In modern age, Ab Fab antics seem normal
Sweetie, darlings, they’re back.
The outrageous, champagne-swilling masters of scandal who took over British television head to the big screen in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, which opened Friday.
And this time, Kate Moss’s life is in Edina and Patsy’s hands.
For the uninitiated, in 1992, Jennifer Saunders created Absolutely Fabulous,a TV sitcom about publicist Edina Monsoon (Saunders) and her magazine editor best friend Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), who drank their way through cases of Bolly (Bollinger champagne), hit clubs, rarely turned up to work and constantly harassed Edina’s disapproving daughter Saffy (Julia Sawalha).
The BBC show, as genre-defining as Amy Schumer’s take-no-prisoners sketch comedy and Lena Dunham’s Girls have been today, launched a new brand of comedy with its bold, unapologetic take on women behaving badly.
But while Edina and Patsy haven’t changed, the selfie and celebrity-laden times have. “I don’t think the way they behave is shocking because they’re so old now,” says Saunders, 58, noting that now the notorious characters’ behaviour is merely “unwise. Nowadays, everyone falls out of a cab without their knickers on.”
Ab Fab, which ran for five seasons and seven specials and became a cult favourite, bubbled up to the top of the British box office this month, marking the U.K.’s biggest opening since Spectre.
Lumley, 70, speculates that Brits needed a break from the heavy news cycle. “Britain was in exactly the right state to want to go see a ludicrous comedy, because we’d had the Brexit vote,” she says. “The political scene was changing every hour.”
It might be why the world needs Eddy and Patsy more than ever. When the movie catches up with the Ab Fab BFFs, Patsy is still employed at her magazine, but Edina’s PR company is failing; she’s left with a boutique vodka company and managing an aging pop star.
“They run out of champagne, which to them is terrible,” Lumley says. “It’s a frantic situation.”
That’s when Edina hears Kate Moss (who plays herself) is looking for new representation and stalks the supermodel at a party. Trouble is, she accidentally tips the icon into the River Thames.
Branded a murderer, she and Patsy go on the run in the South of France.
The signature Ab Fab traits are still there, including the original cast. Edina’s clothes are still too tight, and ever in search of youth, Patsy begins her morning with a Botox needle plunged straight to the cheek.
Saunders, who wrote the movie, “was true to the show, except it was just on a much larger canvas,” Lumley says. The film is also stocked with 60 celebrity cameos, from Joan Collins to Jon Hamm.
Since the show’s debut, celebrity has completely engulfed pop culture, Saunders says. “The world is incredibly selfobsessed now,” she says. “It’s not just celebrities, it’s everybody.”
But one key to Ab Fab will never change.
“I mean, they’re revolting characters — which is why we love playing them, because they’re so funny,” Lumley says.