Fry and Laurie: Classic or Dud

Best of all: the Xmas '87 pilot with the Neighbours skit. "You mean... we've been sleeping together... behind my back?!"

I wouldn't trust my memories though; Christ, if you look at the records I was buying in 1987...

Love them love them love them. Classic for sure. They repeat them all every so often on Paramount.

A man dressed as a woman going "er..." really shouldn't be funny. But when they do it, it's hilarious.

Their Jeeves and Wooster series was a bit dud, tho' - Laurie obviously perfect casting as Bertie, but Fry too young for Jeeves.

l : now that's *you* the reader of the book, jane eyre is telling you
that she's married mr. rochester

F : oh baaaaaa-aaalls !

*

most under rated 80's comedy ever.
and 'terry you're fired' induced genuine
hysteria at my house.

or Tony and Control.

Genius

http://www.geocities.com/mmemym/

http://www.geocities.com/mmemym/bits1/fal0040.htm

I emailed the BBC about a year ago and demanded to know where I could get them on video and they said they weren't available. Sad emoticon.

"Well my father was a Tory and my mother voted Labour. So I suppose by rights I should be a Social Democrat. Er, but in actual fact I'm a Nazi."

Hugh So to you language is more than just a means of
communication?

Stephen Er, of course it is, of course it is, of course it is.
Language is a whore, a mistress, a wife, a pen-
friend, a check-out girl, a complimentary moist
lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-
up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the
dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust
that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you
pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of
erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine
on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered
childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a
spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm
wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk
of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite
boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of
a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun
by an old Wellington boot.

Perhaps the time is right for me to dust off the ABOF&L tapes and become curiously popular among my peers. No one seemed terribly interested in the late 90s.

"The West Indies - A Nation of Cricketers, by Ted Cunterblast".

Christ! I always thought he was saying, ridiculously, "Language is a 'DO-YOU-WANT-A-FRESH-APPLE'"

bringing this link down ere for the heathens. every sketch transcribed. u can't say fairer can u?

Even though I overdosed on the Paramount repeats, I'll probably buy this anyhow.

go geeks!

BEST:

http://www.youtube.com/v/3d58nxCH2lg

I LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!! I am so obsessed with A bit of Fry and Laurie..it's not funny....

My fave might be this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=GNrS9RHMc-I

Ah, short and sweet. :D

The Bishop & The Warlord <<< this is the sketch that I was going to rip off and use as the basis for a band at university... I would have been the guitar playing long haired gimp.

Watching the Comedy Connections special on this right now (well, not exactly right now, obviously, I am on a tram).

This show defined my early 20s. Defined. Bristling with cleverability and properly laugh-out-loud hilarious. All four seasons.

The language sketch, the haircut sketch, the Marjorie's had-a-fall sketch: all thoroughly unique, all genius. I cannot gush enough about this show and the influence its writing and ideas had on me.

"oh deer"

Even now I'll occasionally blurt 'listen to me listen to me' or '(hair) encutment' or 'your cocoa's coming in a minnit' or 'hello Control' or 'cucking' or 'soupy-twist', and nobody ever has any idea what I'm talking about.

or 'li', or 'nnn', or 'teh' after someone says something impossibly long-winded.

"OH DOUBLE BALLS AND BOLLOCKS!"

I have been watching their Jeeves and Wooster series a lot recently. Still great stuff as well.

These guys are never not Oxbridge!

What are you implying by that, m'colleague?

These guys are never not Oxbridge!

this is true, and it puts a kind of ceiling on their appeal for me - i "obtained" quite a few old ABOFAL episodes and liked them a lot but i think it's the two of them that i like more than anything. their actual material isn't that memorable for me. my favorite parts are probably their talk-show pisstakes, where they achieve that rare thing of parodying habits you never knew existed before, but recognized instantly the moment they'd done them.

I've been watching a lot of these recently too. I normally hate sketch comedy but they are so, so classic.

Maybe I didn't see enough of these, but somehow I found them pretty underwhelming, despite my intense love for F&L.

I still watch Jeeves and Wooster, probably once a year.

great stuff, prob my favorite sketch comedy of all time.

Re: The Bishop and the Warlord: Fratello Metallo.

'I'm a hard-headed woman! I'm a bitch on heat!' That's another one.

(xpost) maybe Italy should start entering Eurovision again with that guy...

beyond genius. i'll watch some of these links tomorrow. has anyone done the mr "N-I-P-P-L-E" one yet?

'Twenty-two tap dance Kings Lynn'

I cannot believe how much I remember word-for-word.

"So i said 'Jesus loves me does he? Well...', i said '..he's got a bloody funny way of showing it.' That shut him up, pope or no pope."

Got a DVD of the 3rd series, which is really not very good at all, sadly. But on a happier note it only cost me £3 and I got 4 Al Green albums for £3 at the same market stall.

Now I've been watching through them again, and that last Tony/Control sketch at the end of season 2 is just not fair. I want to see a Tony & Control movie.

Tony and Control, The Red Hat, Marjorie...

All the vox-pops... Fry and Laurie are brilliant together!

And wasn't it Mr Nippl-e?

you might be right. i haven't bothered to find out yet :)

Musical bits with Hugh Laurie are not good... did he only do these in the 3rd series?

No, I'm pretty sure "America" was in the first season, etc.

I must have programmed those out of my memory

The vox pops on this show are fracking brilliant

These guys are never not Oxbridge!

Dude, Fry & Laurie were part of the Oxbridge team on that University Challenge episode of the Young Ones.

Footlights, I'm almost totally certain.

Also YES! The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick! (Is the spelling correct?) 'But could it? Could it? ...Or could it?'

That whole mystery theatre thing was fantastic for so many reasons.

Finally watching "Jeeves & Wooster" and am quite enjoying it

Interested to hear what you make of the "American" episodes.

How long 'til I hit those?

They're possibly the funniest. Fat, vulgar American industrialists falling in love with chorus girls, hilarity ensues!

Season 3, for a couple of episodes and then Season 4.

I always found the "American" characters too cartoony in what was after all a pretty cartoonish thing already. I assumed they were Brits playing Americans but imdb seems to suggest that at least some of them are actual real-life Americans.

I can see what you mean, but I always enjoyed them nonetheless.

Oh, yeah, definitely still enjoyable!

In fact, damn it, I'm going to watch one now.

Complete set for £15 on Amazon, very tempting!

Fry and Laurie reunited!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/23/gold-stephen-fry-hugh-laurie

Well, sort of, might still be a pleasant hour though.

Because he's worth it

He'd better be for $400K an episode.

I always think it's a bit of a shame that Fry & Laurie seem slightly embarrassed by their earlier comedy career now, as if it was just something a bit silly they did when they were younger. Hugh in particular seemed a bit dismissive of it on that Comedy Connections show, in a sort-of "Oh, we thought we were so clever back then" kind of way.

Series 3 definitely the weakest overall, but S4 has an anger to it and a real sense of disgust at the state of things that has been largely absent from anything Fry has been involved in since. Especially now he has got himself rather cosily installed as a National Treasure.