Best known in the U.S. for “Absolutely Fabulous,” which she co-wrote and in which she co-starred, Jennifer Saunders is back with “The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle,” the story of a daytime TV tabloid talk-show host.
The short series will appear Friday nights on the Sundance Channel.
Saunders has been back before, recently with “Clatterford” and other series not seen here — in Britain she has never been away — but “Ab Fab” was a phenomenon popular enough to be known by a nickname, one of the biggest British imports ever.
This is not that; it is too dry and unaccommodating for that kind of big success. It’s very good, I think, but it belongs to some new category — what we might call post-sitcom sitcoms, or even post-comedy comedies, funny but somehow not exactly designed for laughs.
“Black comedy” doesn’t quite say it, although the main characters are tragically dysfunctional and the subject is the exploitation of human weakness for profit.
Here, Saunders has as a co-writer not her long-standing partner, Dawn French, but Tanya Byron, a clinical psychologist who got famous a few years ago as part of the British parenting series “Little Angels,” something like the “nanny” shows we see here.
The series begins as Vivienne Vyle (Saunders), whose name and manner are a takeoff on the real British daytime TV tabloid talk-show host Jeremy Kyle, gets a ratings boost after an on-air scuffle lands her in the hospital. (“You disgust me and most of my audience,” is how she’ll typically address a guest. “But I’m not here to judge you.”) While she’s there, psychologist Jonathan Fowler (Jason Watkins) steps in to mediate an argument between Vivienne and her producer, Helena De’ Wend (Miranda Richardson), and explains Vivienne to herself.
“If what you do is take people apart in public and then not give them back anything to replace what they’ve lost, then I think it’s only a matter of time before someone turns around and punches you.”
“Ooooh,” she answers sarcastically. “Gasps from the audience.” Helena hires Jonathan as a consultant, and Vivienne sees his value: His presence will allow them to make TV not just for the unhappy and unlucky but also for the “really mentally ill. We’ll do real therapy on television. … This is how I can be seen to really care.”
“I want cutters,” she says, “manic depressives, suicidals, the obese, the, whatchacall, the morbidly obese.” And Fowler, although he at first decries her show as a “theater of cruelty,” finds himself seduced by his minor celebrity and by Helena.
Saunders is wonderful throughout, imperious and insecure. But Richardson on her own is reason enough to watch. It’s a manic, utterly disheveled performance, full of vinegar and glee. Helena’s only loyalty is to good television, to the extent that everything else is a mess, including her hair.
There is a degree of “Ab Fab” heroines Edina and Patsy in Vivienne and Helena — a certain “us against the world” attitude and a capacity for rewriting reality — although the current pair are far more capable, ruthless, focused and profane. But as extreme as they are, and as grotesque, they belong to something closer to the real world rather than to the exaggerated alternate universe that was home to “Ab Fab.”
