I’d Like Some Information, Please

Something sets Series 1 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie apart from every other run of the show, you know. Something which, unless you actually went to a recording of the series, is entirely invisible.

In true Dirty Feed style, let me throw a bunch of exciting dates at you, and see if it becomes apparent.¹

• Pilot. RX: 8th and 9th December 1987. TX: 26th December 1987.
• Series 1. RX: 10th December 1988 – 1st February 1989. TX: 13th January – 17th February 1989.
• Series 2. RX: 14th January – 20th February 1990. TX: 9th March – 13th April 1990.
• Series 3. RX: 20th July – 24th August 1991. TX: 9th January – 13th February 1992.
• Series 4. RX: 14th March – 19th April 1994. TX: 12th February – 2nd April 1995.

Sorry, that’s a bit too exciting. Just give me a minute…

…right, all done. Now, the obvious tale concerning these dates is Series 4, with the programmes having been recorded nearly a full year before transmission. Which lead plenty of people watching the episodes at the time to speculate on Stephen Fry’s current mental condition, from material shot a year previously. But we have better things to do than climb into Stephen Fry’s head. At least today.

No, the real story here is: Series 1 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie is the only series of the show to start transmitting while the shows were still being recorded. The pilot was shot a shade over two weeks before TX; similarly, Series 2 finished shooting two weeks before the transmission of its first episode. Series 3 had a longer wait of a few months before making it to air. Series 4, as we already said, had a whole year. But Series 1 only gets halfway through its audience recording sessions before it starts being broadcast to the nation.

There is a very particular reason why I find this interesting. Broadly speaking, sketch shows can be split into two categories. Firstly, there are shows like Monty Python and KYTV, where the episodes were essentially shot as individual, complete shows, with linked sketches. Something like KYTV‘s “Challenge Anna” (TX: 7/6/90), with a story which takes up the whole half hour, has to be shot in this way.²

Then there’s the other sort of sketch show, like Three of a Kind, or Smith & Jones. Rather than a complete episode being shot at once, the shows are essentially constructed in the edit, using sketches from many different recording sessions. Harry Enfield describes this process in his excellent book on the making of Harry Enfield and Chums:³

“In the fourth week of editing, we have to piece together the… jigsaw into six 28-minute shows. This is a nightmare. The sketches may average just under three minutes each, but some (like Julio Geordio) are only a minute, some (like Kevin losing his virginity) are more like six minutes. We start by putting pieces of paper with the names of sketches and how long they are on the floor. Then we try to work out what will go with what to make up 28 minutes, then what should go next to what (I don’t like having a Gits sketch next to Self-righteous Brothers next to Modern Dad, for instance, as they’re all ‘elderly’ characters.) Also, we have to make sure we put only one sketch per character into each show. When we seem to have six shows with a good mixture of characters and length of sketches, we go back to the editor and get him to chop them together and put the titles and end sequences on each show.”

Harry Enfield, “Harry Enfield And His Humorous Chums”, p. 77

So, which way was A Bit of Fry & Laurie produced? Despite the relative lack of recurring characters, Fry & Laurie is firmly in the Harry Enfield mould, at least for its first three series. In any given episode, sketches could originate from many different recording sessions.⁴ I hope you’re beginning to see where I’m going with this discussion. Shows like Harry Enfield and Chums made a point of shooting all their material before the edit, so they could see exactly what they had to work with. Series 1 of Fry & Laurie did not have that luxury; the show was still being made as it was transmitted, despite the fact that the show was also being edited together in piecemeal fashion.

The question, then: what happens to this process, when instead of shooting everything first and then putting together all six shows in the edit, you only have half your material recorded before your first episode is broadcast to the nation? What exactly is shot when, in order to make the show work?

Luckily, we can find out. As part of my ongoing research into the series, I have a list here of exactly which date each sketch in Series 1 of Fry & Laurie was shot. I find it interesting… and if you’ve got far enough to read this, I hope you’ll find it interesting too.

One word of warning. All the information in this article is based on the production paperwork I have, which – as I’ve discussed before – is sometimes inaccurate. I certainly believe the broad strokes here are true, but it really wouldn’t surprise me if the odd date was incorrect. Furthermore, there are some questions raised here which I simply cannot answer – although I have indulged in some (clearly labelled) speculation at times. Consider this piece a first stab towards something which I’ve not seen written about elsewhere, but could definitely use some further research.

