French and Saunders is a British sketch comedy television series written by and starring comedy duo and namesakes Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders that originally broadcast on BBC2 from 1987 to 1993, and later on BBC One until 2017. It is also the name by which the performers are known when they appear elsewhere as a double act. The show was given one of the highest budgets in BBC history to create detailed spoofs and satires of popular culture, movies, celebrities, and art. French and Saunders continued to film holiday specials for the BBC, and both have been individually successful starring in other shows.
In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, the duo were voted among the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Their last special, French and Saunders Christmas Celebrity Special, aired on 27 December 2005 on BBC One. In 2006, both French and Saunders announced their sketch show was dead and that they had moved on to more age-appropriate material. Their last time performing as a duo, the Still Alive tour, ran initially until late 2008, then resumed in Australia in summer 2009. In 2009, the duo were jointly awarded the BAFTA Fellowship, due to their significant international influence on satire and sketch comedy. Since 2009, French and Saunders decided to occasionally do more satire usually for comic relief including Mamma Mia, Gogglebox and The Traitors.
History Background (1978–1987) Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders met in 1978 while they were studying drama at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and began their career by collaborating on several comedy projects. They came to prominence in the early 1980s for performing at the London alternative comedy club The Comedy Store, which also gave its name to its television series The Comic Strip Presents... and the informal grouping of so-called "alternative comedians". French and Saunders were featured on the live comedy album of The Comic Strip recorded by comedy entrepreneur Martin Lewis for his Springtime! label and released in 1981. The duo made their first mainstream television appearance in The Comic Strip Presents..., appearing in approximately 30 episodes each and writing material for the show.
French and Saunders began to establish themselves in what was referred to as the "underground comedy" scene, along with many other prolific actors and comedians they would work with during the next twenty-plus years. In 1983, they starred in an edition of Channel 4's series The Entertainers,The TV Museum Youtube channel: a trailer for the programme, transmitted 6 October 1983, appears on their YouTube website and later went on to appear as comedy relief on the same channel's weekly music programme The Tube, which permitted French the honour of being the first person to use the word "blowjob" on British television. In 1985, French and Saunders collaborated on the programme Girls on Top, which they once again (with Ruby Wax) 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 series. In 1986, French and Saunders made their first of many appearances on Comic Relief, and they signed a long-term contract with the BBC.
French and Saunders (1987–2007)
In 1987, French and Saunders created their eponymous sketch show, which lasted six series and nine specials until 2005. Compilations of previous material appeared until 2017. The show began humbly but established its own niche.
The first series was intentionally set up to look like a low-budget variety show in which the duo constantly attempted grandiose stunts and often failed miserably. A "famous" guest star would often be brought on but mistreated. Also featured during this series were a troupe of geriatric dancers called The Hot Hoofers and a bongos/keyboard music duo called Raw Sex, actually Comic Strip collaborators Simon Brint and Rowland Rivron in character as stepfather and stepson Ken and Duane Bishop respectively. Alison Moyet and Joan Armatrading each appeared in one episode. The dancing and music were included to fulfil the series' mandate as a light entertainment series to include "a certain amount of variety" rather than pure comedy (as the BBC's budget for Light Entertainment was considerably higher than that of their Comedy department). The show-within-a-show premise was dropped with the second series in 1988.
As the show progressed, ratings skyrocketed, eventually prompting the BBC to move it from BBC2 to BBC1 in 1994. French and Saunders received higher and higher budgets to create elaborate parodies of mainstream culture. These ranged anywhere from re-creations of films (e.g., Thelma & Louise, Misery, Titanic, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) to spoofs of popular music artists including Madonna, Bananarama, ABBA and The Corrs. Certain spoken phrases and sight gags referencing previously performed sketches (often from years before) were incorporated for loyal fans. In particular, there is a running gag suggesting French and Saunders are unable to affect accents accurately: this first appeared in their spoof of Gone with the Wind when they break their 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 an interpretation sounding more like a strong Northern Irish accent. Since then, the duo often break character in the middle of elaborate sketches to do an "accent check" and repeat these lines.
The show also contained numerous meta references: an awareness that the viewer was watching a parody. Unlike many parodies done straightforwardly for effect, French and Saunders use the viewer's awareness of what is going on to stretch out the joke further. For example, in their parody of Peter Jackson's fantasy film epic The Lord of the Rings, an encounter between Frodo and Galadriel is thrown off after Saunders delivers her line: "I have passed the test, and now I will diminish, and go to the West and remain Galadriel". French responds, "You will what, sorry?", to which 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!"); two perpetually overacting extras; and Star Pets ("What a lovely dog, Lady Fortescue: I bet he do's tricks").
