Ab Fab, Abigail's Party and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

Jennifer Saunders, Mike Leigh and Jimmy Nail's Geordie builders

Jun 10, 2009

A small selection of the most important and influential British TV shows over the years beginning with the letter A.

British TV has a long and varied history with the humble one channel beginnings on black and white sets where the family used to huddle round in their Sunday Best to watch the Queen's coronation to the modern days of 24-hour news, red button mashing and repeats on the internet.

This is the start of a series of articles that will focus on the TV shows people need to know about, programmes that have ushered in a new form of entertainment whether or they are actually beneficial and the ones that simply made the most impact in terms of critical praise or viewing figures.

Along with Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders can be considered one of the first ladies of alternative comedy in Britain due to her work with the likes of a pre-commercialised Ben Elton and future husband Adrian Edmondson and co. during the 1980s. This series grew from a sketch she did with French about a fashion obsessed, wannabe trendy mum and her long suffering daughter.

It’s a rather simple set-up as Ab Fab follows the daily lives of idiotic PR guru Eddy Monsoon (Saunders) and chain-smoking accomplice Patsy (Joanna Lumley) as they get up to just about anything and everything, usually in some inebriated state. Who said comedy had to be complex?

This is one of those rare occasions when a sketch show is not only well written and clever, but also genuinely funny and utterly original. A Bit of Fry and Laurie was from the Monty Python/Spike Milligan school of comedy in that it was not just a bunch of random strangeness for three minutes to set up a dumb punch line, there was a lot of thought put into each utterance.

Good comedy should not just raise a few laughs but must also make comments about society as a whole. Throughout their four series the duo made jokes about class, the media, celebrities and just anything that took their fancy. Whether it was Stephen Fry’s wonderfully verbose monologues that pushed his boundless vocabulary or Hugh Laurie’s funny but rather admirable interlude songs that he personally performed it was always a joy to watch.

A television play by Mike Leigh that was made as part of the BBC’s drama series Play for Today, Abigail’s Party was an exploration into middle-class ideals that were increasingly present during the 1970s. The titular event, which is never shown in the play, is the setting for suburban life where the people argue about petty things and are constantly striving to out do either other. That doesn’t happen on the box much these days...

This remains as one of Leigh’s most important works on screen and it was also placed at number 11 on the British Film Institute’s top 100 TV programmes.

Okay, the cynics out there will argue that this show cannot be considered British as it is merely a spin-off from a US hit about a rich bloke with mad hair setting a bunch of weird tasks for middle-class business types all in the name of advertising his own company. But it’s only once it was transferred across the Atlantic did The Apprentice format start to come into its own and make sense.

A “reality” show that is worth watching, The Apprentice reveals that the corporate world is full of backstabbing fools and ego-driven metaphors. Also the grandmaster at the centre of the whole thing, Sir Alan Sugar, isn’t afraid to say what he really thinks in the most colourful language possible (“you’ve gone from anchor to w*****” remains a favourite). Trump is Niles Crane in comparison.

At first glance a comedy-drama about a group of Geordie builders who hotfoot it to Germany for work doesn’t seem revolutionary but it became one of the most loved TV shows of its day. The story of Oz (Jimmy Nail) and the gang struck a cord with the viewing public when it was first broadcast on ITV in the mid-80s as it encapsulated the grievances with Thatcher’s Britain and was a genuinely witty escape into the lives of seven very ordinary men and their antics.

Although it suffered the curse of diminishing returns – the final series and following special were a little too farfetched – and a move to the BBC after a 15 break Auf Wiedersehen, Pet remains as an important landmark in British television.

The copyright of the article Ab Fab, Abigail's Party and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet in British TV is owned by Steven Cookson. Permission to republish Ab Fab, Abigail's Party and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.