Ab Fab to have third incarnation

Variety reports that the all-new misadventures of tosspot fashionistas Patsy and Edina will be returning to Comedy Central in November with six new half-hour episodes of Absolutely Fabulous. Original cast members Jennifer Saunders (Edina) and Joanna Lumley (Patsy) will be returning along with the rest of the previous cast. This time around, though, Jane Horrocks (Little Voice) will not be playing Edina’s assistant, Bubble; she will be featured in the show as Yitta Hilberstam, an Icelandic waitress with a tenuous grasp of the English language. The last time the cast was reassembled, the result was the telefilm The Last Shout, which was intended to be the final outing for the Absolutely Fabulous characters. Saunders and Lumley were planning on subsequently creating a series about fading but fabulous West End actresses called Mirrorball, but Saunders says, “When I sat down to write the new characters, I felt Edina and Patsy and all the other Ab Fab characters vying for my attention. So in the end, I gave in...and I’m looking forward to moving on the characters into the millennium and adding a few new ones.” The pilot for Mirrorball will run as a half-hour special in early 2002.