Between Fact… and Breakfast

Recently, I have come across something rather disquieting. Every time I check out the accepted TX dates of a programme I’m researching, something turns out to be awry. Last time it was The Brittas Empire; this time, A Bit of Fry & Laurie comes under the microscope, if you’ll pardon the pun.¹

The story behind Series 4 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie is oft-told; transferring back across to BBC1, with celebrity guests in all but one episode, it’s generally regarded as the weakest of the four series, with its reputation not helped by Fry’s disappearance and flight to Belgium near the beginning of the run. I personally love it, but now isn’t the time for my brilliantly iconoclastic and dangerous comedy opinions. Let’s stick to the facts.

And the facts, at first glance, seem to be clear. Plenty of websites seem to think that the series was transmitted in the most straightforward manner possible: seven episodes, weekly on Sunday nights, from the 12th February through to the 26th March 1995. For example, Wikipedia, the British Comedy Guide, and IMDB all state that this is the case.

Unfortunately, a bit more poking reveals some discrepancies. epguides.com still thinks the series started on the 12th February, but also that it skipped a week on the 5th March; meaning the final episode transmitted on the 2nd April. The BBC itself, meanwhile, also indicates the series skips a week; however, their missed week is the 12th March. The Beeb also unhelpfully list the series as six episodes long in the episode descriptions, rather than the correct seven.

Our mission is clear. Can we disentangle this load of old nonsense?

Let’s start with the obvious thing to check first: the Radio Times listings for the whole of Series 4.

This is very clear; the listings give the series as transmitting weekly, but missing out the 12th March, matching the dates given on bbc.co.uk. And what was apparently shown instead on the 12th March?

When Harry Met Sally… Fine. I’d rather hear Stephen Fry fake an orgasm, but whatever.

To double-check all of this, I consulted the daily TV listings from The Times; they exactly match what is given above. So let’s now turn to our old friend YouTube. And here, I lucked out a little: helpfully, plenty of BBC1 continuity across these dates has been uploaded by some very nice people indeed.

To start with, the following video is from Sunday 26th February, and right at the start confirms that A Bit of Fry & Laurie was broadcast on that date:

In fact, it does a little bit more than that, if you listen closely. Aside from pointing the show at the beginning of the video, at 1:32 we get the continuity announcement into the episode itself: “Comedy now on BBC1 – and what would you do with a biscuit?” The actual start of the show is snipped off in the upload, but Episode 3 starts with a Stephen Fry vox pop: “I love to dunk, I’m a great dunker…” This confirms that Episode 3 with Imelda Staunton and Clive Mantle was definitely broadcast on this date. So far, so good.

Sadly, there’s nothing uploaded around the 5th March, when Episode 4 would have been transmitted. But almost a week later on Saturday 11th March, we do have this, pointing the following evening’s programming:

When Harry Met Sally… at 9:05 on Sunday 12th March, check. And so now we have proof that the Radio Times listing is correct, and A Bit of Fry & Laurie wasn’t broadcast that week.²

Finally, a week later, we can check out Saturday 18th March – the day before the show returned. Hello, is that a menu trail for Sunday’s programmes?

So there we have it. Fry & Laurie returned to our screens on Sunday 19th March. Moreover, the clip features Phyllida Law and Stephen Moore being served a “Swinging Ballsack”. So it really was the expected Episode 5 which was broadcast.

All of which leaves us with the inescapable conclusion: the Radio Times was entirely correct in its billings, and the Series 4 TX dates for A Bit of Fry & Laurie should go as follows:

Oh, and for the record, I also checked the internal BBC paperwork for the series. The above is entirely correct. But I thought I’d best try and prove it using publicly available information, rather than smugly folding my arms and saying “I’m right, shut up, next question”.

*   *   *

Although actually, there are a couple of remaining questions. I’m not sure I have the answer to them, though.

Firstly: exactly why did they skip a week in the middle of the series? At first, this seems to have an obvious answer: Fry’s disappearance. Still, the timeline for this seems a little odd. Fry’s last performance in doomed play Cell Mates was Saturday 18th February; he disappeared on Monday 20th. By Friday 24th, he had released a statement to the press saying he was alive, well, and embarrassed. So for BBC1 to transmit the planned episodes of the show on 26th February and the 5th March as scheduled, before finally pulling the series on the 12th March – with all the lead times that an accurate Radio Times would indicate – feels a little strange to me.

One thing is for sure: on the paperwork I have access to, Episode 5 has the 12th March typed onto it… before being crossed out, and the 19th scrawled in its place.

And then there’s the other unanswered question. In my previous examinations of confusing TX dates – with both Wally Who? and The Brittas Empire – the reason for the confusion was very simple: incomplete or inaccurate listings published in the Radio Times. But here, we find out that the Radio Times listings are, in fact, 100% accurate. A revelation that I found genuinely surprising. I expected to find ill-advised reliance on them to be the cause of all this nonsense.

So why the confusion? Surely people didn’t just look at the first TX date of the series, guess weekly broadcasts, and extrapolate the rest without checking?

In conclusion, then:

UPDATE (20/7/21): Well, thank God. I didn’t write something dumb and completely wrong. I’m always expecting people to pop up and point out that I’d entirely misinterpreted everything when writing something like this.

Still, there is one thing I didn’t fully investigate. I note how odd it seems that the BBC waited for four episodes to be broadcast before skipping a week, if the break was anything to do with the mental state of Stephen Fry. It seems most people agree. What I didn’t do, however, is consider any other potential reasons for this break. Luckily, others have done my work for me in this regard.

So, one possibility mooted by Steve Williams relates to drama serials showing in the 9:05pm slot – the slot just before Fry & Laurie. The Buccaneers had finished on the 5th March, and The Choir was starting on the 19th March. If When Harry Met Sally… had been parachuted in to fill the gap, then it may have been thought that 10:35pm was just too late to be running brand new Fry & Laurie.

Another possible explanation is put forward by Alan Barnes, who recalls that ITV’s Band of Gold started on the 12th March at 9pm, and that When Harry Met Sally… could have been scheduled by the BBC as a spoiler. Nip the programme in the bud before it even began.

I don’t know if either of the above are true for sure. What I would say, is that it seems to me to be very likely that the skipped week in Fry & Laurie was down to more prosaic scheduling concerns like the above, rather than anything to do with Stephen Fry. Both the above explanations seem far more plausible to me than “Oh no, we’d best stop Fry & Laurie weeks into the run, even though we were happy to to show it when Fry’s disappearance was actually a news story”.

1. What pun? ↩

2. UPDATE (25/9/23): This section originally included an embedded YouTube clip with continuity from the Sunday night itself. Sadly, this video was deleted from YouTube, and I didn’t keep my own copy. Many thanks to Ben Baker, for supplying a link to an alternate video from the Saturday night, which luckily makes the same point. ↩

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fry & laurie, tx date investigations