The relationship between Fowler and clownish Constable Goody was clearly another to be placed in the Blackadder & Baldrick pile, but there was also a shade of the silly boy Pike about the rookie bobby, while Trinidadian veteran PC Gladstone could be compared to either Jones or Godfrey, as the most senior thorn in Fowler’s side. With Atkinson getting his lips around regular long decorative speeches composed for him by Elton, every episode of
TTBL
had his usual stamp of quality, but the star had some competition for laughs against David Haig’s astonishingly nuanced portrayal of the dangerously frustrated Derek Grim, with his own show-stopping rants about Fowler’s ‘wishy-washy, diddums, half-cock, up-yer-social-worker, fol-de-rol, blame-it-on-society, psycho, sicko, socio-claptrap-crap!’ Nor was it possible to ignore James Dreyfus as Kevin Goody, debuting a brand of heightened sitcom campery which belied the character’s longing for Mina Anwar’s Constable Maggie Habib, the one real voice of reason in Gasforth.
The richness of this police line-up was a potent enough recipe for continued success beyond the second series (and a Christmas special featuring Ben as a modern-day Joseph), and the show also garnered a British Comedy Award, but Atkinson decided to lay Fowler to rest at the customary two-series mark. For Elton,
TTBL
was an undeniable step towards the conventional (the first episode even has Fowler forgetting the anniversary of his relationship with sexually frustrated desk sergeant Patricia Dawkins), but he described the show as ‘the thing I have the most special love for’. In the BBC’s ‘Britain’s Best Sitcom’ rundown, viewers voted
TTBL
in at number 37, which, arbitrary though these polls are, did put Fowler ahead of sitcom legends like Reggie Perrin, Rab C. Nesbitt, Alan B’Stard and Brian Potter. A concerted campaign by
Dibley
obsessives, however, zoomed that series
in at a flabbergasting number 3, only to be fought off by John Sergeant’s urging to give
Blackadder
the crown – which was ultimately pipped to second place by the nationally beloved
Only Fools and Horses
.
Fry was one other person who was glad for
TTBL
, as Atkinson was happy to offer his best man his first return to sitcom in six years, popping up at the end of the first series as the blatantly Melchettian Brigadier Blaster-Sump, a dangerous lunatic in a kilt detailed to assist Fowler in leading a camping expedition for criminal youths:
BRIGADIER: | My name’s Blaster-Sump, damn you! Now, you play a straight bat with me and you’ll find we’ll rub along pretty well together. Use a bent bat, however, a wobbly bat, a bat with a hole in it and bits sticking out of the end, and by thunder I’ll crush your young testicles beneath the hard granite of the Mull of Ben Craggy! |
HABIB: | And those of the party who are not equipped with testicles? |
BRIGADIER: | The victims of tragic accidents, you mean? |
HABIB: | No, I mean girls! |
BRIGADIER: | Fortunately I’ve never been called upon to discipline a girl! No, quite the other way round, as a matter of fact … |
FOWLER: | Brigadier Blaster-Sump? |
BRIGADIER: | Yes, young lady? |
FOWLER: | I’m a trained orienteer, as are two of my officers. We wish only to use your equipment. |
BRIDAGIER: | DAMN YOU, YOU BITCH! Are you telling me I’m orf the team? |
FOWLER: | Reluctantly, sir, yes. |
BRIGADIER: | Oh well, probably just as well. I like to sleep naked when I’m out of doors. Don’t want you young ladies getting all flushed and dampened, do we? |
As the Brigadier frightened off the campers with a terrifying lift of his kilt, this evening’s work became not just an episode-stealing cameo appearance, but a crucial step towards comedic rehabilitation for Fry, during what was turning out to be an overwhelming decade for the high achiever.
