Lady Poshbird-Whateverherfuckingname-is on? And how many takes were invoved in getting her to deliver her one line? Meryl Streep, she aint!
Jennifer Saunders (and Dawn French)have been getting away with this kind of shite for the best part of twenty years. Goshdarnit, its just not a fair world! :(

>Have you noticed that there are no actual JOKES in Abfab? Its just people overacting and insulting each other . . .

Don't be a jokes fascist. I don't understand this 'but there aren't any jokes in it!' argument. Do you want 'Knock-knock who's there?' jokes like from a crimble cracker? Because if something makes (some) people laugh, OR is dramatically intriguing, then it's good. Isn't it? Why the insistence on stiffly regimented JOKES?

Besides, I thought AbFAb was jokesy anyway.


>The "Celeb" specialguests are just there to act appalled for about 30 seconds.

Yeah, you are so right.Totally fucking annoyingly not a good idea. They aren't using the guests well. It's like, Saunders and Wax are so up the arses of these guests, so keen to stay in with the celeb status quo, they can't find it in themselves to take the piss out of them.

I mean, why else have poshvadge on?

>Jennifer Saunders (and Dawn French)have been getting away with this kind of shite for the best part of twenty years. Goshdarnit, its just not a fair world! :(

No. I think they're great. The shame is there aren't any MORE good women. Smack The Pony just aren't doing it for me. None of them could ever last as long as F&S cos they're unlikeable and unfunny.

I bust a gut laughing at Bubble playing 'noise of horses' hooves made by coconut shells' with her cousin's breast-shells, but then, I would. More jokes for lactating wimmin, that's what I want!

Sub-Rentaghost pantomime for dressing-up-box fixated hooting queens.

If Withnail is the Some Like It Hot of alcohol humour, this is the Dude Where's My Car.

Every scene lasts a decade, every line is signposted months in advance. Every would-be shocking taboo breaker is afforded the televisual equivalent of a chorus of old ladies raising their handbags, Vic and Bob style. Oooooh!

Clumsy. Ineptly written. Acted like the season's drawing to a close on Clacton's lower pier. Hyped by a media in love with their own reflection. Full of tiny moments that are bludgeoned to death by repetition and mugging before they can flourish into anything close to a joke or an observation.

Ghastly ghastly ghastly ghastly.

Always hated it. Always will. The very worst thing that could have happened to the once talented Jennifer Saunders.

....and Bubble just acts like shes retarded. What a subtle satire of Anthea Turner, too. I mean, someone like Anthea Turner really DOES need sending up, doesnt she, its not like everyone in the entire fucking world realises what a waste of flesh, blood,bone,space and time she is, is it?And she was satirised in such a subtle, subliminal and erudite way, too, gosh, I thought Mort Sahl was dead (or at the very least, very old). Big Breeze-Block sized BOLLOCKS!
Oooooh, that programme riles me, so it does!

I never even liked the sketch Ab Fab was based on. And I was quite a French And Saunders buff in my youth. The Exorcist parody and the 'all my leg bones have dropped out' sketch remain in my top 20.

Is there any truth in the story that the Pet Shop Boys almost split up after the F&S parody of 'Rent' in series two?

No, they really liked it.

They even included it on their sell through video compilation, if I remember rightly.

Yes. Early French and Saunders rock very hard indeed.

"She can't draw fingers!"
"Nick it! Nickitnickitnickit!"
"There's people wanna ban that." "Only queers and lebanons."
"Whether at work. At home. Or madam."

and Dawn eating the big wagon wheel. All top stuff. What went wrong?

>What went wrong?

Was it the movie pastiches? While 'comedy parodies' are usually a sign of creative exhaustion, F&S were quite good at them to begin with (The Sound of Music, Exorcist, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane). After series three, I felt they got over-reliant on the formula.

In later episodes almost every sketch was a pastiche of some sort - TVam, Noel's house Party (set in Crinkly Arsehole, if I remember rightly) and some really lame musical parodies (the Guns 'n' Roses one stands out as being particularly woeful).

These days, Dawn's acting technique seems to involve nothing but mugging (although she was very good as bottom in a recent production of Midsummer Night's Dream).

Some other fond memories:
The school trip sketch
Jen playing countdown ("contestant - you have thirty seconds to make a nine letter word out of the following letters - z, p, q, a")
All the Raw Sex sketches
The Bangles
"I just can't plant any more carrots!"
"Load of fuss and nonsense about nothing"
"It's not bread unless it's French and shaped like a penis"
"Cheryl from Bucks Fizz!"
"Spermalatalogicalazersingle cream"

There's a "Hooray for Hollywood" sketch in series 2 that is the root of the decline.

