Product Details

• Actors: Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha, June Whitfield, Jane Horrocks
• Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English, French
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 7
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: October 15, 1996
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304179073
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,571 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

This is not your parents' sitcom. Two middle-aged tarts smoke, swallow, and bed everything in their paranoid paths and are all the more fun for being so unabashedly vulgar. Jennifer Saunders stars as the queen of excess; Joanna Lumley is her promiscuous best friend in this groundbreaking, side-splitting satire. Created by the uninhibited team of Saunders and Dawn French, the series was written by Saunders. This set includes all 18 of the 30-minute episodes from the British TV series; the less-than-thrilling 30-minute midseason special, How to Be Absolutely Fabulous. Anglophiles and anarchists will love this, but consider yourself forewarned--it is strictly adult material. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ABSOLUTLEY HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!, October 8, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (BOLTON, LANCASHIRE, ENGLAND) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Absolutely Fabulous - Series 1 to 3 [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Absolutley Fabulous is undoubtedly one of the very, very best British sitcoms. Every episode is hilarious and it started a nation crying out "sweetie darling". The pairing of Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley is priceless! These form a hilariously over the top duo who are both in the fashion industry but do very little work and mainly leave it up to the incompentent and very dizzy Bubbles (played brilliantly by the talented Jane Horrocks) to do all the work even though she makes a shambles out of it most of the time. Theres also Saffron (perfectly played by Julia Sawalha) who is Edinas' poor, put upon daughter and comedy veteran June Whitfield as Edinas' batty mother. This is certainly a big highlight in the career of the enormously talented writer and actress Jennifer Saunders. All of these 18 episodes are classics, made instantly memroable by its sharp, witty diaogue and magnificent comic playing. Its intersting to see Joanna Lumley escape her usual aristocratic image and play foul mouthed, chain smoking Patsy Stone. Saunders and Lumley have masterminded that essential comic delivery and timing brilliantly. It really iis impossible to select a favourite episode but could say that amongst the best are POOR (series two) when Edina and Patsy are arrested for drunk driving. One of the funniest scenes to take place in this episode is when Eddy and Pats are holding up traffic. A lady presses the car horn continually to which they jump out the car and go up to the car the lady is in and start hurling abuse at her. Classic stuff. Other excellent episodes include where they go off to Morroco to promote Edinas new business venture, Pop specs. An episode titled DoorHandle (series three) is where they travel all the way to New York in search of a new, hip, door handle for Edinas living room. FIRE is a great one when Eddy, Pats and Saffron are locked in a room together and they all reveal there darkest secrets. The quality in all three series' never once falters. A CLASSIC! HILARIOUS! A COMIC MASTERPIECE! Excellent comic playing and a hilarious, rollercoaster dialogue. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unexcelled!, October 27, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Absolutely Fabulous, The Complete Collection: Series 1 to 3 [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This brilliant, caustic, uproarious and innovative situation comedy will go down in history as one of the very few greatest ever. The premise -- sort of a American sitcom turned on its head (the mother is the juvenile and the daughter is the sensible one) -- might have gotten stale or threadbare quickly. But with a genius like Jennifer Saunders writing and starring, and with the sterling supporting cast, this set is a delectable treat from first to last. The self-absorbed and fad-mad Edina and the equally self-absorbed sex-and-substance addict Patsy, the not-always patient Saffron, and June Whitfield hilarious as Edina's Mother, are main ingredients in a witches' brew that will intoxicate and delight you. And special mention has to be made of the numerous flashback and dream sequences, which are so far-out and funny that they'd be worth the price alone! (For example, in the "Birth" episode, the flashback to Edina's birth-- with Mother in her hospital bed made up complete with lipstick and wearing pearls as the nurse wields huge salad tongs to clamp the exiting child...and Patsy's riotously funny birth scene in a Paris avant-garde flat with beat poets, a Piafian singer, a ballet dancer, and a modern painter, swirling around Patsy's mother as she free-verses "Come, no longer my ball and chain! Enter the world, you tiny-- mediocrity!... Oh, cut the cord, cut the cord!..." is, in a word, priceless!). Patsy and Edina are (really) horrible but excruciatingly funny! A Desert Island set!

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweetie! Darling!, January 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Absolutely Fabulous, The Complete Collection: Series 1 to 3 [VHS] (VHS Tape)

My 19 yr old daughter and I cannot get enough of this absolutely fabulous British comedy. You will either love it or hate it--no in-between. This ingenious series is a perfect satire on the 60's generation. It is brilliant comedy acting by women--from the main characters, Eddie, Patsy, Saffie, Mrs. M, and Bubble to the other women characters in the fashion industry that surround them. There is plenty of drinking, drugs, self-centeredness, imaginative costume, shouting, loud theme music and outrageous behavior to make one wonder what the appeal is. Absolutely Fabulous lifts off the ground and takes flight. If you become hooked and fond of these insane characters you will go through the series and back again and again. A great time capsule of a whacky culture.