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A Bit of Fry & Laurie
A Bit of Fry & Laurie is a British sketch comedy television series written by and starring former Cambridge Footlights members Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, broadcast on both BBC1 and BBC2 between 1989 and 1995. It ran for four series with 26 episodes, including a 36-minute pilot episode in 1987.
As in The Two Ronnies, elaborate wordplay and innuendo were staples. It frequently broke the fourth wall; characters would revert to their real-life actors mid-sketch, or the camera would often pan off set into the studio. The show was punctuated with non sequitur vox pops in a similar style to those of Monty Python's Flying Circus, often making irrelevant statements and wordplay. Laurie was also seen playing piano and other instruments and singing comical numbers.
The 36-minute pilot was broadcast on BBC1 at 11:55 pm on Boxing Day 1987, although it was later edited to 29 minutes for repeat transmissions (including broadcasts on the Paramount Comedy Channel). The full version is intact on the Series 1 DVD. It was the first pilot Fry and Laurie had produced for the BBC since 1983; their previous attempt, The Crystal Cube, had not met with the BBC's approval.
The show began its full run at 9:00 pm on Friday 13 January 1989. The first three series were screened on BBC2, the traditional home for the BBC's sketch shows, while the fourth series switched to the mainstream BBC1. The last series was the least well-received. BBC1 was not the best place to showcase Fry and Laurie's arch humour; it featured celebrity guests in all but one episode, an addition which neither Fry nor Laurie approved; and it was shown not long after Fry's nervous breakdown in 1995, which cast a shadow over the series. One reviewer said that, perhaps owing to this, Fry got more of the laughs, while Laurie was increasingly relegated to the "straight man" role.
Guest performers frequently appeared during the first three series before they were made a permanent fixture in the fourth. These included Selina Cadell (Series 2, episode 4), Paul Eddington (Series 2, episode 5), Nigel Havers (Series 2, episode 6), Rowan Atkinson (Series 2, episode 6), Nicholas Parsons (Series 3, episode 1), Rebecca Saire (Series 3, episode 2 and 5), Gary Davies (Series 3, episode 6) and Colin Stinton (Series 3, episode 6).
In 2010, the duo reunited for a retrospective special, titled Fry and Laurie Reunited.
The show did not shy away from commenting on issues of the day. A sketch in the second series, in which a Conservative government minister is strangled while Stephen Fry screams at him "What are you doing to the television system? What are you doing to the country?", is an attack on the Broadcasting Act of 1990 and the perceived motivations of those who supported it. The pair would later attack what they saw as the Act's malign after effects in the sketch "It's a Soaraway Life", a parody of It's a Wonderful Life evoking a world in which Rupert Murdoch never existed.
The series made numerous jokes at the expense of the Tory prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and one sketch depicted a televised "Young Tory of the Year" competition in which a young Conservative (Laurie) recites a deliberately incoherent speech consisting only of nonsense political buzzwords, such as "family values" and "individual enterprise".
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A Bit of Fry & Laurie
A Bit of Fry & Laurie is a British sketch comedy television series written by and starring former Cambridge Footlights members Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, broadcast on both BBC1 and BBC2 between 1989 and 1995. It ran for four series with 26 episodes, including a 36-minute pilot episode in 1987.
As in The Two Ronnies, elaborate wordplay and innuendo were staples. It frequently broke the fourth wall; characters would revert to their real-life actors mid-sketch, or the camera would often pan off set into the studio. The show was punctuated with non sequitur vox pops in a similar style to those of Monty Python's Flying Circus, often making irrelevant statements and wordplay. Laurie was also seen playing piano and other instruments and singing comical numbers.
The 36-minute pilot was broadcast on BBC1 at 11:55 pm on Boxing Day 1987, although it was later edited to 29 minutes for repeat transmissions (including broadcasts on the Paramount Comedy Channel). The full version is intact on the Series 1 DVD. It was the first pilot Fry and Laurie had produced for the BBC since 1983; their previous attempt, The Crystal Cube, had not met with the BBC's approval.
The show began its full run at 9:00 pm on Friday 13 January 1989. The first three series were screened on BBC2, the traditional home for the BBC's sketch shows, while the fourth series switched to the mainstream BBC1. The last series was the least well-received. BBC1 was not the best place to showcase Fry and Laurie's arch humour; it featured celebrity guests in all but one episode, an addition which neither Fry nor Laurie approved; and it was shown not long after Fry's nervous breakdown in 1995, which cast a shadow over the series. One reviewer said that, perhaps owing to this, Fry got more of the laughs, while Laurie was increasingly relegated to the "straight man" role.
Guest performers frequently appeared during the first three series before they were made a permanent fixture in the fourth. These included Selina Cadell (Series 2, episode 4), Paul Eddington (Series 2, episode 5), Nigel Havers (Series 2, episode 6), Rowan Atkinson (Series 2, episode 6), Nicholas Parsons (Series 3, episode 1), Rebecca Saire (Series 3, episode 2 and 5), Gary Davies (Series 3, episode 6) and Colin Stinton (Series 3, episode 6).
In 2010, the duo reunited for a retrospective special, titled Fry and Laurie Reunited.
The show did not shy away from commenting on issues of the day. A sketch in the second series, in which a Conservative government minister is strangled while Stephen Fry screams at him "What are you doing to the television system? What are you doing to the country?", is an attack on the Broadcasting Act of 1990 and the perceived motivations of those who supported it. The pair would later attack what they saw as the Act's malign after effects in the sketch "It's a Soaraway Life", a parody of It's a Wonderful Life evoking a world in which Rupert Murdoch never existed.
The series made numerous jokes at the expense of the Tory prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and one sketch depicted a televised "Young Tory of the Year" competition in which a young Conservative (Laurie) recites a deliberately incoherent speech consisting only of nonsense political buzzwords, such as "family values" and "individual enterprise".