Absolutely Fabulous

Absolutely Fabulous, which is about to make its cinema debut, is a comedy about women being useless. I watched it obediently in the 1990s — mostly for the clothes — and realise now, with more jaded eyes, that I was invited to laugh only at female failure. Failure is not a bad subject for comedy — it is actually one of the best, as Edmund Blackadder and Alan Partridge and David Brent tell us — but Absolutely Fabulous is too unsophisticated to be funny, and comedy without wit is spite.

Absolutely Fabulous is based on a single sketch from Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders who were, then, the only female sketch double act on TV. (French appeared in only one episode of Ab Fab, and instead graduated to The Vicar of Dibley, a more genial — though equally self-deceptive — fantasy.) The running gag, and it is as old as Plautus is: a mother is parented by her child, who is more mature than she is.