TV/International

Few things are as addictive as the addictive personalities of Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), two middle-aged hipsters wallowing in clothes, booze, pills, glamour, celebrity, and anything else their excessive appetites demand. The fifth series of Absolutely Fabulous finds Edina coping with the unexpected pregnancy of her long-suffering daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha) and the departure of all of her PR clients except for Emma "Baby Spice" Bunton (playing herself with good humor).

The babes of boozeland are back and drunker than ever in the fourth season of the Britcom Absolutely Fabulous. Even after a five-year hiatus, the main characters are unchanged, and the only giveaway that things are different is Eddy's defection from Lacroix to Burberry. Devoted fans will appreciate that this season (which also has the usual dieting, drinking, and manhunting) goes where no Pats and Edina have gone before, from a PR gig with Twiggy to menopause. What's more frightening: Patsy going through "the change" or the two dames dressed to the nines...

When anyone raves about Sex and the City, you need only to remind her that the Brits did it first--and better--with the creation of the brave say-anything show about sex, drugs, and the battle of the bulge. Absolutely Fabulous is a groundbreaking, off-the-wall comedy from the early 1990s, which began with a skit from The French and Saunders Show, about a moral, uptight daughter and her extremely loose mother. Ab Fab has taken this to the extreme. Edina (Jennifer Saunders) is the queen of excess.