Starship Podcast Warlock

In which Bubble tries to identify office equipment, Edina and Patsy travel to yet another country they are completely unequipped to exist in, and poor Saffy narrowly escapes one outrageously awful fate after another, though she does finally find someone to eat yogurt with. Meanwhile Jeff and Drew skim the career of Dame June Whitfield, which is filled with classic British televisual institutions we've never seen. If you're the least bit curious about which series of fantasy novels Drew has, shockingly, barely read, or why Jeff has a grudge against Frankie Howerd, hit play now!

While a death in the family causes Saffy to get upset and her mom and gran to buy art and do magazine quizzes, we discuss the closest existing cinematic equivalent to Absolutely Fabulous, which of course is the Villeneuve Dune.

As Saffy contemplates moving out of her mother's house and into the dorms for some low-alcohol-cider-fuelled decadence, Edina and Patsy take a recreational (?!) trip to the hospital for operations on the toe and the face, respectively. Meanwhile we discuss our history with and predilections for alcoholic beverages. Do we out-lush Patsy and Edina, or are we more on the Saffy end of things? And what is Helena Bonham-Carter doing in this episode? (Of the show, not the podcast. Sigh.)

Edina struggles to accept two massive crises in one day: first, both of her husbands are in her house with their new partners, and second, she's turning 40. Meanwhile we review the career of Julia Sawalha and attempt to rank the episodes of an incredibly strong debut season.

Patsy does the unthinkable and goes into -- this is hard to say -- the office. I KNOW! She also strikes a bargain with Saffy aided by a sad story of her upbringing/upbraiding by Eleanor Bron...but is the story a lie, and the bargain unkept? We also meet a food critic who looks a lot like Vyvyan from the Young Ones and find out which body parts are in style this month. Pre-show we discuss the next Doctor Who showrunner, links between Doctor Who and AbFab, and what it felt like to be in college when this series was on the air (the main takeaway being that we should have gone out dancing more).

Edina spends just a minute in the iso-tank and suddenly Bubble is competent, Saffy has a cute friend, and Patsy is shagging the school headmaster. Meanwhile, we review the career of Joanna Lumley: Bond girl, Avenger, medieval queen, world traveller, philanthropist, and of course otherworldly being who can control time and is named after a gemstone.

Patsy and Edina go to France, or possibly a location standing in for France, we didn't check. If you want solid facts, you're listening to the wrong podcast! But if you want to hear all of our (mainly Jeff's) travel stories, you're listening to the right podcast. We start with our humble beginnings being misled into thinking we needed to speak French on our respective trips to Canada, and move on to adventures in Japan, Thailand, and even Senegal. Not France, though, weirdly (at least in Drew's case).

As Edina Monsoon frets about her really quite pleasant weight and turns into a Spitting Image puppet, we review the career of her real-life counterpart Jennifer Saunders. We also discuss one of Robin Williams's surprise improv set drop-ins, the appeal of Laura Branigan, and the housemate who loved "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (only slightly more than Drew did).

We had so much fun recording Sex (the Absolutely Fabulous episode) that we abandoned our original plan for Season 4 and opted to do the first three seasons of AbFab instead! So we jumped back to the beginning, "Fashion," in which Edina chants, drinks, doesn't drink, channels a color, throws a fashion show minus Yasmin Le Bon, and falls out of a car, typical day really. Meanwhile we discuss how we started watching the show, which to be honest comes down to...we started watching it.

Special bonus episode, with special guest Marina! We watch the Hitchhiker's movie after all, thinking it couldn't be as bad as we remembered it. Indeed we do have different reactions to different parts of it this time, but you'll have to listen in order to find out which of us liked it, which of us didn't, and which of us went catatonic or just dozed off for a pretty big chunk of it. This is a long one, but feel free to skip to segment 2 of the podcast if you don't have time for the movie and just want to hear our post-movie commentary. The sound quality is a little hit and miss on this one, but that seems appropriate given that the quality of the movie itself is the same.