Too many titters, no laughs in French/Saunders series

By MICHELE HEWITSON

If the promos were not so busy trumpeting Let Them Eat Cake as a lascivious, lewd romp through Dawn French's cleavage, we could be forgiven for wondering whether the Carry On team had been at it again.

Because there hasn't been seen such an expanse of decolletage, nor so many boom-boom lines heard about bosoms since ... well, when was the last time you saw a Carry On film?

Because Cake features Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders (they didn't write it so I suppose we can be thankful for small mercies), it is supposed to be good telly.

Set in the court of Versailles where the aristocracy await the revolution by bonking each other silly and by playing parlour in the boudoir, French plays French maid (get it?) Lisette to Saunders' Colombine, a woman whose brain is smaller than her cleavage.

The running gag is that she doesn't have much of a cleavage.

Still, the competition is fierce. Colombine's rival, Madame de Plonge, has "a cleavage so big you could hide a giraffe down it." Her weapons of seduction are her breasts: "She's been throwing herself at him like an Olympic wet nurse."

Madame de Plonge does have one other weapon - her daughter Eveline, a girl so pure and innocent that "I wouldn't know a penis if I sat on one."

All right, so it's period comedy. Is that any excuse for the jokes being so old?

As it is, it's about as bawdy as a night in Ye Olde Steak House where the attraction is the cleavage and the rude words on the menu.

I mean, really, how many times can you be expected to titter when French says "Conte" in a way which sounds like another c-word, a, tee hee, really rude one? Then there was the groan-inducing: "You'll have to tryst again, like you did last summer."

It must have seemed like a bright idea. There's plenty of fodder for satire in the sexual mores of a corrupt, and very bored, court. And the opportunity for slapstick obviously proved irresistible.

French slips, and oh, ha ha, her over-exposed chest ends up in the face of a young blade. Which showed attention to historical detail. That gag predated the custard pie in the face - and it's about as predictable.

Did I mention that the costumes are, predictably, just gorgeous?

And the wigs. Fantastic wigs. You really had to admire the one topped with a warship complete with miniature cannons which went off during the music recital. You really had to. Because there wasn't much else going on up top. It was all going on somewhere else. You might be able to guess.

Marie Antoinette, of course, never said, "Let them eat cake." French and Saunders should, though, have said something like, "Let them go to Hooters," when they read the script for this tedious panto for grown-ups who think cleavage titters pass for wit. It's a crummy sort of cake.

* Let Them Eat Cake, TV One, 9.35 pm