With all that very much in mind… let’s take a look at the very first studio material recorded for the first series of A Bit of Fry & Laurie.

First recording session (10/12/88)

Hello there. What a load of fantastic sketches.

The paperwork really does suggest that every single one of the sketches above was recorded on the 10th December, without any kind of pre-record day. It does seems like an awful lot of material to get through in one session – maybe they recorded some in the afternoon? But then the sketches are mostly verbal – more so than any other series of Fry & Laurie – which would make things a lot easier. You can also imagine Fry & Laurie being able to rattle through the sketches at great pace, especially considering the fact it’s all their own material.

Still, if we assume all the above as correct… you’d be fucking⁶ pleased to have been in the audience watching that recording, wouldn’t you?

The next week would have been spent rehearsing the next batch of sketches at Acton. Seven days later, we’re back at Television Centre, for…

Second recording session (17/12/88)

This recording sees the opposite issue to the previous week; we’ve gone from 12 sketches recorded then, to just six here.⁷ I very, very strongly suspect that there were plenty more sketches shot in this session, and they ended up not being used in the broadcast shows.

On which note, it’s worth bringing up the obvious: the script book for Series 1 of Fry & Laurie (“raw, trembling, naked sketches from their first BBC TV series”) details many sketches which were presumably shot, but went unused. This is, of course, the point where I wish the paperwork I had access to included camera scripts, as they would be immensely helpful in this regard. Maybe one day.

At this point, everyone went off for a lovely Christmas break. Three weeks later, and now in the bold new world of 1989, we have…

Third recording session (8/1/89)

Back to a nice healthy lot of sketches recorded and used. Note that “Prize Poem” and “Spies Two” are actually shot on pretty much exactly the same set, with minimal redressing. Even some of the pictures on the wall are identical, although they changed the ones above the fireplace.⁸

Spies Two

Prize Poem

With half the recording sessions for the series done, rehearsals for the next recording would have taken place all week at Acton, as per usual. But before the next recording session takes place, Episode 1 of the series is broadcast to the nation.

Broadcast of Episode 1 (13/1/89)

Nearly every single sketch in Episode 1 of the series was recorded in the first session for the show on December 10th. The only exception is “Decency Lesson”, which was shot the following week on the 17th.

Two days after the first episode was broadcast, the team are back in the studio for the fourth recording session.

Fourth recording session (15/1/89)

Again, an oddly small number of sketches here. And again, I suspect plenty of unused ones were actually recorded during this session. In fact, we have some on-screen evidence of this. Take a look at the “Costume Designer” sketch – in particular, what’s in the background:

That set with the two blue doors does look suspiciously like part of the set from “Parent Power” shot weeks before, but it certainly doesn’t show up in any broadcast sketch recorded in this session. It is very likely to be a vestige of a recorded but untransmitted sketch, lurking in the background.

Five days later…

Broadcast of Episode 2 (20/1/89)

In production terms, this feels an entirely different beast from Episode 1. That was mostly sketches shot in one session, one exception aside. This is a variety of material shot across three different sessions.

It’s at this point that the last-minute nature of the series becomes clearer. Three of the sketches here – “Information”, and the linked “America/Chat Show”, were recorded just 12 days before transmission. I don’t wish to overstate my case here; non-topical programmes were sometimes recorded closer to TX that you would expect – indeed, sometimes even closer than this. But it does feel unusual enough to be worth noting. It’s certainly an aspect of the series which is never discussed.

Two days later, we’re again back in the studio. (I wonder exactly how much feedback from the broadcast episodes that the production read and took notice of.)

Fifth recording session (22/1/89)

Copyright I

Madness

Copyright II

Spies Three

Nipples

Copyright III

Tomorrow’s World

Critics One

Critics Two

Stephen’s Brilliant

Critics Three

The Burt

Marjorie’s Fall

Leave It Out

Violence

A slightly strange recording, in that it features two sets of running sketches: the “Copyright” series of stolen material, and the “Critics”. Considering the show has very few of these running jokes in Series 1, it’s amusing that two of the most prominent were done in the same session.

