Absolutely Fabulous: Complete Series 5

Sticking with the buzz, I treated myself to Series One on VHS - excellent - and was duly rewarded by Series 4 after a very lacklustre Series 3. Inbetween, the almighty 'Last Shout' tided me over, and thanks to those interminable re-runs, even Series 3 grew on me after a while.

Which brings me full-circle to this, the complete series 5.

Now, oddly enough, this isn't available here in Region 2 on DVD just yet, so I am prepared to put up with minor (yet completely unforgivable in terms of necessity) flaws like the absence of Debbie Harry's vocal on the opening credits, and the lack of the 'Chicago' scene from the 'Birthin' episode (I did catch that one on TV, and believe me, American buddies, you're missing nothing. In vulgar parlance - it SUCKED), but what I was not prepared for in the slightest is the total lack of laughter, smiles and general Humour that made the first four series such a wonderful thing to watch.

For every decent, solid joke (Bubble's New Duchess persona, Patsy's recurring collagen disasters, Eddie singing Christmas Carols) there are three or four totally humour-free incidents (Eddy and Patsy worrying Saffy about post-pregnancy womanhood, preditable and tired Liza & David jokes, Bo and Marshall's infomercial, all appearances by TitiCaca, the entire 'Huntin', Shootin', Fishin' episode, etc etc etc). Laugh-For-Laugh, it's not great, and a feeble second even to the rushed, gimmicky 'Gay' TV Special.

One reviewer here levels a criticism at the studio lighting, and he/she is completely, 100% correct on this score - the harsh, high-contrast key-lighting ratio makes for a cheap and tawdry-looking Monsoon household, and, rather than looking like their fabulous selves, Eddy and Patsy now look like scary old has-beens. Even at DVD quality it's difficult to see detail sometimes, and the whole visual quality is very amateurish - NOT the Thing, sweetie.

Worryingly, Sauders seems to be taking parts of her writing into a 'Surreal' and decidedly less funny area - what works for Britcoms like 'The League of Gentlemen' and 'The Fast Show' most certainly does not work with Eddy and Patsy - case in point, the opening 1940's sequence of 'Huntin', Shootin', Fishin', the Patsy voodoo doll and the 'Boobarella' skits, while solid surreal comedy ideas, are not well-suited to a show where the whole raison d'etre is to keep one's finger on the pulse.

For all the bad points, however, there are some classic moments - Katy Grin and the Tank, 'Big Mother', "Is he from a-Gabon?", and Patsy & the pheasant - but these moments of true Ab Fab glory are few and far between, and I, for one, can't force a smile for that length of time while waiting for them to appear.

DVD-wise all is good, the outakes are plentiful (if bog-standard, most outtakes from everything seem to be people getting the same line wrong ad nauseam) and the presentation and audio are top-notch.

Sadly I cannot recommend this DVD to anyone but the most avid of Ab Fab completists. It's rare that I consider an Amazon purchase a waste of $40, but there it is.

Not Good.

The incredibly talented cast of "characters" include Edina's long-suffering 20-ish daughter, the gave-up-on-Edina-long-ago elderly mother, Edina's dipsy secretary with ESP (she knows someone is about to ring the door bell -- because they sent a telegram announcing their visit), Edina's estranged ex-husbands and their new spouces (one female, one male), and a line of celebrities playing themselves.

Absolutely Fabulous is the "hippest" show on television, ridiculing society's conventions and focusing on "living" at all cost. The "who cares?" attitude, which seems to always drop the lead characters down on the ground in the end, nonetheless gives the Ab-Fab Duo a false sense of victory. One "last line" says it best: "In the end it was all good, though, wasn't it?" Good? It was FABULOUS!*****