Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 12, 1995 TAG: 9506130015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Cable's Comedy Central began airing the first dozen episodes of the series last summer and has been repeating them ever since. Now the final six shows are ready to be seen, starting tonight at 8, with a repeat of that episode the following Sunday at 11 p.m.
It's enough to make Ab-Fab fans go both cuckoo and bananas, and the number of those fans may be growing. The show's ratings have been twice as good as anything else on Comedy Central, and it recently got the priceless publicity boost of a piece on ``60 Minutes.''
``Cybill,'' a CBS sitcom recently renewed for next season, was clearly inspired by ``Ab-Fab'' and its two lead characters. And Roseanne, the comic and actress, is trying to get ABC to buy her own Americanized remake of the show. The problem is, ABC wants a cleaned-up version, and once you clean up ``Ab-Fab,'' you've pretty well killed it.
The adventures of Edina and Patsy, played by series creator-writer Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, are outrageous, irreverent and criminally funny. Edina seems to run some sort of public relations agency; her job consists mainly of planning lavish parties. Her friend Patsy is in the fashion business, but mostly just pals around with Edina, whom she calls ``Eddie.''
In some ways, they are the female counterparts to MTV's ``Beavis and Butt-Head,'' albeit decades older. They're frivolous, irresponsible, hedonistic, insensitive, and essentially the only ones who can stand each other's company. Though they don't get literally falling-down drunk as often as they did in the first 12 episodes, Patsy rarely travels anywhere without a supply of Stolichnaya Vodka at hand, sometimes mixing it with champagne, usually glugging it right out of the bottle.
``Door Handle,'' first of the new episodes, has almost no plot. Edina's intellectual, sober-minded daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha) scolds her mother over another of her many uncompleted projects, remodeling the kitchen. Edina obsesses on the details; she has a particular doorknob in mind and can't continue until it's hers. The next thing we know, she and Patsy are in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in New York studying doorknobs and thinking about stealing one.
The second episode is about what the two women consider a disastrously dull New Year's Eve. ``My New Year's resolution, Sweetie, is to have more fun,'' says Edina after clattering down the stairs on roller blades. In the third show, Edina decides that after years of involuntary abstinence, she would like to have sex again. Patsy orders up two male hookers. By the time they arrive, there's a drag queen in the kitchen, Edina's mother is looped on pills, and Patsy's bulimic sister Jackie is making mad dashes to the bathroom.
For all their ridiculous behavior, Edina and Patsy have a poignant, bittersweet side. They are both running from the great fears of their life, age and boredom, trying to make themselves fascinating and youthful. ``The older you get, the more frightening life is,'' Edina observes in Episode Five. ``It should be the other way around, but it isn't.''
And in the last show, after Edina has paid a calamitous visit to a spiritual retreat, Patsy advises her, ``Darling, if you want to ... discover the meaning of life, you're better off downing a bottle of whiskey. At least that way you're unconscious by the time you start to take yourself seriously.''
Extravagantly funny, brilliantly written, sometimes so caustic it's cruel, the series is definitely an acquired taste. Once acquired, though, it can easily become addictive. The least that can be said for it is that it's a total original. No matter how many times it's imitated, there's never likely to be anything quite as deliciously crazed. ``Absolutely Fabulous'' is a triumph of insanity.
- Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB