In a sentenceTwo women who have not been in the same room for a while, pretending they have never left it, and getting away with it for an hour
Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders return to a television studio in 2017, thirty years after they first shared one, for an hour-long special whose title adds a nought to the anniversary as its opening joke. It is a sketch show in the shape they have always used: the two of them together, moving in and out of sketches as the mood takes them, with the pair’s own history as the running subject. Jack Farthing and Eleanor Tomlinson appear alongside them. The hour closes with a parody of Poldark. Ed Bye directs. It runs 60 minutes.
A fond, slightly baggy reunion hour that trades on memory for most of its length and then, in a closing Poldark sketch, remembers exactly what French and Saunders were for. Worth your evening if you grew up with them; a curiosity if you did not.
Thirty years after they first shared a BBC studio, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders have come back for an hour, and the extra nought in the title is the first joke. 300 Years of French & Saunders is a sketch special that is also a look back, and it does both about as well as you would expect from two performers who have never appeared to try very hard and have never needed to. It is fond, it is loose, and it has one sketch at the end that is as good as anything they did in their prime. We enjoyed it, we laughed less often than we had hoped, and we would still send anyone who grew up with them to it without a second thought.
The frame is the one they have always used. The two of them sit in a studio, talk to each other as if nobody were watching, and slide into sketches and out again, with Saunders usually the one who wants to get on with it and French the one who wants to talk about something else first. Ed Bye directs it plainly, which is right: a studio floor, a live audience, a few sets, and the camera kept on the faces, because the faces are the show. There is nothing here that could not have been made in 1987, and that is the point rather than a complaint.
The parodies are the mixed part. French and Saunders built their reputation on taking something everybody had seen and doing it slightly wrong, in costumes that cost too much, with a straight face. The best of the new ones have that. The weaker ones feel like two people who have been told what is on television rather than having watched it, and the joke is then about them not quite knowing, which is funny once. A couple of sketches end because the hour has to move on rather than because they have found their ending.
Then there is Poldark. Jack Farthing and Eleanor Tomlinson turn up as guests, and the closing sketch is the one we will not describe beyond saying that it is the only point in the hour where the two of them are at once cruel about a programme and obviously in love with it, which was always their trick. We laughed out loud twice in sixty minutes, and both times were here. For the rest of it we smiled, which is a different thing, and we noticed the difference. The one review we have read so far singles out the same sketch, and we think that is because it is the one that was written rather than remembered.
The look-back material is where it sags. Reminiscence is pleasant in their company and it is also easy, and the hour leans on the audience’s memory of old sketches more than it ought to. If you do not have that memory, there are stretches where you are watching two people enjoy a private joke, graciously, with the door open. At 60 minutes that is not a great deal to forgive. It is still padding.
Set against their own best work, the film parodies of the nineties that spent the licence fee on a wig and a sinking ship, this is a smaller thing and knows it. French is as quick as she ever was; Saunders is drier and a little more tired, and plays that for what it is worth. Neither of them is coasting. They are simply older, and the hour is honest about it in a way the title pretends not to be.
Watch it with someone who can name the sketches being referred to, and let them explain. On your own, and cold, you will like the last ten minutes and wonder what the fuss was about before that.
Hughes finds the reunion entertaining and warmly welcomes French and Saunders back. She especially praises the closing Poldark sketch for being both silly and smart.
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French and Saunders · not reviewed yetThe original series, where the wigs were bigger and the budgets more cheerfully abused.
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Victoria Wood As Seen on TV · not reviewed yetThe other great British sketch show of the decade, and the sharper writer.
The Kids in the Hall · not on Fi1m yetCanadian sketch troupe with the same fondness for men in frocks and bad wigs.
Smack the Pony · not reviewed yetThree women, no studio audience, and sketches that end when they should.
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