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
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