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A Bit of Fry and Laurie
Sundays at 9:30pm
Long before he became a sensation as Fox's snarling House,Hugh Laurie was a star in Britain, known for his deft word play and lightening innuendo (Did he really just say that? You can say that on TV?) in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, a sketch comedy show he wrote and starred in with longtime collaborator Stephen Fry. (The two were introduced at Cambridge by actress Emma Thompson.)
With pithy, incongruous little vox pop segments that punctuate the half-hour episodes, plus memorable characters such as uber-polite secret service agents Tony and Control, or John and Peter, two scotch-swilling executives with ever-changing business concerns, the show's humor is infectious, and one finds oneself parroting bits of Fry and Laurie long after the half-hour is over. ("Control, ..." and "Oh my, I think I left the iron on!")
Check out these memorable quotes from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and on British talk show segment posted on YouTube, Laurie charms in an interview that covers his early aspirations to fame. (As one YouTube commenter puts it, "Hugh is so polite that it is hard to imagine that he could play a character like House so well.") Other YouTube clips of Laurie include a conversation on Inside the Actors' Studio and a sketch from the early eighties in which Stephen Fry plays Robert Browning opposite Emma Thompson as Elizabeth Barrett. Also on YouTube, a clip of Laurie on BBC America's Hard Talk discussing his reputation as a "horrible child".
More on the chronology of Fry and Laurie's work at the Internet Movie Database:
- Stephen Fry has been in just about everything, from countless TV appearances (including in Blackadder), to the feature films V for Vendetta and A Fish Called Wanda. He's also played Oscar Wilde in a 1997 movie, called simply Wilde, with a very young Jude Law as his love interest.
- Hugh Laurie has won two Golden Globes for his starring role on House. He's also done the voice of Johnny Town-Mouse in The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends, of Jasper (one of Cruella's two hapless henchmen) in 101 Dalmatians, and of Mr. Little in Stuart Little. You can also find him in Sense and Sensibility (1995), an episode of Friends, and plenty of episodes of Blackadder.
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