Saunders admits series was a mistake

Jennifer Saunders has confessed that her last TV series with Dawn French was a mistake.

Critics mauled the show, which marked the duo’s return to the screen after a seven-year absence, as dreary, self-obsessed and proof they were past their comedy prime.

Now Saunders has admitted that the concept of setting the show around her own writers’ block, showing her and French struggling to find ideas for the show, was not a good one.

She said: “I don't think it worked. I think we misjudged the pace of it and misjudged how much other stuff we might need it for it.

"Dawn and I enjoyed it - but I think we were probably the only people that enjoyed it thoroughly because it was exactly what we wanted to do.”

"In our heads we were making a late-night BBC2 show, because we always forget we've developed into mainstream now.”

However, she says the experience won’t deter her from trying something different again.

In the interview with The Mirror to mark Comic Relief, she said: "If you give up trying you'll be dumped almost immediately. You've got to go for it or you might as well give up. Sometimes it just doesn't happen and you can't change it because it's in the can."

Published: 11 Mar 2005