The BEST episodes written by Stephen Fry
#1 - Episode 3
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 4 - Episode 3
Sketches Include: Vox Pops, Guests Introduction, Barman, Interruptus, Little Girl (song), Making Tea, For Some Reason Angry, Don't Be Dirty. The guests order a South Seas Vulvic Wart cocktail.
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Stephen Fry: Out There - Season 1 - Episode 2
This episode sees Stephen visit Brazil, home to the largest gay pride celebration in the world and a place that has some of the best legislation on the planet for gay equality. But it has come at a price. All of the advances have brought about a violent backlash against gay people; on average, one gay person is murdered every 36 hours in Brazil. Stephen sees how this is impacting on the lives of gay men and women there and also confronts the politician leading the fight against gay rights. Stephen also visits Russia, where gays are now worse off than they have been for a long time. Their rights are being constantly eroded by a conservative government, backed by the disapproval of the Russian Orthodox Church. Stephen then travels to India, where the old British laws that criminalised homosexuality have just been overturned. Modern India is now looking to Hindu traditions as it forges a more positive way forward for its gay citizens, including its once celebrated transgender community.
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#3 - New World
Stephen Fry in America - Season 1 - Episode 1
In episode 1, Stephen Fry explores the New England states. Starting in Maine to learn about lobster, he then heads over to New Hampshire during the height of presidential primary activity, from there he makes a stop in Vermont and the Ben and Jerry ice-cream factory before attempting some deer hunting in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. The next stop for Stephen's hired taxi is Boston followed by New York City where he meets up with musician Sting and gets a feel for the "Goodfellas" social club types in Queens. Quick stops in Delaware and Maryland, then to Washington DC, where Stephen chats with Wikipedia founder James Whales before wrapping up his New England tour with some political satire from Capitol Steps and a Lincoln impersonator in Gettysburg.
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#4 - Episode 4
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 4 - Episode 4
Sketches include: Good Evening, Guests Introduction, Soccer School, Dalliard: Models, Hugh Interviewing Guests, Be Nice (song), Head Gardener, Gelliant Gutfright("Flowers For Wendy"). The guests order a A Quick One With You, Stephen cocktail.
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#5 - Spreading the Word
Fry's Planet Word - Season 1 - Episode 4
In this programme, Stephen Fry explores 'the written word'. Writing is a great invention - making it possible to communicate across space and time. Without writing we would have no history and very little technology. Stephen discovers the earliest writing - cuneiform - at the British Museum, and learns how our alphabet came from the Phoenicians. As part of his exploration of the diversity of scripts, Stephen visits 106-year-old Mr Zhou, the inventor of the Chinese phonetic writing system called Pinyin, who relates how literacy increased four-fold after its introduction under Mao. After the written word came the printed word, and Stephen looks at how this has shaped our relationship with writing, giving us libraries, dictionaries and encyclopaedias. From the Bodleian to Diderot's favourite café to the cutting-edge research at MIT, Stephen explores how the written word evolved into printing, then libraries, encyclopaedias and computer code. Blogging and twittering is just the tip of a brave new future which no one dares predict.
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#6 - Episode 3
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 3 - Episode 3
Sketches include "The Yorkshireman Meets the Southerner"; "We've Had Lots of Letters"; "The Department Talks to Alan"; "The Chimpunks' Voice Version of Hey Jude"; "The Day I Forgot My Legs"; "Terry Discusses How to Fire People"; "Summing Up Game"; "Balloon-O"; and "Shoe Shop". Concludes with a Everything in the Till and No Sudden Moves cocktail.
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#7 - Episode 7
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 4 - Episode 7
Sketches include: Guests Introduction, Religianto, Consent, Sophisticated Song (song), Fast Monologue, Telephone Alert, Truancy. The guests order a Modern Britain cocktail.
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#8 - Episode 6
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 2 - Episode 6
Includes "Satire/Tribute ('Where is the Lid?' song)", "Yellow Pages", "Beauty and Ideas" (Continued from Series One's "Language Conversation"), "Anarchy", "Dammit Church (John & Peter #6)", "First Kiss", "Borrowing a Fiver Off", "Spies/Firing (Control & Tony #8)", "Introducing My Grandfather To…", "A Vision of Britain", "Wrong Directions" (follows the end credits).