The unusual recording pattern of this series also leads to something else odd. By the time the third “Spies” sketch was recorded in this session, the first one had already been transmitted. Again, I don’t mean to indicate that this kind of thing is unprecedented, but I think it’s counter-intuitive and unexpected when it comes to this particular series.

Broadcast of Episode 3 (27/1/89)

An episode with material across three different recording session again… and the vast majority of it shot in the same month as it was broadcast. Only “Gordon & Stuart Eat Greek” was shot before Christmas.

With material shot 12 days before transmission on the 15th, but not including any material from the session on the 22nd, how the production works is now becoming clear: the running order for each week’s broadcast show is finalised at least a week before transmission, but less than two weeks.

One other delightful thing to note. “Special Squad” earned itself a spot on Points of View due to Hugh Laurie screaming “Scumbag!” to his own son at the end of the sketch.⁹ Elsewhere in that episode is “Hugh’s Brain”, the final gag of which is slagging off people to write into… Points of View. So it is delightful to note that both sketches were also recorded on the same day as well!

Sixth recording session (1/2/89)

Judge Not

I Know

Swiss

Spies Four

Chicken

Cocoa

The Duel

The last recording of the series, and a session which has – at least to me – a slightly end-of-term feel. “Chicken” is one of the most unnerving sketches in the whole series – they aren’t actually going to do it, are they? – and Deborah Norton finally gets to step out-of-character and be (a version of) herself. Then there’s “Cocoa”, which is more vulgar than the series generally allows itself to be, urinating women and all. And, of course, “The Duel” is surely designed to be the final sketch broadcast of the series.

Meanwhile, “Spies Four” brings up a rather odd aspect of shooting the show: despite each of the four broadcast sketches using the same set, they were actually recorded in four different sessions. This perhaps feels counter-intuitive; surely it would make more production sense to record them all in one session, or at least across two? Isn’t it wasteful on studio space to erect the set four different times?

I don’t know the answer to this, but I can – spoilers – reveal that they did exactly the same for the “Spies” sketches in Series 2. My gut feeling is that amazing though the sketches are, they work best watching them separately; they are very deliberately a little samey. Perhaps the production simply thought that doing them all in different sessions would guarantee a better audience reaction.

On a similar note, both the silhouette sketches – “Leave It Out” and “I Know” – were also shot during different sessions. And considering how odd it is that there are only two of those kind of sketches in the final shows, it bring up the tantalising possibility that more of them were recorded, and, well, left out.

With all six recording sessions now completed, the only thing left is for the remaining three episodes to be broadcast.

Broadcast of Episode 4 (3/2/89)

Trouser Competition RX: 8/1

Prize Poem RX: 8/1

Copyright I RX: 22/1

Madness RX: 22/1

Copyright II RX: 22/1

Spies Three RX: 22/1

Light Metal/Bitchwoman Song RX: 17/12

Bank Loan RX: 8/1

Nipples RX: 22/1

Inspector Venice RX: 15/1

Copyright III RX: 22/1

Tomorrow’s World RX: 22/1

An episode with a number of interesting wrinkles. The “Copyright” sketches in particular are so interesting that I wrote a whole article about the questions concerning their recording.

So instead, I want to point out something about the duo’s whimsical “Trouser Competition”, from the beginning of this episode.

LAURIE: We’d like to announce that we’ll be holding a competition during tonight’s show. What’s basically going to happen is this. We’ll be performing a series of sketches, and obviously we’ll be wearing different costumes for each one. Except that tonight, we’re actually going to be wearing the wrong trousers for every sketch.

FRY: That’s right. What’s happened is that we’ve mixed up the trousers at random, and what you have to do is use your skill and judgement to find out which trousers go with which sketch.

LAURIE: That’s right. So for example, if you think the trousers I’m wearing in Sketch A should have been worn by Stephen in Sketch G, for example, then just write it down. When you’ve got them all, send us a card, also saying in not more than ten words, why you think trousers are important.

