"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1987-1992, 1995)

Though Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry have acted together in all sorts of projects they haven’t written (like Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster, and Peter’s Friends,) this is what comes to mind when I think “Fry & Laurie humor.”  Their comic chemistry is evident in any shared project, but this series has a particular spark and savvy that’s all theirs.  There’s nothing quite like the comedy they make here.

A Bit of Fry and Laurie was a sketch comedy show packed to the gills with the duo’s trademark wordplay, absurd situations, bonkers characters, and inventive subject matter.  The tendency is to crow about “sophisticated comedy,” and some of the jokes are indeed masterful, but it’s not all high-brow all the time.  It also includes outrageous sexual humor and, what Extras would call the death-knell of comedy, “wigs and silly glasses.”  Dirty jokes and goofy costuming doesn’t discount the intelligence, doesn’t mean the funny gents at the helm aren’t whip-smart.  The humor is low and high, often both at the same time.  And really, the cruder jokes are generally just as well-written as the classier stuff.  This isn’t a show that goes dirty instead of being funny – the two go hand in hand.

So what’s on the docket?  There’s fantastically funny music lampooning various genres.  I adore “I’m in Love with Steffi Graf,” but my favorite would have to be the mock-protest song “All We Gotta Do,” which goes especially Dylan-esque (read:  mumbly and unintelligible) whenever the lyrics are poised to explain how to solve the world’s problems.  There’s over-the-top social satire, like the man who storms into his son’s school, outraged that they’ve been teaching lies like “Sexual intercourse can often bring about pregnancy in the adult female.”  They do fake talk shows, infomercials, and telethons, and they play insufferable TV critics and lambast their own sketches.  Stephen, without a hint of makeup, costume change, or acting, “plays” special guest Michael Jackson, and It’s a Wonderful Life is retold with Rupert Murdoch in the starring role.  They share end-of-episode cocktail recipes with such enticing names as “A Slow Snog with a Distant Relative” or “Everything in the Till and No Sudden Movements.”  Some sketches are just nonstop wordplay, like Stephen’s overenthusiastic linguist character or the sketch in which bartender Stephen keeps interrupting Hugh’s monologue to offer eerily-apt snacks.  (“She takes no interest in my friends, she laughs at my…” – “Peanuts?” – “…hobbies.”)

They don’t do many recurring sketches, but the ones they have are excellent.  I especially love Control and Tony, the stiffest, most polite spies ever, and super-intense business partners Peter and John are my favorites – “Damn, double damn, with an extra pint of damn for the weekend!!”  Still, they generally keep things fresh.  A few novel goodies include an Australian soap opera (“I’ve been having an affair with you for some time now,”) a prize-winning teenage poet (“‘Unhappy bubbles of anal wind popping and winking in the mortal bath,’”) and a bookstore customer dissatisfied with Jane Eyre (“Give me something, please, to read that doesn’t go on about window seats I’ve never heard of, and doesn’t have some dead bitch calling you ‘Reader’ all the time.”)  Yep, “a league of their own” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Warnings

Language, sexual references, alcohol/drug use, comic violence, and thematic elements.

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