French & Saunders - Back with a Vengeance
The comedy duo of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders return in full  splendor! Each has gained greater fame individually (inThe Vicar of  DibleyandAbsolutely Fabulous, respectively), but delightfully  ridiculous things happen when they combine their powers--crazed and  surreal humor they could never fit into any other forum. In one sketch  they play Renaissance stylists, sullenly assisting Boticelli with the  costume and hair design for his classic painting of Venus; in another,  they're a pair of retired Englishwomen in Florida, ecstatic to the point  of madness over the abundance of American food. Rather than simply mockingCold Mountain, they mock the movieandNicole Kidman's vapid  audio commentary on the DVD. Weaving in and out of the comic routines is a  meta-sketch about the creation of the entire special, in which the pair  depict themselves as lazy, fatuous, arrogant narcissists whose only  redeeming feature is that their producer is even more ignorant and  incompetent than they are. French and Saunders skewer female excess like  no one else--in a holiday special included as a bonus, French does a  devastating version of Catherine Zeta-Jones giddily reveling in her  success, giving a Christmas speech as the Queen of Wales. The loopiness of  the best bits defies description; their rapport and timing are simply  exquisite. It's a pleasure to be in their company again.--Bret  Fetzer