French and Saunders

French & Saunders

These days decent comedy teams are thin on the ground.Gone are the days of Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and Morcombe and Wise, so it's all the more astounding that French and Saunders are still going strong as the millenium nears.

Dawn French, the less than tall one, and Jennifer Saunders, the non-shortish one, met way back during the eighties when hair was big and comedy was languishing. As students at the Central School of Speech and Drama (London), Dawn and Jennifer didn't immediately hit it off. Eventually they teamed up to form the comedy duo The Menopause Sisters before moving on to the ground-breaking Comic Strip, which also featured the likes of future Young Ones Ade Edmundson, Nigel Planer and Rik Mayall. As members of the Comic Strip, the girls toured extensively, honing their act and waiting for their big break. Telly appearances soon followed in series such as The Young Ones, Ben Elton's Entertainers and Happy Families, and the oft-times brilliant Comic Strip Presents anthology series.

The really big time came calling in the form of Girls on Top, a wacky sitcom about four very different friends sharing a flat. Dawn and Jennifer starred along with the soon to be huge Tracy Ulmann and the defiantly unfunny Ruby Wax. Next up was the show their fans had always hoped they'd do - French & Saunders. All French & Saunders all the time. Through five series (a sixth is said to be imminent), the ladies have presented some of the freshest sketch comedy on telly. A willingness to take chances and commit to a comic premise set them apart from so many of their contemporaries. One of these edge-dwelling skits led directly to the top cult comedy of the nineties, Absolutely Fabulous.

When not working together on the French & Saunders series or their frequent Comic Strip and stage collaborations, the pair put their talents to still more good use. Saunders fleshed out the earlier F&S skit and created AbFab in which she also starred with New Avengers alum Joanna Lumley and Press Gang's Julia Sawalha. Dawn French has had a pair of excellent, though very different, series of her own, the charming foodie program Scoff and the marvelous clerical comedy The Vicar of Dibley. These funny ladies also do their part for comedy's greater good at home where they're married to two other fine comic minds - Lenny Henry is Mr. Dawn French while The Young One's Ade Edmundson claims Jennifer Saunders as his better half.

There are plenty of good F&S related sites on the WWW including...

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