A Lot of Fry & Laurie
Together and apart, the early nineties was a conveyor belt of creativity for Fry & Laurie, both of them featuring in Martin Bergman and Rita Rudner’s sadly maligned
Cellar Tapes
reunion movie
Peter’s Friends
– sharing the distinction of being directed by Kenneth Branagh with Elton
fn5
. Stephen also joined Ben in adding ‘novelist’ to his list of careers, with early offerings the quasi-autobiographical
The Liar
and
The Hippopotamus
garnering especial plaudits, and Hugh followed suit with
The Gun Seller
, an espionage thriller, in 1996 (though with his typical self-effacement, he refused to send it to publishers under his own name, and was accepted under a pseudonym). Acting remained their main pursuit, though, with Laurie already moving into straight acting in a central role in 1993’s
All or Nothing at All
, while Fry made a return to historical comedy alongside Geoffrey Palmer and Nicholas Lyndhurst in
Stalag Luft
, both for ITV. In the latter, David Nobbs took the old POW camp chestnuts – desperate escape plans, and Nazi guards who are as keen to get away as the prisoners – and folded them into one feature-length comedy drama, allowing Fry to portray both a pipe-smoking upper-class wing commander and a heartless Nazi commandant.
It was while the colleagues were putting together the second series of their BBC sketch show that they were invited to follow Rowan to commercial TV for the biggest challenge of their joint careers – taking on the mantle of perhaps the greatest double act in the history of English literature. Granada TV had recently launched a pitch-perfect adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories starring David Suchet, and the winning team of producer Brian Eastman and writer Clive Exton decided that their next bold move would be to return the most beloved creations of the most beloved comic author to the screen. In the fifteen years since Wodehouse had written his last, his celebrated master and servant had sunk so low from their earlier popularity on BBC TV in the guise of Ian Carmichael and Dennis Price that many people knew Jeeves and Bertie only as a grotesque pairing appearing in sherry adverts. Not least thanks to Hugh’s performance in
Blackadder
, Eastman felt sure that nobody could embody the silly ass Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and his cerebrally blessed gentleman’s personal gentleman Reginald Jeeves quite as well as Fry & Laurie. The duo’s proximity in age may have seemed jarring at first to those who saw the valet as a venerable elder, but Fry’s already infamous reputation as a brainbox was sure to make the relationship believable.
Wodehouse was a major inspiration for
Blackadder
– he was after all the original Master of the hilarious simile. But despite being lifelong devotees of Plum’s work, like Elton, Curtis and most of the
Blackadder
crew,
fn6
Fry & Laurie were not quick to accept Granada’s invitation. Taking the effervescent words from the page and translating them into flesh, with poor Stephen trying to personify a man who did not walk, but ‘hovered’ or ‘trickled’, and whose eyebrow was never permitted to rise more than a quarter of an inch at the greatest provocation, seemed a futile weight to heave onto their shoulders. But it only took a disappointed reply from the production team to the effect that they
would look elsewhere for Stephen and Hugh to bridle, and bite – if anybody was going to mess it up, they decided, it may as well be themselves. Duly, before series two of
ABOF&L
even began filming, Laurie had picked up his whangee and pulled on his spats, while Stephen perfected the art of trickling, and
Jeeves & Wooster
debuted in April 1990.
In the series, Exton tended to pick and choose from Wodehouse’s short stories and novels, reshaping Bertie’s escapades as the format required, but in doing so he helped to bring whole new generations of readers back to the original prose, albeit with Fry & Laurie in the mind’s eye. The friends made one lushly designed and directed series per year for four years running, to great acclaim – Anne Dudley’s BAFTA-winning music even led to an LP,
The World of Jeeves & Wooster
, which provided Laurie’s real debut as a recording artist. It’s true that by series four the scripts had taken jarring strides from the source material,
fn7
with bizarrely superfluous kangaroos and a climactic chase sequence straight out of
Benny Hill
, but it is unlikely that any actors will displace Fry & Laurie from the iconic roles in the public imagination for generations to come.
