Saturday Night Fry was a six-part comedy series on BBC Radio 4, first broadcast between the 30th of April and the 4th of June 1988. Episode One had previously been broadcast as a pilot on 19 December 1987, under the title 'Fry on Saturday'.
Hosted by Stephen Fry — accompanied each week by a selection of guests including Jim Broadbent, Emma Thompson, Phyllida Law, Robert Bathurst, Julia Hills, Alison Steadman and long-time collaborator Hugh Laurie — the show took the form of a round table discussion and sketches which veered tangentially from the sublime to the ridiculous. Parodies of television and radio formats were common ('Fat Man On A Bicycle', and so on). Controversial satirist Chris Morris has praised the show on many occasions, in particular for its observations on the media. Many say its influence can be felt in On The Hour and other such programmes.
Snippets of classical music were used to mark breaks between items, usually succeeded by Fry's voice saying, "And as the strains of the
Although slightly different in format the series could be seen as a direct precursor to A Bit of Fry and Laurie, the 1989 television series (piloted in 1987), which employed a very similar style of humour and wordplay (indeed, it invented the language Strom, which gave birth to the farewell phrase "Soupy twist", and also gave rise to the phrase "Mr. Music, will you play?"). Certain editions were constructed in complex knots: one edition saw the cast rearranging the script as a practical joke whilst Fry has gone to the toilet, ending up in him reading the part where they do that and so finding them red-handed, whilst the first edition fell in and out of dream sequences caused by a devilish potion.
The signature tune opening each episode was "Saturday Night Fish Fry" by Louis Jordan. This would always be preceded by a rather convoluted introduction from Fry.
In 2009, the series was released on a triple compact disc set by BBC Audio in June and reaired the following month on BBC Radio 7.
There was also a show of the same name running on BBC Radio 4 in 1998, again hosted by Fry. This was a completely different show, however, being a series of 45-minute serious debates interspersed with the occasional sketch or piece of music.
Famous quotes containing the words saturday night, saturday, night and/or fry:
“Saturday night was for wives, but Friday night at the Copa was always for the girlfriends.”
—Nicholas Pileggi, U.S. screenwriter, and Martin Scorsese. Henry Hill (Ray Liotta)
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“The difference between tragedy and comedy is the difference between experience and intuition. In the experience we strive against every condition of our animal life: against death, against the frustration of ambition, against the instability of human love. In the intuition we trust the arduous eccentricities we’re born to, and see the oddness of a creature who has never got acclimatized to being created.”
—Christopher Fry (b. 1907)