Daniel Walber's series looks at Production Design in contemporary and classic movies
This, week, in honor of the most fabulous sitcom in the history of television, I’m going to try something a bit different. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, expanding toward world domination as we speak, is a booze-soaked-cherry on top of a quarter-century-aged fruitcake. It also does more than well by the show’s strongest points, bringing back not only its beloved characters but also its crazed sense of fashion.
And as you can tell by its choice use of an underwater exercise bike, the movie renews the TV show’s flare for production design as a comic tool. Jennifer Saunders and the show's design team, which only varied a bit over the years, have always used excess to their advantage. To prove my point, here are five favorite design moments from the many seasons of Absolutely Fabulous...
IsoTank (Season 1, Episode 4)
Eddy, always looking out for strange new trends health and fashion trends, begins this ridiculous episode in an isolation tank. It's the show's first great prop gag.. It looks like a miniature spaceship and its logo has all of the style and subtlety of an early ‘90s tanning salon. It’s even big enough for Patsy to join her.
New Best Friend (Season 2, Episode 4)
Although she didn’t come back for the movie, Miranda Richardson remains one of the show’s best guest stars. She plays Bettina, an old friend whose impending visit causes Eddy and Patsy a whole lot of distress. They explain in a flashback to Bettina’s ‘60s apartment. It’s a hilarious, slapdash distillation of hip minimalism: a single white room with a bunch of floating wind chimes.
Birth (Season 2, Episode 6) and Door Handle (Season 3, Episode 1)
The designers’ commitment to excess isn’t always colorful. The season 2 finale begins, not with a panorama of bad taste but with a charcoal disaster. Patsy has accidentally burnt up the entire kitchen, the show’s principal set.
Like all of the show’s best sets, every single detail has been painted with the same brash brush. Everything is singed, blackened and warped. Everything, that is, except the left side of Patsy’s face, saved from the cigarette fire by the way she fell to the table.
As a side note, it wouldn’t be right to bring up this episode without mentioning the premiere of the following season, in which Eddy and Patsy fly to New York to find the perfect door handle for the replacement kitchen. They finally track it down at the Four Seasons Hotel. Pure excess, but don’t you want one yourself? It’s like a Cronenbergian sex toy.
Panic Room (Season 5, Episode 3)
Much in the way that 1993 Eddy had an Iso Tank, 2003 Eddy has a Panic Room. It’s just as visually overwhelming as the kitchen fire. There are boxes of Doritos on the hall, large fluffy pillows in odd places, and a Trivial Pursuit game that Eddy has stolen from her daughter.
And, of course, there’s champagne. I suspect that at least 40% of the show’s shots include a bottle of champagne somewhere in the background, though proving this would require lots of research. Crisp, bubbly research.
Huntin' Shootin' & Fishin' (Season 5, Episode 4)
Finally, here’s a location that exactly fits the model I was talking about in my article on the sitcom style of Everybody Wants Some!! The posh hunting lodge where Eddy and Patsy go for a weekend is the crazed ideal of the upper classes at leisure. All of the furniture looks gilded, the curtains are heavy reds, and there’s polished wood everywhere. There’s even a lurking suit of armor. It doesn’t matter how authentic it is, the point is that it instantly fulfills both the visual fantasies of the characters and the recognition of the audience.
Also, it’s an excuse for me to post this picture of Patsy with a pheasant on her head. Sure, it’s not really production design, but it’s not a hat either.