A Bit of Fry & Laurie
came to a close a year or two later, but in even odder circumstances. It had become a quiet success on BBC2, with cherished script books accompanying every series. The duo’s predilection for dressing up in period costume remained undimmed, be they warring Victorian lovers, or duellists, with Geoff McGivern playing referee:
Hugh and Stephen in period dress on a misty heath, about to duel …
REFEREE: | Gentlemen, I believe you both know the purpose of this meeting. |
STEPHEN: | Thank you, Mr Tollerby, but we have no need of explanation. The circumstances are well known to us. |
HUGH: | Quite right. Let us be about the business. |
STEPHEN: | The business? |
REFEREE: | Very well, gentlemen. Sir David, I understand the choice is yours – sword or pistol? |
HUGH: | Sword … The only weapon for a gentleman. |
REFEREE: | Quite so. That means, Mr Van Hoyle, that you have the pistol … |
Fatally, for the fourth series, the pair were plucked from Auntie’s second channel and upgraded to prime-time BBC1 – two sparkling Footlighters guaranteed to bring a chuckle to the nation on Sunday nights. This was despite the controversial seasonal experiment,
Christmas Night with the Stars
, a year earlier, in which Stephen and Hugh were given the task of fronting an attempt to revive the festive TV entertainment, over twenty years after its cancellation. With Geoff Posner directing, the programme was lined up to be as spectacular as ever, but the hosts’ tongues were poked right through both cheeks as they introduced not just vintage favourites Sandie Shaw and Ronnie Corbett but new comedy stars Reeves & Mortimer, Alan Partridge and their ex-decorators Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, in their
Fast Show
guises. Middle England families who sat down expecting a straightforward tribute to light entertainment of yore were banjaxed by Fry & Laurie’s gleefully unctuous insincerity and free use of the word ‘cock’, and so many letters of complaint flooded in that Hugh was compelled to respond, ‘I quite understand people feeling excluded from something because they think it’s trying to offend them. I don’t think either of us would set out to do that.’
But this was Fry & Laurie’s curse – with their dinner-jacketed cocktail-shaking antics around the grand piano, they bore all the hallmarks of
being respectable – or even ‘safe’, which is far worse – but in practice they were anything but, and their whimsy was always tempered with bouts of satirical anger, and unapologetic sickness. The final series of
ABOF&L
, despite its new, cosy format and scheduling, was steeped in an unprecedented darkness and weariness, from a tear-sodden climactic ‘Soupy Twist’ right back to the very first misanthropic moment:
HUGH: | I’ve got this feeling that my life is grey and hopeless. |
STEPHEN: | Grey and hopeless? Oh now, come on. What are you talking about? |
HUGH: | … Films and music are crap. Books are crap. The streets are so full you can’t walk in a town without being pushed off the pavement, the roads are unusable, the trains are a joke, the politicians are so feeble-minded and gutless you can’t even hate them … You smile at someone in the street, you’re either knifed in the kidneys or in court for rape. |
STEPHEN: | It’s frigging useless, isn’t it? |
HUGH: | We’re done for… |
Pause: an incredibly long one. Turn to the camera.
STEPHEN: | Well, first of all, m’colleague and I would like to welcome you to this brand-new spanking series of the show that tries to bring a little jolliness into the darker corners of modern Britain, but doesn’t. |
To make matters worse, whatever mitigating twinkle there may have been in th’colleagues’ delivery was dimmed when, one week after the
series began, Fry’s face was all over the news-stands, the headlines screaming: ‘FEARS AS FRY GOES MISSING’.
The cold coals of Fry’s ‘Bruges episode’ have been raked over enough times already – Simon Gray even wrote a memoir,
Fat Chance
, about the debacle – and in retrospect Stephen’s diagnosis as a cyclothymic manic-depressive puts the affair so neatly in context that the extent of the dismay at the time has been largely forgotten. Gray’s new Cold War play,
Cell Mates
, reuniting his favoured young actors Fry and Mayall, had played to great success on its pre-London run, but within three days of the West End opening on 17 February 1995, Fry had taken his critical notices to heart, and fled the production, leaving only a single note of contrition. As the final episodes of
ABOF&L
were broadcast, their star was wrestling with a suicidal compulsion – not for the first time – which only the thought of his family’s reaction helped him to vanquish, choosing instead to secretly abscond across the Channel and disappear. In his absence, the tabloids had a free-for-all on Fry’s life, running exposés on his addiction to cocaine (which he insisted was taken as a relaxative from his hectic schedule) alongside the unfolding drama of his self-imposed exile.