Now, far be it from me to take Fry & Laurie’s inimitable brand of humour and run it into the ground, but I’m going to take Fry & Laurie’s inimitable brand of humour and run it into the ground. While the above is obviously a joke, you could imagine them following through on the gag, and actually wearing incorrect trousers throughout various sketches in this episode.

But as we have seen, doing so would have presented a slightly tricky problem when it comes to the production: it would put a serious crimp on the team’s capacity to mix and match sketches from different recording sessions in each episode. No wonder they didn’t even try.¹⁰

Broadcast of Episode 5 (10/2/89)

Lavatories RX: 8/1

Critics One RX: 22/1

Judge Not RX: 1/2

Critics Two RX: 22/1

Teacher RX: 9/12/87

I Know RX: 1/2

Stephen’s Brilliant RX: 22/1

Critics Three RX: 22/1

The Burt RX: 22/1

Christening RX: 10/12

Swiss RX: 1/2

Go on then. Have you spotted it?

Yes, the sketch “Teacher” – featuring Laurie as a particularly ineffectual, erm, teacher¹¹ – wasn’t actually recorded for Series 1. Instead, it’s an unused sketch from the pilot, recorded on the 9th December 1987.¹² Clearly, the team really liked how it turned out, couldn’t find room for it in the finished pilot, and so hung onto it for the series proper.

The other thing to note about this episode is that three of the sketches – “Judge Not”, “I Know” and “Swiss” – were shot during the final recording session, a mere nine days before transmission. This is the closest to TX any material in the whole series would be shot.

Broadcast of Episode 6 (17/2/89)

The final episode of the series, and an episode shot across four different recording sessions, all of which took place in January. Clearly, no material remained that they wanted to use from the two December recordings.

One thing which is worth talking about in a little detail is the very final sketch of the series, which is officially known as “The Duel” but is more commonly referred to as “Tony of Plymouth”. Featuring Hugh Laurie doing his best Owen Jones impression, the original sketch featured the theme from 1940 film The Sea Hawk, by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Sadly, this couldn’t be cleared for the DVD release, meaning that library music has been awkwardly pasted over the top – rendering much of the dialogue virtually inaudible.¹³

Luckily, the original version of the sketch can be found on YouTube:

But for the purposes of this article, what’s more fascinating than the music replacement is the litany of sets that Fry & Laurie battle their way through throughout the sketch. Some of these sets can, of course, be seen elsewhere in the series itself. For instance:

In the first picture, you can clearly see the set for “Cocoa” (with the bed and wheelchair), and behind it, the set for “Spies Four”, with the fireplace. Both these sketches were broadcast during the last episode, as with “The Duel” itself.

More interestingly, the set from “Judge Not” is also used, as in the second picture. This sketch actually appeared in the previous episode, but we have already proved in this article that it was actually shot during the final recording session, along with “The Duel”. Which is very, very pleasing – finally, we have visual proof that our exercise in recording dates and paperwork matches up with what is actually on-screen!

Which makes what we see during the rest of the sketch so fascinating. Because there are very clearly plenty of sets we see during “The Duel” which don’t appear in any broadcast sketch which was shot on the 2nd. Meaning that they must belong to sketches which were shot, and then went unused.

In order, then. The first picture is difficult to work out – some kind of patterned glass, next to a red wall? The second picture is much easier – next to the (used) courtroom set, we have a bathroom with a washbasin. The third picture shows a front door set. And the fourth picture – where Hugh Laurie goes crashing through the window – is some kind of living or drawing room.

The sheer number of unused sets here – at least four – thus indicates at least four unused sketches, using completely unique sets. And only two episodes in the series – Episode 5 and Episode 6 – used material from this recording session. And Episode 5 was broadcast just nine days after this recording session; the final shape of these programmes was still in flux this late on in production.¹⁴

*   *   *

Here’s the thing that really strikes me about all this, though. Because I do understand that my particular interest in how close Series 1 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie was made to transmission may seem a little baffling, especially when my job involves ensuring plenty of last-minute television makes it to air.

I’ll try to explain. DVDs and streaming services help old shows live… but it also ossifies them. It turns the shows into fixed pieces of work. And these shows we’re discussing today are so good, that it is easy for your brain to file them away as something which popped out fully formed, after months of hard work.

