The outrageous British comedy Absolutely Fabulous made a successful return to Comedy Central last week, more than doubling both the show's lead-in and the network's average in the time period over the previous six weeks.
A heavy promotional push heralded the first original regular episode of the Jennifer Saunders-Joanna Lumley comedy to run on Comedy Central in six years (a two-hour movie also debuted on the channel in January 1997), and it paid off. The BBC series, about a pair of hedonistic, trend-obsessed women, drew an audience of 1.24 million viewers and a 0.9 rating among adults 18 to 49 in the Comedy Central universe (about 77 million homes, or 73% of the country). That 0.9 rating matches the rating of the 1997 Ab Fab movie, the Comedy Central series' best since its summer 1995 heyday.
Although Ab Fab settled for only about half of the 18 to 49 audience of the previous week's regular episode of Comedy Central's biggest current hit, South Park (862,000 18 to 49 viewers for Ab Fab, 1.67 million for South Park), it nearly doubled what Comedy Central averaged in prime time the previous week (862,000 vs. 462,000).
The network is hoping the return of Ab Fab, one of its early signature shows, can boost its prime-time audience, particularly with viewers not attracted to South Park.
?We're pleased with these numbers,? said Tony Fox, EVP-corporation communications for Comedy Central. ?We've reached a significant audience and introduced the show to an audience that wasn't around in 1995.? Fox said the show helps bring greater gender balance to the male-skewing Comedy Central audience, while bolstering the channel's appeal to the affluent and gay audiences that have loyally supported Ab Fab.
Back in 1995, Ab Fab drew ratings as high as 2.1 among adults 18 to 49 and averaged about a 1.4 rating in first-run. It's not surprising that the 2001 episode is lower-rated because cable competition was generally less formidable back then, and this new episode faced tough competition from sweeps programming on the broadcast networks.
The broadcast competition in June and July vs. November was also a lot tamer.
The 0.9 rating among adults 18 to 49 Ab Fab drew in its Nov. 12 return more than doubled the show's 0.4 lead-in from the British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway. It also easily topped the 0.4 Whose Line averaged in the current Ab Fab time period in its previous six tries.
The premiere was preceded by a Sunday 2 to 7 p.m. marathon of repeats, which averaged a 0.4 among adults 18 to 49. That's Comedy Central's best Ab Fab rerun result since January 2000.
New Ab Fab episodes are scheduled to run together with two reruns of the earlier series each Monday through Dec. 17.
Repeats of the earlier Ab Fab episodes are also running on BBC America, where the comedy is among the most popular shows on the schedule. BBC America will air the new Ab Fab installments in about six months.
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