French & Saunders

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French & Saunders
French and Saunders
Format	Sketch comedy, Parody
Created by	Dawn French Jennifer Saunders
Starring	Dawn French Jennifer Saunders
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of seasons	7
No. of episodes	46
Production
Running time	Various
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC Two
Original run	9 March 1987 – 24 December 2007
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

French & Saunders is a British sketch comedy television show written by and staring BAFTA Award-nominee Dawn French and Emmy and BAFTA Award-winner Jennifer Saunders. It is also the name by which the performers are known on the occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act.

Widely popular in the early 1990s, the show was given one of the highest budgets in BBC history to create detailed spoofs and satires of pop culture, movies, celebrities and art. French and Saunders continue to film holiday specials for the BBC, and both have been successful starring in their own shows. Saunders won an Emmy, a BAFTA Award and an international acclaim for writing and starring in Absolutely Fabulous, which led to roles in the American sitcoms Roseanne and Friends. She won an American People's Choice Award for voicing the evil Fairy Godmother in DreamWorks' animated Shrek 2, but more recently she has written and starred another two hit sitcoms, Jam and Jerusalem (where Dawn French had a role) and The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle. Jenifers Other work includes being the face of Barclays Bank and BBC America, while French starred in BBC hit The Vicar of Dibley.

The show features an unusual style of humour, where many otherwise normal parody sketches are permeated with an underlying theme (which somewhat breaks the fourth wall) of the jealousy that French has for Saunders, and the superiority complex of Saunders.

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, they were voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

The last special, 2005's French and Saunders Christmas Celebrity Special, aired on 27 December 2005 on BBC One. In 2006, Saunders and French announced that the sketch style French & Saunders show was now dead, and that they had moved on to more age-appropriate material. Still Alive Tour is scheduled for 2008 as well as a six-part anniversary series, A Bucket O' French & Saunders, six episodes compiled of old sketches which started airing on 7 September 2007 on BBC One.[1]

[edit] History

[edit] Origins

French (left) and Saunders spoofing Jack and Rose from the popular film Titanic

The duo met in 1978 while attending the Central School of Speech and Drama and immediately began to collaborate on projects. They first came to public attention in the early 1980s for performing at the London club The Comic Strip - which also gave its name to the TV show and the informal grouping of so-called alternative comedians. French & Saunders were featured on the 1981 live comedy album of The Comic Strip recorded by comedy entrepreneur Martin Lewis for his Springtime! label and released in September 1981. Their first mainstream TV appearance was in 1982 in the British comedy programme The Comic Strip Presents..., where they were featured in approximately 30 episodes each as well as writing material for the series. They began to establish themselves in what was referred to as the "underground comedy" scene, along with many other prolific actors and comedians like Alan Rickman and Miranda Richardson, people whom they would go on to work with for the next twenty-plus years. From 1984 they appeared as comedy relief on the weekly Channel 4 music programme The Tube in which French had the honour of being the first person to use the word "blowjob" on UK TV.

In 1985, they collaborated on the programme Girls On Top, which they again wrote and starred in. Co-stars Tracey Ullman and Ruby Wax rounded out a set of four oddball roommates, and the show ran for two years. In 1986 they made their first of many appearances on the UK version of Comic Relief, and they signed a long-term contract with the BBC.

Although the two have parted somewhat to find great success individually, they frequently reunite for holiday specials on the BBC. A six-DVD boxed set of their work was released internationally.

[edit] French & Saunders

In early 1987 the duo launched the programme French & Saunders, which has carried over six series up until late 2007. The show began humbly but immediately established its own niche as a spoof on other types of shows. In the first season it was set up to intentionally look like a low-budget variety show in which the two stars were constantly attempting grandiose stunts and often failing miserably. Often a "famous" guest star (usually someone who was very much a B-list celebrity) would be brought on and then treated badly. Also featured during this season was a set of geriatric dancers and a bongos/keyboard music duo called Raw Sex, actually long-time collaborators Simon Brint and Rowland Rivron and the vocal talents of Kirsty MacColl.

As the series progressed and ratings skyrocketed the duo received higher and higher budgets with which to create elaborate parodies of mainstream culture. These ranged anywhere from recreations of films (Thelma & Louise, Misery, Titanic, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) to spoofs on popular music artists (Madonna, Bananarama and ABBA being favourites). Certain spoken phrases and sight gags that referenced previously-performed sketches (often from years before) were incorporated for loyal fans. In particular there is a running gag suggesting that the duo are unable to accurately affect accents; this first appeared in their spoof of Gone with the Wind when they break character in the middle of an elaborate and expensive parody to argue about the authenticity of their Southern accent. Saunders goads French to try the accent by saying "How are you?" and French responds with a mangled interpretation: "Har URR Yer?" Since then they often break character in the middle of elaborate sketches to do an "accent check" and repeat these lines.

Another unique aspect to the show is that it was permeated by a sense of awareness at all times that the viewer was actually watching a parody. Unlike many parodies that are done in a straightforward manner for effect, French & Saunders uses the viewer's awareness of what is going on to further stretch out the joke. In their parody of the The Lord of the Rings films, an encounter by Galadriel (Saunders) and Frodo (French) is thrown off when Saunders delivers the line "I have passed the test, and now I will diminish, and go to the West and remain Galadriel", to which French responds "You will what, sorry?" Saunders replies "I will diminish... I don't understand, it's in the book."

Other characters that make a recurring appearance are the bald, fat, perverted old men ("Begging for it she is!"); Star Test (most memorable character is Sonia, played by French); and Out and About ("I bet she do's tricks").