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#9 - True West
Stephen Fry in America - Season 1 - Episode 5
A tour of the Southwestern states of New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada are next up in episode 5. In New Mexico, the work of physicists at Los Alamos Lab is contrasted by the life of a group of eco-friendly residents in the predominantly artist community of Santa Fe. In Arizona, Stephen spends some time with Navajo Indians in Monument Valley; makes a visit to more upscale surroundings aboard a well appointed houseboat on Lake Powell; takes a Second World War Flying Fortress Bomber to the "Boneyard" in Tucson, where 3,000 military planes are eerily mothballed; and tries his hand at being a cowboy at Old Tucson Studios. While in Nevada, Stephen learns about the intricate brothel life from madam Susan Austin and gets a peek at Mormon missionaries in the process of shooting their annual calendar before heading over the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
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#10 - Episode 1
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 2 - Episode 1
Stephen and Hugh incorporate the song "Time, Where Did You Go?" and Dancersize in their opening gambit. Sketches include "Hardware Store", "Peter and John #2", "Letter to Stephen's Grandfather", "Arthur Meets the Psychiatrist", "The Sportscasters Cover Everyday Life", "Control and Tony Talk about Lies" and "Hugh Interviews 'Michael Jackson'".
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#11 - Episode 4
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 3 - Episode 4
Sketches include "Specialized Greeting Cards"; "Photocopying My Genitals With"; "Scene from From Here to Just Over There"; "The Not Quite Late Enough Show"; "Taping News from Bristol"; "Nothing Rude About God Save The Queen"; "AA Meeting"; "Pass the Marmalade"; "Too Long Johnny" and "The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick". Fry and Laurie make the Mug of Horlicks cocktail.
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#12 - Episode 6
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 1 - Episode 6
Sketches include "Marjorie's Fall", "Puppy Appeal", "Leave It Out", "Girlfriend's Breasts", "Spies Four", "Violence", "Chicken", "Cocoa", and "Tony of Plymouth (Sword Fight)".
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#13 - Episode 6
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 3 - Episode 6
Sketches include "Magazine Leaflets", "Nigel Carter Visits", "Novelty Shop", "Delightful Restaurant", "Tahitian Kitchen", "My Favourite Pants", "The Bishop and the Warlord", "Court Case Against The Bishop and the Warlord" and "Flying a Light Airplane without Having Had Any Formal Instruction With". Fry and Laurie offer Berliner Credit Sequence as a cocktail.
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#14 - Episode 1
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 4 - Episode 1
Sketches include: Grey and Hopeless, Guest Movements, Theme Vox Pops, Blame the System, The Comedy Charter, Writing Poetry, Smell: The Forgotten Sense?, Gordon's Unintelligible Song, Wrist Changer Commercial, and It's A Soaraway Life. The guests order a Golden Meteorite cocktail.
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#15 - Pacific
Stephen Fry in America - Season 1 - Episode 6
In this final episode, Stephen explores the states along the Pacific Coast, as well as Alaska and Hawaii. First he chats with Jony Ive, Apple's design guru, in San Francisco's Chinatown; then Stephen accompanies Tom Allmann, the Sheriff of Mendocino, on a drugs bust. Traveling through the giant redwood forests of Northern California and Oregon, he meets pot-smoking students and arboreal activists who are intent on protecting the forests. After leaving his taxi behind in Seattle, Stephen flies to Kodak Island in Alaska to witness a Russian Orthodox Easter. While there, a group of Inuits demonstrate how they hunt bowhead whales. From the extreme north, Stephen heads south to Hawaii to wrap up his journey across America. He gets the low-down on Waikiki Beach from Terry Pennington, a real-life Magnum PI; goes swimming with sharks; and meets champion surfer Titus on the island of Kauai. On the Big Island, Stephen views exploding stars at Keck Observatory and witnesses the creation of new land with a visit to the lava fields that flow into the ocean.
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#16 - Episode 2
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 2 - Episode 2
The BBC must find new places for funding. Thus this episode is sponsored by Tideyman's Carpets, which ingratiates itself in almost all the sketches: "The Spillage That Wasn't", "Control Talks of the Open Window", "A Right Way and a Wrong Way to Deal with Trick-or-Treaters", "The Tideyman's Test", "Piano Standards", "Nazi Interrogates English Major", "John and Peter #3" and "The Improvised End Sketch".
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#17 - Episode 2
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 3 - Episode 2
Includes: * Condom Quickie * Embassy * Ampersands * Duel * Ass-Kickers' Song(song) * Petrol Attendants * Jobs * European Deal * Cocktail Ending: A Slow Snog with a Distant Relative
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#18 - Episode 6
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 4 - Episode 6
Sketches include: Stolen Money, Young Tory of the Year, Variety, Gossiping Heads, Death Threat, What I Mind (Misunderstood) (Song), Honda, The Duke of Northampton. The hosts finish off with a Silver Prostate cocktail.