It's flimsy dressing up box fun to watch Dawn and Jennifer disguised as Hollywood stars, but the material isn't much funnier than watching the original films.

But they - and the BBC costume dept - seemed to enjoy doing it so much that it soon became their trademark. Very easy to show clips of at awards ceremonies. "ooh, doesn't that look expensive?"

The central joke of F&S doing parodies and tributes was always that they were cheap, tatty, ratty and bad at doing them - like a school play. The humour was bathetic - why were barely competent performers trying to stage The Godfather? That sort of thing.

However, the more F&S became flagship BBC comedy icons, and the more money that got spent on the spoofs, the "better" and more competent they became, thus destroying the joke. Their parody of Titanic looked just like Titanic, and had about the same number of jokes in it, so it's not really a parody.

I didn't enjoy much past series two, to be honest...

Well, I still insist that the'yre crap, and always have been. One thinks of their complete dependence on make-up, costumes, or, if that fails, good old viscera (ie-the miserable "misery"parody, and inevitably shooting Lulu to bits in that Pulp Fiction spoof), or of them having a cake pushed into their faces by Jane Asher. And how many times have they done that "I/we took the padding off half an hour ago" joke, hey? HEY?

....come to think of it, I'd better stop watching any French and Saunders-related stuff. Still, at least I can honestly say that I've never ever seen "The Vicar Of Dibley" in my life.

I dont need Dawn fucking French to point out to me that she is the size of a house for me to laugh at her for it.

>Well, I still insist that the'yre crap, and always have been. One thinks of their complete dependence on make-up, costumes, or, if that fails, good old viscera (ie-the miserable "misery"parody, and inevitably shooting Lulu to bits in that Pulp Fiction spoof), or of them having a cake pushed into their faces by Jane Asher. And how many times have they done that "I/we took the padding off half an hour ago" joke, hey? HEY?


But all your examples, save one, come from the fourth series which we've already agreed is very poor.

Watch the Series Two compilation video if you can. It's much better than you'd expect (if a bit dated).

It was kind of ironic that Eddie ended up paralysing her face, when Jennifer Saunders never moves her face anyway.

I kind of liked it, though. It's good fun. And great to see people still doing those microscooter jokes!

Oh christ. They didn't?

>Oh christ. They didn't?

They did. But to be fair, Eddie is the kind of adult who would still have one and ride one, so it could be a character thing.
Certainly better than that horrendously judged Ericsson (or whoever) ad with the half-piping scooter suits.

> Certainly better than that horrendously
> judged Ericsson (or whoever) ad with the
> half-piping scooter suits.

I thought the same thing when I saw that advert. But it recently occured to me that maybe this is a "character thing" too. Presumably the advert is aimed at men-in-suits. Maybe this target audience, like Eddie, think that miniscooters are cool ...

That's the only possible explanation for what is, otherwise, a bloody awful advert. Yer know, other than the explanation that it really is horrendously judged.

Talking of "horrendously judged" ads, what about the new "DFS is sexy" adverts? (You know the ones: instead of some c-list local news anchor wandering through aisles of sofas shouting about prices, you get couples in leather trousers about to fuck and eat ice cream on chaise longues).

I was delighted to discover that this new ad campaign was done "in house", without the use of their usual ad agency. And, naff though it may be, it's really helped sales.

So, the ad that looked like a bloke in personnel had borrowed a DV camera was the one that highly-paid ad creatives came up with and made the whole nation laugh derisively. While the new ad that looks like some Soho wankstain had decided soft furnishing was the new Haagen Dasz, was the one done by furniture salesmen, and has the whole nation out buying.

Anyone can do it. Ha ha ha ha ha.

A career in advertising once more looks like the gossamer breath of a featherlight myth, puffed up to look like a respectable job for a grown adult.

I liked the second episode of Absolutely Fabulous in this particular series since it didn't have any pleb pleasing guest appearances. For me the show works when it's the four women interacting with each other.
Pity it had a dream sequence though. Personally I wished Jennifer Saunders decided to continue with Mirrorball. Oh God, don't tell me the reviews of that was negative on this site. I've just made myself look a total twat. At least you don't know what I look like so you can't point at me and laugh.