The third series of French & Saunders, which originally aired on the BBC in 1990, produced the various clips assembled as French & Saunders: Gentlemen Prefer.
Gone With the Wind, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,
The Exorcist, and
Dangerous Liaisons provide fodder for Hollywood parodies, but much of the material focuses on original characters. Chat show hosts and pundits, cleaning ladies with attitude, women in prison --
Dawn French and
Jennifer Saunders embody them all. Elsewhere, the duo aim their satiric sights at both the publishing and PR industries. Ladies' magazines and late-in-life hangers-on of
Andy Warhol also get their due. There's also an opera documentary in which dueling divas belt out Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky" and a feminine twist on the dirty-old-men characters who have been one of the show's staples from the beginning. "Modern Mother and Daughter," the sketch that provided the basis for
Absolutely Fabulous, is included, with French originating the role that would be played by
Julia Sawalha in the actual series. Sharp-eared viewers will catch a snippet of Inner City's Detroit techno classic "Good Life" in "Modern Mother"; sharp-eyed audiences, meanwhile, will notice that
Eleanor Bron, who would go on to play Patsy's poetess mother in Absolutely Fabulous: Birth, appears as an over-the-top academic commentator in the Warhol segment. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide