Top 20 Absolutely Fabulous Moments
#20: Finding Serge
After wishing for years for a trendy, gay child, Eddy’s dreams finally come true when she learns that her wayward son Serge plays for the other team. She and Patsy jet off to New York to find him, only to be horrified by what they encounter. It turns out that, all this time, her elusive son has turned into a male version of Saffy, Eddy’s least favourite child. He’s just as upright, boring, and poorly dressed as his half-sister. After all that, she ultimately disowns Serge – whose full name she doesn’t even remember – in favour of adopting his more interesting boyfriend. Serge is probably better off without her.
#19: Saffy’s Birthday
After another New York adventure, Eddy returns home to Saffy and a brand-new kitchen. This comes after Saffy complained about their kitchen being ruined at the beginning of the episode, and it turns out that only when Eddy isn’t there to get in the way is Saffy able to manage the refurbishment. But not only does Eddy not realise the kitchen is fixed, she’s also completely forgotten that it was Saffy’s birthday. They argue and Eddy is, as usual, desperately selfish, turning her mistake against Saffy and berating her while the credits roll. Luckily, she’s just been shopping, which soon distracts her and Patsy.
#18: Romanian Babies
Sick to death of Saffy, who’s now trying to prevent Eddy from showing up to her school open day, Eddy orders Bubble to find her a selection of Romanian babies to adopt to replace her. It doesn’t go completely smoothly, since Bubble vanishes to the US while the Romanian infants are en route, but eventually, her panel of potential children arrives – right in the middle of Saffy’s open day. She’s already changed her mind by the time this happens, and Saffy’s backed down about letting her come to college, but it’s too late. Or is it? Eddy wakes up safe and sound in her isolation tank and realises that the entire Romanian baby saga was just a dream.
#17: Fire
We already mentioned that the kitchen needed to be remodelled, but the reason why happened in the final episode of the previous series, when Patsy burned it down. Eddy and Saffy are awoken by the fire alarm going off, with Eddy desperate to find something to wear before the firefighters arrive. It turns out that not only was Patsy the one who started the fire, falling asleep with a lit cigarette, but that she was in there and miraculously survived. She didn’t even wake up when half a dozen firemen turned up to put it out. No wonder Saffy was so peeved and started begging Eddy to chuck her out.
#16: Can Opener
Saffy has now moved out, which leaves Edina helpless and unable to perform even basic tasks, like opening a tin of custard. She manages to successfully locate and identify the can opener, but can’t figure out how to get it to attach to the can and take the lid off. So, she does what any reasonable person would: she calls a cab and takes her can and kitchen utensil all the way to university, hands it to Saffy mid-lecture, and has her take the lid off for her. Once she retreats to Holland Park, she’s left eating cold custard out of the jar with a spoon, all without a word – at least, until she rings Saffy on her mobile.
#15: Saffy’s Wedding
The big day has arrived: Saffy’s having a lavish wedding to her fiancé Paolo, whose parents are richer than sin. But, of course, Saffy isn’t allowed to be happy; various forces conspire to ruin the big day, but it’s primarily down to Edina. Midway through the ceremony, the Lord God himself appears – or rather, herself, because God is played here by guest star Marianne Faithfull, smoking a cigarette. Eddy objects to the wedding, but for once, her attention-seeking is in Saffy’s best interest. Paolo’s a piece of work who immediately moves on with the Gucci model Eddy drafted in to replace Saffy’s dowdy bridesmaid.
#14: Bubble Explains Time
Bubble has a flimsy grasp on most aspects of life, and that apparently includes the passage of time. While bringing in the new year at Eddy’s flat, she grills them about how and when the year advances. After having it explained by Saffy, she then begins to wax lyrical about the strangeness of time, baffling everybody else in the room. As usual, it’s Jane Horrocks’ perpetually unpredictable performance as Bubble that makes this so memorable, though she does later in the episode get mixed up between a hamster and a hamper. But would you rather listen to Bubble, or Cherysh over the phone?
#13: Funeral
After an entire episode of Eddy refusing to care that her father’s just died, she eventually decides that she IS going to attend his funeral, despite being under strict instructions from Saffy to stay far away. The rest of the family stands sombrely by the graveside while the coffin is buried, until getting interrupted by Eddy and Patsy, drunker even than they usually are, showing up in a taxi. Boozing gets the better of them, with Patsy taking a tumble into an open grave. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any sillier, Eddy does the same thing, collapsing onto her own deceased father. Whoops.
#12: Powder
It’s not just alcohol Eddy and Patsy indulge in. During their sojourn to France, Patsy wants to get her hands on a certain white powder, because it’s the only thing that will make time in an isolated French cottage bearable. During a game of doubles ping-pong, she slips away to indulge. The pay-off for this set-up is later, though, after they decide to rush back to England. Patsy’s luggage is searched by airport security and they find her suspicious powder, detaining everybody and sending it away for tests. In the end, the revelation is that all along, the powder was a harmless household product. Patsy got ripped off, but that’s not even the worst part…
#11: Bettina & Max
Miranda Richardson guest-starred this time as Bettina, one half of a couple Eddy knew years ago who were devout minimalists. After a lot of fuss over tidying the house, Bettina and Max arrive, and Eddy realises with horror that they aren’t minimalists at all anymore. They stumble in with oodles of supplies and a newborn baby, ruining Eddy’s image of them. Worse, they completely take over the house, to the extent that Eddy decides she’d rather go to work and do her actual job. In the end, she gets rid of them by seducing Max, with Bettina listening to their tryst on the baby monitor. All’s well that ends well.
