Episodes
Absolutely Fabulous first aired on 12 November 1992 and ran for three series, until 4 May 1995, when the sixth episode of series 3 was billed as the last ever episode. However, the following year in November 1996, two specials called "The Last Shout" were broadcast and were also billed as the last ever episodes. Both episodes featured end sequences with flashes to the future. However, after writing Mirrorball, Jennifer Saunders decided she had more ideas, leading to a fourth series, which premiered on 31 August 2001. A fifth series and three specials followed, the last of which aired on 25 December 2004. This was followed by a short special for Comic Relief in March 2005. In July 2005, Saunders announced she would not be writing or playing Edina again, stating "The 6am calls to go to make-up and all the promotional work wear you down. I would like to write and direct—that would be my joy". However, in November 2010, Lumley revealed to Playbill magazine that she had recently spoken to Saunders about the possibility of filming a new series. Lumley and Saunders reunited for the M&S Christmas advert in 2009, along with other stars such as Twiggy and Stephen Fry.
On 29 August 2011, it was announced that a further series of three programmes was being made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original production. The first of these, "Identity", was shown on Christmas Day 2011 and the second, "Job", was shown on New Year's Day 2012. The last, entitled "Olympics", aired on 23 July 2012. The episodes were jointly co-produced by Logo, and BBC America in the US.
On 3 January 2012, following the success of the 20th Anniversary Specials, it was rumoured that Saunders was set to write another Christmas special for 2012. The BBC were rumoured to also be urging her to write a sixth series for 2013. Saunders denied the reports of additional episodes via her Twitter account, and stated that she is working on a feature adaption based on the series. In March 2012, Saunders reiterated her plans for the film version, claiming that she was currently working on it.
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Famous quotes containing the word episodes:
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men’s existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)