There’s a sketch in A Bit Of Fry & Laurie that bears a little more of a closer look. It’s the one where Hugh tries to engage a class in a discussion about Romeo And Juliet.
It begins with this shot:
We’ll come back to this in a moment. But then Hugh enters.
The staging is really interesting, and he proceeds to deliver his lesson to the actual studio audience.
This staging choice is a throwback to the live revues, and also a budget thing probably (more later), but it makes for a really interesting dynamic. The audience are clearly enjoying the sketch, but they can’t laugh too much, otherwise the effect is ruined. I expect some of the laughter is being edited around too.
But what’s that in the bottom corner of the board?
Let’s try and get a closer look:
It’s something about Picasso, but I can’t make out the rest. What can you see?
Anyway, back to this shot.
Why are their baby footprints all over the board?
At first, I wondered if this sketch was shot at the same time as this one.
But thanks to this excellent article on Dirty Feed, we know that the teacher sketch was filmed for the pilot, but not used.
While that doesn’t explain the footprints, it probably explains the lower budget staging of Teacher. It’s a very good sketch thwarted by the contraints put upon it. I can see why they still wanted to use it, and only found a place for it in a longer run of episodes.
Alas, we have no answer for this. Any theories?