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#19 - Episode 2
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 4 - Episode 2
Sketches include: Hugh's Accident, Psychotherapy Video, Local News at Ten Thirty Three and a Bit, English People Care to be the Most Ignorant in Europe, I'm In Love With Steffi Graf, The Lover's Helper, Fascism Discussion, Max Meets Fiona, and Heart Transplant. The guests order a Long Confident Suck cocktail.
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#20 - Deep South
Stephen Fry in America - Season 1 - Episode 2
Stephen has a real affinity for the South's rich, colorful history and gentile pace. In episode two, his taxi takes him to the coal mines of West Virginia, to Kentucky, home of the Kentucky Derby, and in Tennessee he explores the roots of Bluegrass music and takes a detour to a "Body Farm" where scientists assist police investigations by creating various "time since death" scenarios. From there, Stephen takes an uplifting hot air balloon trip across North Carolina then spends Thanksgiving in Georgia before heading to Miami where he has to endure a stifling combination of heat and humidity. He wraps up his Southern tour in Alabama and discovers just how serious college sports fans are in America.
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#21 - Episode 5
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 2 - Episode 5
Includes "MBE Introduction", "This Is Dominic Appleguard", "Rhodes Boysons", "Amputated Genitals", "The Cause (Jack & Freddy/Neddy #1)", "Gordon & Stuart #3" and "Where Eagles Dare".
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#22 - Episode 1
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 1 - Episode 1
Sketches include "Mr. Smear Confronts the Headmaster", "Hugh Laurie's Short Poetry Reading", "Politician Insists, 'Stop Breaking into My Car'", "SAS Application/Library Books on Cricketers", "Spoon Bender", "Apology", and a barbershop piece called "Bitch Mother Come Light My Bottom" by Sir William (now Lord) Rees-Mogg.
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#23 - Episode 3
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 2 - Episode 3
Fry and Laurie have gags over their mouths to protests the censors' ban on traditional swearwords. Thus Fry and Laurie create new swearwords for their sketches: "Testimony", "Over to You", "The Jeweller's Shop", "Girlfriends", "Mystery Object", "Westminster Society", "Peter and John #4" and "What People Find Funny".
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#24 - Episode 5
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 1 - Episode 5
Sketches include "Lavatories", "Critics One", "Judge Not", "Critics Four", "Ignored Teacher", "That's It", "Hugh's Favourite Sketch", "Critics", "The 'Burt'", "Christening", and "Swiss Comedy (Heidi and Johann Smell Just Right)".
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#25 - Episode 1
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 3 - Episode 1
Includes: * A Word, Timothy * Very Upset * Love Me Tender (song) * Milk Pot * The Department * Stephen's Song (song) * Psychiatrists * Cocktail Ending: Whiskey Thunder
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#26 - Episode 2
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 1 - Episode 2
Sketches include "Information Desk", "My Name is Derek Nippl-e", "Flexibility of the English Language", "America", "The Richard Morley Interview", "Tony Gives Control a Flash", "The Mouth Organist Gets Reprimanded", "Hands Exercise", and "Peter and John."
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#27 - Mississippi
Stephen Fry in America - Season 1 - Episode 3
In episode 3, Stephen follows the path of the Mississippi River which takes him into the Midwest. Before leaving the south, however, he celebrates Mardi Gras in the French Quarter of New Orleans and tours areas still scarred by Hurricane Katrina. Another stop in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the Delta Blues, brings him to Morgan Freeman's blues club where they discuss the current situation in the Delta. From there, Stephen heads over to St Louis, Missouri, and then the (snow-covered) corn fields of Iowa and on to Michigan, where he meets Cadillac designer John Mancunia and tours Henry Ford's village in a Model T. More blues await when Stephen reaches Chicago and makes his way through the city's South Side accompanied by blues legend Buddy Guy. Before leaving the city, Stephen makes a guest appearance at the renowned improvisational comedy training ground, Second City Theater. Wisconsin provides a more agrarian setting. Here, Stephen attempts to milk a sheep and churn the curds with artisanal cheese-maker Brendan Jenson. Following the now frozen Mississippi River north to Minneapolis brings him in contact with a very unlikely settlement of Hmong refugees from Vietnam. Ice fishing is a traditional past time in Minnesota and Stephen participates, catching his first fish in 40 years.
