French & Saunders is a British sketch comedy television show written by and starring Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and also the name by which the performers are known on the rare occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act.
French & Saunders is a British sketch comedy television show written by and starring Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and also the name by which the performers are known on the rare occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act.
Widely popular in the early 1990s, the show was given one of the highest budgets in BBC history to create detailed spoofs and satires of pop culture, movies, celebrities and art. French and Saunders continue to film holiday specials for the BBC, and both have been successful starring in their own shows. Saunders starred in and wrote the hit sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, which is based on a sketch written with French for French & Saunders, while French starred in The Vicar of Dibley.
The show features an unusual style of humour, where many otherwise normal parody sketches are permeated with an underlying theme (which somewhat breaks the fourth wall) of the jealousy that French has for Saunders, and the superiority complex of Saunders.
In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, they were voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
The last special 2005's French and Saunders Christmas Celebrity Special aired on 27 December 2005 on BBC One. In 2006, Saunders and French announced that the sketch style French & Saunders show was now dead, and that they had moved on to more age-appropriate material. A Farewell Tour is scheduled for 2008 as well as a six-part anniversary series, A Bucket O' French & Saunders, six episodes compiled of old sketches which started airing on 7 September 2007 on BBC One.
French & Saunders is a British sketch comedy television show written by and starring Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and also the name by which the performers are known on the rare occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act.