I’ll post a little joy here:
Before he was Dr. House, he was just Hugh Laurie, British comedian, and they’re releasing DVD’s of his old show “A Bit of Fry and Laurie.” I liked the review NY Times’ Vincent Cosgrove made of the DVD – and it sounds like it’s a great DVD with a fun bonus of Laurie’s days in Cambridge with Emma Thompson and the others:
LONG before Hugh Laurie was captivating and galling American television viewers as the prickly Dr. Gregory House on Fox’s “House,” he was half of the acclaimed British sketch comedy team Fry and Laurie, along with his fellow Cambridge graduate Stephen Fry. (That’s right: Dr. House’s American accent is fake.) Their collaboration began more than 25 years ago, when both were members of the Cambridge Footlights troupe. They went on to team up on numerous TV shows in Britain, but for American audiences they were perhaps best known as Jeeves and Bertie Wooster on the “Jeeves and Wooster” series on “Masterpiece Theater.” [….]
Thankfully, there are recently released DVDs of the first two seasons of “A Bit of Fry and Laurie,” the duo’s inspired sketch comedy series, originally broadcast in 1989 and 1990 on BBC2.
Mr. Fry and Mr. Laurie wield words — real or nonsensical — with a precision Henry Higgins would admire. Skewering language, they also conjure a Lewis Carroll-like world. While there are moments of physical comedy, the pratfalls that produce the most laughs are verbal. Sample this prime example of Fry-Laurie gibberish: “Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.” [….]
Lamenting TV censors, the two explain that in their next sketch — set in a courtroom — they must use made-up words to describe a crime. Portraying a police officer, Mr. Laurie declares that the defendant called him a “fusking cloff-prunker.” When the judge expresses ignorance of the term, a lawyer (Mr. Fry) defines it as “an illicit practice whereby one person frangulates another’s plimp, my lord. He or she gratifies the other party by smuctating them avially.” Eventually, the bailiff faints.
A bonus on the DVD of the second season is the “Footlights Revue,” first broadcast on BBC in 1982. The performers — including Emma Thompson — are so young that you can imagine them still clutching their diplomas. In one sketch, Mr. Fry, at his mellifluous best, reads from a letter relating his encounter with Count Dracula in Transylvania. Mr. Fry recalls that when the “mighty oaken door” of the castle opened, he beheld the ghastly sight of Dracula’s manservant: “Of all the hideously disfigured spectacles I have ever beheld, those perched on the end of the man’s nose remain forever pasted into the album of my memory.” It’s enough to make the count whirl in his coffin. The rest of us can just have a good laugh.
The most entertaining thing about the Times’ posting this review on-line – well, they put in this clip of Laurie’s singing this hilarious love song (“Mystery… You remain a mystery to me… Different Country. You and I live in a different country… Estuary. I live on a house boat on an estuary…. [You’ve been d]ead since 1973…So why do I still long for you…”). Oh, and trust me – Jeeves and Wooster – too funny. Laurie was great as the total English gentleman idiot Bertie Wooster. Umm, no offense meant of course; just that Bertie really was an idiot… or, as the article notes, Laurie was quite a hoot indeed.