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#28 - Mountains and Plains
Stephen Fry in America - Season 1 - Episode 4
Episode 4 provides Stephen with some picturesque views of America's rugged mountains and wide open spaces. Starting at the Canadian border, he works his way along the Rocky Mountain and plains states, all the way to the Mexican border. Stephen meets media mogul Ted Turner at his 50,000 head bison ranch, visits with a Wyoming ranching couple, and tries travel by dog sled before over indulging at a diner in Bismarck, North Dakota. From there, it's through the Badlands of South Dakota and a ride with a trucker traveling through Nebraska. He gets a glimpse of resort style living in Aspen, Colorado and attends a gala dinner in Houston, Texas before making his way further south to see a band of Tex-mex musicians in El Paso.
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#29 - Christmas Special
Gadget Man - Season 1 - Episode 6
In this Christmas special, Stephen Fry brings his insight and wit to bear on gadgets from Christmases past. Drawing on unusual and entertaining archive footage, Stephen surveys how Christmas and gadgets go together like mince pies and cream, as he takes a wry look at toys, snow, decorations and Christmas dinner.
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#30 - Episode 3
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 1 - Episode 3
Sketches include "Hugh's Brain", "Gordon and Stuart Eat Greek", "Costume Design", "Doctor Tobacco", "Open University", "Spies Two", and "Special Squad".
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#31 - Episode 5
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 3 - Episode 5
Sketches include "Bookshop Customer Attacks Jane Eyre", "Courting Elizabeth", "Split Personality", "World Sport Bushwallyta", "Are You Sleeping With My Sister?", "Aromusician Ottoman Nodge", Cross-Wits and "Jack Wants Neddy to Become the Prime Minister" Fry and Laurie make a "Beef Goulash" in place of a cocktail.
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#32 - Episode 5
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 4 - Episode 5
Sketches include: The Louella Della Tweed Interview, The Post-Race Interview, Hearing on Councilman Wade, It's Red, It's Shiny and It Doesn't Exist, Telephone Quiz Line, Dachshund Owner's Baby Talk, Wasp Exterminators. The guests order a Swinging Ball Sack cocktail.
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#33 - Episode 4
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 1 - Episode 4
Sketches include "Trouser-Competition Introduction", "Prize Poem", "Awful Smell", "Madness", "Antique Shop", "Spies Three", "Light Metal (The Bishop & The Warlord)", "Bank Loan", "Nipples", "Inspector Venice", and "Tomorrow's World".
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#34 - Babel
Fry's Planet Word - Season 1 - Episode 1
In this first episode, Stephen seeks to uncover the origins of human language and how and why we are the only species on the planet to have this gift. From attempts to teach chimps to speak to the so-called singing mice who have been given the human 'language gene', Stephen uncovers to what extent our brain is uniquely hard-wired for language. Watching how a child acquires language, Stephen hears from psycholinguist Steven Pinker how grammar is an innate quality, yet still has to be nurtured. Case studies of feral children, like Victor of Aveyron, illustrate how difficult it is to be certain which is more important. And at the National Theatre of the Deaf in Connecticut, Stephen learns why sign language is a true language. Taking part in a Klingon version of Hamlet prompts Stephen to ask the question why we have created the 6,000 plus languages which exist on the planet and with philologist Wolfgang Klein, he understands Grimm's law, which shows how over 2,000 Indo-European languages have all come from one source.
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#35 - Work Made Easy
Gadget Man - Season 1 - Episode 3
Stephen examines devices that make work easier and more fun, meeting up with Lord Sugar to road test some of the latest work-saving gizmos, including a coffee machine that talks to your phone. Stephen also plays around with some of Lord Sugar's early inventions. Other gadgets covered in this episode include a pen that transcribes notes direct to your computer and an executive sleep pod.
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#36 - Tasty Tech
Gadget Man - Season 1 - Episode 2
Stephen takes a look at how gadgets can make shopping and cooking so much easier and far more entertaining. He escorts the world's only driverless shopping trolley around the supermarket, tests high-end barbecues and tries out an array of fancy kitchen gadgets as he prepares to host a spectacular dinner party for his friends.
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#37 - Fun and Games
Gadget Man - Season 1 - Episode 4
Stephen looks at how gadgets entertain us. He shows Jeremy Clarkson how traditional pub games could be overhauled by replacing them with various gadgets, including an automatic cocktail-maker and a futuristic pool-table machine that lines up your shots for you. (And remote-controlled pet as well.) Stephen also tries to build the world's biggest computer game.