The sixth and final series aired in 2004, returning to the first series' metafictional premise. In this series, the two lampooned themselves as incapable of getting any work done: Saunders later characterised it as "a fairly accurate rendition of our writing process" but asserted that, while they appeared to others to be procrastinating, they were actually generating writing ideas. The series also starred Liza Tarbuck as a heavily fictionalised version of herself, forced to be the fictional show's producer despite her actual career goal of creating and producing game shows, and Lorna Brown as the production assistant, Abba. Maggie Steed appeared in two episodes as the duo's agent, Mo, based on their real agent, Maureen Vincent, while Eileen Essell and Brenda Cowling appeared briefly in several episodes as Abba's imagination of French and Saunders, respectively, as old women. The show ended with a final Christmas special in 2005. A compilation series, A Bucket o' French and Saunders, aired in 2007.
In 2008, the pair retired the show after performing a sketch with the singer Anastacia, in which French dressed in a similar outfit to the US star. French said she was left feeling "humiliated".
Post-show developments (2007–present) In Christmas 2010, French and Saunders were featured in three two-hour radio shows on BBC Radio 2. This was followed by further specials in 2011 for Easter and the Bank Holidays.
In 2020, the duo debuted a podcast titled French & Saunders: Titting About on Audible. The podcast features the pair in relaxed, often nostalgic conversations about a new topic in each episode. Series 2 was released in 2021, and Series 3 in 2022. Series 4 was released in 2023.
In 2021, it was announced that Gold had commissioned a new one-off special titled French and Saunders: Funny Women. The special, filmed on the set of their original sketch series, features a discussion by French and Saunders and focuses on the history of women who have contributed to comedy. It was broadcast on Gold on 17 July that year.
Cast In addition to French and Saunders themselves, the sketch series featured several regular and recurring cast members, who were chosen for their "funny bones" and willingness to "be part of the gang".
Although the amount of music in the show decreased over time, Raw Sex remained regular cast members through series 4. Betty Marsden also appeared in series one as Madame, the show's choreographer. Singer Kirsty MacColl appeared in one episode of series two and five episodes of series 3, sometimes performing jointly with Raw Sex.
For series 5, Mel and Sue served as assistant writers and appeared in four of the seven episodes. In series 6, the show returned to the show-within-a-show format of series 1, with Liza Tarbuck appearing in each episode as the fictional show's producer and Lorna Brown as the PA.
The show also featured dozens of guest stars. Notably, Saunders' Absolutely Fabulous co-stars Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha, and June Whitfield all guest-starred as themselves, with Whitfield appearing on the show three years before the beginning of Ab Fab. The spouses of the duo, Lenny Henry and Adrian Edmondson, both appeared on the show respectively, while the producer, Jon Plowman, made occasional uncredited cameos. Recurring Ab Fab actors Patrick Barlow, Harriet Thorpe, Helen Lederer, and Kathy Burke also appeared, as did French's The Vicar of Dibley co-star Gary Waldhorn, and Jam & Jerusalem regulars Maggie Steed, Rosie Cavaliero, and Pauline McLynn.
Regular ActorRole(s)Series 1Series 2Series 3Series 4Series 5Series 6Dawn FrenchHerself / Various colspan="6" Jennifer SaundersHerself / Various colspan="6" Simon BrintKen Bishop / Various colspan="4" colspan="2" Rowland RivronDuane Bishop / Various colspan="4" colspan="2" Betty MarsdenMadame colspan="5" Kirsty MacCollHerself colspan="3" Lorna BrownAbba colspan="5" Liza TarbuckLiza colspan="5"
Recurring Kevin Allen (8 episodes, 1990–1996) Patrick Barlow (8 episodes, 1990–2003) Kathy Burke (7 episodes, 1988–1999) Sean Chapman (3 episodes, 1994–2002) Sidney Cole (4 episodes, 1993–1995) Brenda Cowling (5 episodes, 2004) Adrian Edmondson (4 episodes, 1988–2017) Eileen Essell (4 episodes, 2004) Mel Giedroyc (4 episodes, 1996) Lenny Henry (4 episodes, 1988–1996) Lulu (3 episodes, 1988–2017) Patsy Kensit (3 episodes, 1996) Kate Moss (4 episodes, 1996) Sue Perkins (4 episodes, 1996) Maggie Steed (3 episodes, 1998–2004) Harriet Thorpe (8 episodes, 1987–2003) Ian Tough (3 episodes, 1993–1996) Janette Tough (5 episodes, 1993–2005) Tim Wylton (4 episodes, 1993–2004) Jon Plowman (3 episodes, 2003–2017) (uncredited) Keturah Sorrell (5 episodes, 1987) (uncredited)
Episodes