But being aware of how the show was actually made changes things for me. It turns it from something ossified, into something that feels new all over again. The idea that you can make a piece of work in such a way that when the nation first sees it, you still have half the series left to shoot, thrills me. Because it’s a reminder that to create wonderful things, you don’t need to lock yourself away for months, at least once you have your scripts. You can shoot, edit, and transmit things extremely quickly. And crucially: make something that deserves to be watched decades later. There doesn’t even need to be a topical joke in sight.

Series 1 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie was created before the nation’s very eyes. You could have seen Episode 1 on TV, and then two days later been in the audience for a sketch shown in Episode 3. And that’s the kind of thing which is entirely lost over the decades.

So next time you watch it, bear some of the above in mind. Nothing sprung out fully-formed. The shape of the show was clearly still being decided while it was on air. Three weeks into transmission of the series, material was still being shot which ultimately went unused. There was no grand plan, where the content of each episode was fixed months in advance.

Sometimes, television is great because it’s alive. And if the decades have smothered a layer of dust over a programme, then sometimes it just helps to blow the dust off, and appreciate just a little of the… scramble.

It happens to some of the best TV ever made.

With thanks to Milly Storrington and Tanya Jones.

1. The recording dates here are for the studio sessions, not the location material – which was, of course, recorded earlier. ↩

2. This is of course, a slight over-simplification, and these kind of shows often see some movement of sketches between episodes. I hope my general point is clear, though. ↩

3. It truly is an excellent book, incidentally, and shows Harry talking about his comedy with a real sense of respect and seriousness. ↩

4. Series 4, which includes different guest stars per episode, is a little different in this regard… although Episode 6, the one without any guests, is an interesting exception. But that’s for a different article. ↩

5. The paperwork states that this was shot in the first recording session on the 10th. As previously detailed on the site, there is some evidence that this may be incorrect, and it was shot on the 17th instead. With no proof either way, I’ve gone with what the paperwork suggests for now. ↩

6. Stephen Fry said I could swear, Miss. ↩

7. If we count “Light Metal” and “Bitchwoman Song” as two separate sketches; the paperwork lists them together. ↩

8. I’ve written enough about fireplaces in comedy to last a lifetime, so let’s just say that counting up the instances where this fireplace shows up elsewhere in Fry & Laurie is left as an exercise for the reader. ↩

9. This episode of Points of View was broadcast 8/2/89, twelve days after the episode was broadcast. Sadly, I’ve not managed to track down a copy. ↩

10. Hilariously, there one, single sketch where it appears that Hugh Laurie is wearing the wrong trousers – a policeman vox pop. It then transpires that he actually has an excellent reason to be wearing incorrect trousers: “I’ve actually applied to join the plain clothes branch, but as you can see, I’m on probation…”. ↩

11. Look, these are all the official sketch names, this isn’t my fault. ↩

12. In fact, the paperwork for this episode only states that it was recorded in December 1987. We can, however, be fairly sure it was the 9th. The paperwork for the pilot says it was shot over the 8th and 9th of December; the 8th would traditionally be a pre-record day without the audience present, with the 9th being the main record with the audience. As the sketch clearly has the audience in shot, we can be fairly confident it was shot on the 9th. ↩

13. Clearly this piece of music was a favourite of Hugh Laurie’s – he chose it for his first appearance on Desert Island Discs in 1997. Bearing this in mind, the replacement of the track on the DVD is even more annoying than it would be otherwise. ↩

14. If you’re still reading the footnotes at this point, I suspect you’re the kind of person who will enjoy the following table. Here is your pocket guide to exactly which shows featured material from each recording date:

    TX ↓ RX →	10/12	17/12	8/1	15/1	22/1	1/2
    1.1 (13/1)	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
    1.2 (20/1)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
    1.3 (27/1)	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
    1.4 (3/2)	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
    1.5 (10/2)	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
    1.6 (17/2)	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

    There are some obvious patterns there, of course: the early episodes clearly can’t use material from recording dates which are yet to take place, and the later episodes run out of some of the material shot earlier. But there are other, less obvious points of interest. Uniquely, the recording on the 8th January resulted in material which was used in a full five episodes, for instance.

    I hope that was good for you. It certainly was for me. ↩

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