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#38 - Uses and Abuses
Fry's Planet Word - Season 1 - Episode 3
This programme looks at the ways language is used and abused. While not everyone approves of 'bad' language, Stephen learns that swearing plays an important part in human communication the world over. He undergoes an MRI scan and discovers the parts of the brain associated with swearing - and meets a sufferer of Tourette's and a stroke patient who swear they can't help using the f-word. Stephen and Brian Blessed participate in some rather colourful experiments to examine how swearing can help relieve pain. Stephen discusses the positive and negative power of 'bad' words in humour and social interactions with Armando Iannucci, Stephen K Amos and Omid Djalili, and discovers how we use double entendres, euphemisms, and politesse to hide true meanings. Stephen meets nurses, teenagers, and rappers to discover how slang and jargon can both aid and thwart clear communication, but ultimately add to the richness and texture of language.
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#39 - Body Beautiful
Gadget Man - Season 1 - Episode 5
Stephen looks at how new technology can help keep us fit and healthy. He road-tests some of the latest gym gadgets and gets a makeover from Amy Childs (from The Only Way Is Essex), using some weird and wonderful beauty devices. Some of the gadgets on the show include an app which predicts how long you will live, the world's most incredible treadmill and a device that claims to make you slimmer in just 30 minutes. And Stephen attempts to build the ultimate running machine that will enable him to race against double Olympic champion Kelly Holmes.
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#40 - The Power and the Glory
Fry's Planet Word - Season 1 - Episode 5
In this programme, Stephen Fry celebrates storytelling. It has been with us as long as language itself and as a species, we love to tell our stories. This desire to both entertain and explain has resulted in the flowering of language to describe every aspect of the human condition. Stephen asks just what makes a good story and why some writers just do it better. He reveals what stories make him shiver with joy or, conversely, shudder with horror. From Homer's epic to Joyce's modern-day reinvention with Ulysses, from taking in Shakespeare, PG Wodehouse, Tolkien, Orwell, Auden, Bob Dylan and the even the mangled web of words that became known as Birtspeak, Stephen uncovers why certain words can make us laugh, cry or tear our hair out. Talking to storytelling gurus like screenwriter William Goldman and modern-day interpreters of classics like Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, he looks at how character and plot are interwoven and how any schema to create the perfect story are doomed. Shakespearean actors Simon Russell Beale, David Tennant, Brian Blessed and Mark Rylance give their take on Hamlet and laud the bard as the blue planet's supreme writer. Sir Christopher Ricks argues that Bob Dylan should be considered as great a poet as anyone, whilst Richard Curtis explains why Auden can move us to tears but why in the modern world, Coldplay are just as important.
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#41 - Identity
Fry's Planet Word - Season 1 - Episode 2
What is it that defines us? Stephen argues that above all, it is the way we speak. Be it a national language, a regional dialect or even class variation - we interpret and define ourselves through our language. From markets in Kenya to call centres in Newcastle, Stephen charts the shifting patterns of lingua franca and the inexorable spread of Globish (Global English). As many of the world's more than 6000 languages are threatened with linguicide, Stephen seeks out examples of this rise and fall. In Ireland he learns how TV soaps are keeping Irish alive, whilst in Southern France, Provencal and other Oc languages are struggling to survive after 200 years of suppression by Parisian orthodoxy and the heavy hand of the Academie Francaise. But even amidst the imminent death of some, other languages like Basque survive, whilst Hebrew in Israel is reborn. Variety is the spice and in Bradford poet Ian McMillan teaches Stephen the subtle variations of dialect, whilst in Norwich Stephen finds his ultimate sense of identity in the chants of his beloved Canaries, Norwich City F.C.
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#42 - Episode 4
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - Season 2 - Episode 4
Fry and Laurie want to be big enough for Marlon Brando to notice them. Thus come the sketches: "Dinner with Digby", "Department Store Changes", "Interrogation in the Car", "An Elf or a Pixie", "Peter and John #5", "The Robert Robinsons", "Control's Telescope" and the "Bigometer Update".
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#43 - Super Commuter
Gadget Man - Season 1 - Episode 1
Stephen and his guest Jonathan Ross look at how gadgets can make the daily commute more bearable and more fun. Gadgets include a very unconventional electric car, a very unusual bicycle and a 3D headset. Stephen also attempts to beat the traffic jams by creating his own fantasy super-vehicle.
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