In an introductory discussion about Trevor Griffiths' Comedians during a 1990 A-Level English lesson, I can remember the class being asked who our favourite comedians were. My best friend and my self’s choice of Fry & Laurie was not widely shared (Trevor & Simon were most highly approved of, although the teacher didn't know who they were).
In part, my peers' dismissal was because they primarily associated Fry & Laurie with Alliance & Leicester commercials and Jeeves & Wooster, which is fair enough. But with hindsight it’s easier to see why people wouldn't have responded positively to their comedy and found it rather detached.
The pair's refusal to do parodies was an admirable stance, but it also denied them a level of instant ("they're doing that") recognition. You can hear the studio audience always responding positively when they get closest to it, in the "Dammit!" Peter and John sketches, performed in the recognisable idiom of Howard's Way if not a specific imitation. (It's fun to finally see the famous Marjorie finally appear this week, played by Maria Aitken as a smouldering Kate O'Mara-type figure)
The consistent level of elaborate wordplay is dazzling at times. There's one sketch in particular here, with Fry as an eccentric and maddeningly circumlocutory jeweller: "Would you like an Opal Fruit? A nice strawberry Opal Fruit or, indeed, any flavour? I won't be long. Where am I going? There is a sweetshop not two miles away from here, and I happen to know that they sell Opal Fruits". Even though I haven't seen this for over ten years, I seem to have remembered almost every line of it... Odd original coinages and bits of phrasing occasionally find their way into my own conversation, even now (from this sketch, I've always found "I am chastened and bowed" a useful formulation to convey playful humility). But if you don't have an ear for the wordplay, then there isn't a lot else going on in the sketch - certainly not anything emotional to latch on to - and at almost five minutes long it does test even the patience of even the most appreciative viewer.
These flaws are rather more apparent in the second series (which they only had a year to come up with) than in the initial one (their first series to themselves after almost a decade of working together), with high quality line-by-line dialogue papering over otherwise drifting sketches. The bit which now strikes me as most interesting in this episode is rather atypical, a filmed monologue from Laurie in a car as a man reminiscing about all of his old girlfriends. The imagined lovers are all absurdly implausible women, but the performance and the emotion behind it have a reflective melancholy that's very appealing, and not like much else in the programme.
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