Jennifer Saunders reunites with the cast of Absolutely Fabulous for a new documentary called Inside Out. Here are the details…
Following the huge success of Bottom: Exposed earlier this year, GOLD have commissioned a similar feature length documentary about Absolutely Fabulous called Inside Out. While Bottom: Exposed featured many interviews and talking heads, Inside Out reunites most of the cast – Whitfield passed away in 2018.
Series co-star Jennifer Saunders said to the British Comedy Guide, “I loved making Ab Fab but I can’t remember a great deal, so much of this retrospective is a revelation to me. Thank you Gold for this kind and helpful programme”.
Its other co-star, Joanna Lumley, added: “It was a fabulous wander down memory lane by actresses who only have the faintest grip on reality. Really thrilling, and I hope vastly entertaining. I loved every second”.
Saunders, along with double act partner Dawn French, began her career at the start of the alternative comedy movement, performing alongside the likes of Hale and Pace, Ben Elton and Andy De La Tour. They quickly graduated from The Comedy Store to The Comic Strip, which itself made the leap to television with their now iconic first film Five Go Mad In Dorset.
It was truly a transformative time for television comedy, as it was broadcast on Channel 4 exactly a week before the first episode of The Young Ones debuted on rival channel BBC Two.
While Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson took their violent stage antics into sitcoms like Filthy, Rich and Catflap and Bottom, French and Saunders went on to headline their own sketch show, which ran for four series and several specials. They both had very successful solo outings in the 1990s, with French headlining The Vicar Of Dibley.
Then, of course, Saunders wrote and starred in Absolutely Fabulous, a parody of fashionistas that captured the zeitgeist of the early 1990s. It was the marriage of Saunders’ razor sharp scripts with a pitch perfect cast, which included Saunders as Edina Monsoon, Joanna Lumley as doggedly drunken best friend Patsy, Julia Sawalha as her uptight daughter Saffy, June Whitfield as her cutting mother and Jane Horrocks as Bubble.
Premiering in 1992, the show ran for five series and several specials until 2012, with feature film Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, released in 2016, which served as a coda, although Saunders has not ruled out writing more episodes.
Inside Out will air on GOLD later this year, we’ll keep you updated as we hear more.
