TV guide: Duo who stood the test of time; French and Saunders

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), Sept 20, 2008

IT'S been more than 20 years since the Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French double act came together. Happily, they are still going strong.

Dawn (born 1957) and Jennifer (born 1958) met at the Central School of Speech and Drama in Manchester in the early 80s.

Dawn returned to teaching before their paths crossed again in London at the stand-up training ground of the Comedy Store, where a lot of the alternative crew met.

They later became part of the talented Comic Strip Presents team.

French and Saunders have since managed to appeal to a wide age group with their lampooning of famous films from Titanic to Misery and Silence Of The Lambs.

They have also paid hilarious homage to serious TV series such as Silent Witness, which in their hands became Witless Silence.

Their career as a double act has, however, run along similar lines to legends Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett - individuals also able to pursue solo careers.

Unlike Morecambe & Wise, they were never joined creatively or contractually at the hip, yet they are still regarded in the public's eye as a duo.

On screen, as on stage, French and Saunders spark off each other.

Their own personal view of entertainment is a simple rule of thumb: "If it makes us laugh, then it works for us."llions would agree.

Both have been stalwarts on the Comic Relief front and the pair have also excelled in their own multi-award winning solo series.

Dawn, married to Lenny Henry, has shown her acting ability in the Vicar Of Dibley and Jennifer, married to Ade 'Young Ones' Edmondson, with her own self-penned Absolutely Fabulous creation which was born out of a French and Saunders sketch called Modern Mother and Daughter.

Their TV work together has made them household names.

Whether playing petulant schoolgirls or, bizarrely, two sex-crazed fat men (using state-of-the-art hideous male make-up) they have always relished experimenting.

Male duo Raw Sex (Roland Rivron and Simon Brint), ably supported them in their first four series and then French and Saunders were promoted to BBC1 in 1996.

Mark Lewisohn, TV expert, says: "Men had often appeared in drag as monstrous parodies of females, but rarely, if ever, had the tables been turned with such devastating effect.

"Later the Two Fat Men were replaced by Two Fat Ladies from the huntin', shootin' and fishin' class. But, although these sketches featured gory scenes of self-mutilation by the gin-swilling twosome, they never quite managed to re-create the sheer side-splitting awfulness of the male version."

French and Saunders naturally promoted women (double act Mel and Sue also wrote for them) and major personalities turned up as guest stars.

June Whitfield, Jane Asher, Stephanie Beecham, Lulu and Dusty Springfield joined in the fun like Andre Previn and Glenda Jackson suffered at Eric and Ernie's hands. Always taking risks, the two comics won awards with their takes on The Exorcist, Quentin Tarantino films, Batman movies, the singers Bjork and their respectful tribute to Abba.

They wrote their own material and, in the process, have always maintained greater control over their work.

The 2004 series featured a slight departure from the usual format, viewers eavesdropping on the stars and their new producer (played by Liza Tarbuck) as they blundered about trying to get the show off the ground.

It was an in-joke too far. Too self-indulgent.

French and Saunders presented themselves as shambolic, lazy souls devoid of new ideas, biting the BBC hand that fed them.

Yet, self-effacingly they regarded themselves as over-the-hill performers only holding appeal for older viewers.

But even now French and Saunders are still ahead of their time and their game. Always bouncing back.

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FUNNY GIRLS: Dawn French (left) and Jennifer Saunders as comedy characters and (below) as they really are