#10: Awards Show
Eddy and Patsy are at a PR industry event because Eddy’s up to win a coveted award thanks to her bribing the judges. Unfortunately for her, the judges are just as dishonest as she is, and the award goes to rival PR guru Claudia Bing. The show itself offers plenty of great moments, from Naomi Campbell’s starring role as herself to Patsy’s crass announcement that she’s going to the toilet. “AbFab” was always known for its high calibre guest stars, and this episode provided a massive opportunity to show that off. And we also get a look at just how inept Eddy is as a PR manager, unable to satisfy any clients or would-be clients.
#9: Patsy’s Job
It wasn’t actually clear what Patsy’s job was until the end of the first series, but while she’s briefly staying with the Monsoons, she reveals that she’s the “director of fashion” at a major magazine. Saffy has lots of questions about what exactly a “director of fashion” does, especially considering Patsy almost never goes to her office or does any work. Her explanations brought us many of the show’s most enduring one-liners. Later, we do get to see Patsy’s office – once she works out where it is – and her colleagues, including another iconic guest star spot from Kathy Burke as the magazine’s ruthless editor-in-chief Magda.
#8: Twenty-Five Years Later
Back in the final episode of the original three-series run, not including the 1996 specials, we got a flash-forward showing what the characters are up to. They’re still living in the house in Shepherd’s Bush – sorry, Holland Park – with Saffy and now Saffy’s two children, who are just as anguished by Eddy and Patsy as Saffy herself. They come stumbling down the stairs looking even older than the twenty-five years would suggest, and Patsy’s able to move her face even less than she could before. This is even funnier today, considering in 2016 we got an entire movie showing what Eddy and Patsy were REALLY like twenty-five years post-“AbFab”.
#7: Jackie Stone
We find out in this episode that Patsy actually has a sister. Not only that, but she’s about to arrive at the house for New Year’s Eve thanks to Bubble inviting her. Nobody is excited about this prospect, but eventually, Jackie arrives, played by none other than Kate O’Mara. She makes digs that Patsy has gained weight while simultaneously shocking her by actually eating food in front of other people. Eventually, we discover that this smooth operator is anything but; she has no friends or loved ones, and ends up robbing Eddy’s jewellery, with Patsy’s help, to fund her animal shelter for abandoned cats.
#6: Court
Saffy concocts a plan to trick Eddy into thinking they’re going to be poor in an effort to reign in her wild spending. It doesn’t exactly go to plan, however. When she sends Eddy and Patsy to the supermarket to pick up ordinary groceries, they steal an entire case of champagne and then get arrested for drunk driving among various other offences. This lands them in court to answer for the charges. The judge doesn’t care a bit that Patsy announces she’s an alcoholic, nor does he have sympathy for the high price of champagne. It ends with a long treatise against “stupid people” and the two of them get community service, fitting insulation in an old people’s home.
#5: Makeover
After Patsy’s grand return to her fashion magazine, Magda says it’s all hands on deck to throw together a makeover on television. Patsy, as “director of fashion”, is in charge, but the original models quit. She needs to very quickly find two people with terrible dress sense to makeover, and of course, sets her sights on Saffy and Eddy’s Mother. It takes Patsy a while to convince Saffy to go along with it, feeding her a sob story about Patsy’s childhood that turns out to be completely true. And who better to present this television makeover segment than Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders’ comedy other half?
#4: Penny Caspar-Morse
It’s a running joke in “AbFab” that Eddy thinks she needs to lose weight, and these efforts get a lot more extreme when Bubble announces cruel model Penny Caspar-Morse is going to be paying them a visit. Eddy’s horrified by the lack of warning and wants to do everything possible to impress Penny. But the tables turn when she arrives, and Patsy discovers she’s now blind. This is great news for Eddy because it means she can pretend to be thinner than she is. Coming so early in the show, this moment more than most showcased just how irredeemable Eddy and Patsy are – but that’s part of the fun!
#3: Saffy’s Play
By the fourth series in 2001, Saffy was in her late twenties and trying to embark on a career as a playwright. She writes and stages the play “Self-Raising Flower” which, despite them generally being totally uninterested in Saffy’s life, Eddy and Patsy attend. The play is all about Saffy and her tragic life, but the audience in the theatre – much like the audiences at home – go wild for the Eddy and Patsy characters. Even Patsy herself gets into it by the end, loving the fact a man in drag has been cast to play her, while Saffy is heartbroken the viewers think this “greatest hits” compilation of her life is hilarious.
#2: Scandal
In the series 2 opener, Patsy’s being hounded by the media on her way to visit the Monsoons. You might immediately assume this is because she’s a famous fashion director of a prestigious magazine, but no: it’s because she’s been involved in a bawdy sex scandal with an MP. She loves the attention, but not ALL of the attention, as it turns out the tabloids have been reporting her age as 47, not the 39 she continually claims to be. She resolves to put things right by appearing in “Hello!”, though a disastrous cosmetic treatment and an even worse claim about her age ruin the whole thing.
#1: Destroying the Chalet
On a sojourn to Val-d’Isère to get away from Saffy and her fiancé Paolo, Eddy and Patsy find themselves desperately bored. With no dull daughter, stuffy mother, or annoyed celebrities to bother, they very quickly turn against each other. Raging drunk, Eddy begins to lament that it’s always her and Patsy stuck together at the end of the day. Patsy’s so angry a physical fight begins. They throw everything that isn’t nailed down at each other and then some, well and truly destroying the French chalet. And then they start having fun and continue to smash the place up on purpose for kicks.
Let us know in the comments what your favourite moments in the later series of “Ab Fab” are.
