 Stephen and Hugh developed the Fry/Laurie double-act via radio, TV and stage appearances through the mid-80's, including a regular gig on Saturday Live/Friday Night Live, the 1987/88 comedy-and-music shows hosted by Ben Elton. The BBC gave them their own sketch show, a one-off half hour titled A Bit of Fry & Laurie, at Christmas 1987. The Sunday Times referred to Stephen and Hugh as "one of the most polished double acts to have emerged from what is inexplicably called alternative comedy." The Times called the program "an amiable half hour." The first six-part series of ABOF&L aired in 1989, with new series in 1990, 1991 and 1995. Some comments from the press: London Times TV listing , 1/91: "The thinking person's Little and Large return for a third series....The humour of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie is witty, literate, cerebral and apolitical." London Sunday Times, 2/91: "...(the British Isles) can boast some outstanding comic talent, and nowhere more obviously than in Fry and Laurie. Tonight is the last in a series that has seen a real development in the pair's humour. With a greater emphasis on characterisation - often of a grotesque nature - the visual impact has been more entertaining and dramatic. Yet none of this has been at the expense of the linguistic play, which has reached new heights of sophistication guaranteed to daunt at least the next two generations of comedians." But there are fashions and cycles even in comedy, and four years later, the critical taste for their particular style had seemingly waned. The series, now seven parts and airing on BBC1 for the first time, received mixed reviews. The audience figures were also reputedly less than expected, though the odd scheduling of the programs to follow two genteel literary miniseries (The Buccaneers and The Choir) can't have helped. Not all the critics were unimpressed, as the following quotes illustrate: "The invention...is as clever and funny as fans would hope." - Sean Day-Lewis, Sunday Telegraph "...good moments - Laurie's folk singer parody" - Sunday Express "...an intelligent and witty entertainment" - Times "A week or two ago I watched a television programme by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie: it was very funny indeed, and its funniness was swift, fresh and ingenious." - Bernard Levin, columnist in the Times "...a consistently inventive and fulfilling experience" - Time Out "The last of the present series has a good chuckle quota , but the sketches need Laurie's acting talent and Fry's venom to succeed....the jokes and characterisations have a bite and substance that is rare indeed in British comedy....there are few double-acts working today that can match their chemistry." - Time Out Even some of the naysayers had kind words for Fry and Laurie themselves: "They are both quite good actors who have understandably endeared themselves to the public through (past projects). Having outgrown their true medium of university revue, they were able to stretch their talents (with the help of) strong scripts in the Bertie Wooster plays and the Blackadder series." - A.N. Wilson, Sunday Telegraph, in an otherwise horrid review "I still love Fry and Laurie. I even love their commercials. One small lapse in a glittering career. Just so there's no hard feelings, I'm going to retrospectively review something they did ages ago. Fry and Laurie appeared on Saturday Night Live and produced a dialogue about going to Florence to see Bernard Berenson. Let me say without the safety net of inverted commas that it was the funniest thing I have ever seen on television. If I die with a smile playing on my pinched blue lips, it will be because, through the haze of Alzheimer's, I've just remembered it." - AA Gill, Sunday Times A critic from, I believe, the Express, who had panned the first episode reconsidered somewhat towards the end of the series: "Finally, a confession: last week I laughed at A Bit of Fry & Laurie...Laurie's musical interlude (also one of the few highlights of the first show) was good fun, and some of the sketches were superb....Politically correct insanities were satirized with accurate observation and precision delivery." And they had a real champion in Hugh Massingberd of the Daily Telegraph: "Some reports last week concerning the disappearance of Stephen Fry...stated that the new series of A Bit of Fry & Laurie had received poor reviews. Not from me, it hadn't. I have thoroughly enjoyed this refreshing oasis of wit and stylish satire, and continue to do so. Indeed I am happy to cast aside the odious peaked cap of critic...and declare myself an adoring fan of this remarkable uomo universale and of his delightful comedy partner, Hugh Laurie. Their arrival on the scene in the mid-Eighties was like a shaft of golden light in which several different generations could happily bask....Their performances together in, especially, Blackadder Goes Forth and Jeeves and Wooster...rank at the very top of my most pleasurable experiences in 40-odd years of watching the telly." A Bit of Fry & Laurie was seen in the U.S. on
the
Bravo cable channel periodically
From 1993 to 1995. It's also been seen in the past two years on a few
PBS affiliates. In 1999, The BBC in America cable channel aired Series
4 of the program. |
