So I don’t write blog posts often. As a matter of fact, it’s just kind of hard to work up the effort to do so, kind of like how hard it is to commit to going to the gym more as a New Year’s Resolution.
Well, I made the realization that I would rather write blog posts than go to the gym.
And not only that, but I was treated to a good kick by a piece of news I came across on imdb.com. One of my favorite shows, Absolutely Fabulous, will be making the move to America and will be doing so on Fox.
Now, I love BBC, and I do appreciate how sometimes the BBC/America transition works (see: The Office). But I also realize how crossovers fail (see: Coupling, Kath & Kim). And there’s also the underlying fact that I LOVE Absolutely Fabulous, and know there’s nothing in the world that could translate it to America and still be great.
The show follows Edina, a high-ranking PR woman in the fashion world, along with her best friend, Patsy, as they have their various adventures in a totally, outrageously, British way. They’re friends devoted not only to each other, but to the alcohol that is almost always found in their hands and the famous lifestyle they both lust after.
That, along with seeing Edina as a fashion victim in a new way every shot, makes for one insane show. It even has an insane theme song (This Wheel’s on Fire, check it out) that fully exemplifies the psychedelic roots of the characters themselves, and further contrasts them with Edina’s daughter, Saffy, an uptight academic. To give you an idea, one episode follows Edina as she looks for her can opener. This seemingly mindless journey follows her to Saffy’s college classroom as she studies DNA, where Edina first calls on the cell phone (which is huge, by the way), and then intrudes in the middle of class to ask about the can opener, thereby mortifying Saffy in ways she had never been mortified before. Genius.
All of this, encapsulated in a perfectly ’90s way, is why I love it. And I’m not saying it won’t work, but I am saying it won’t unless Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley return as the characters they made famous.
If that could work, maybe then it could be fabulous.
