Quick Take
- Narration: Dawn French performs with full warmth and comic authority, you hear Jennifer Saunders in French’s responses, which makes the dynamic feel genuinely alive.
- Themes: friendship and creative longevity, technology and aging, gap year fantasies
- Mood: Warm, chaotic, and genuinely funny without trying to be
- Verdict: If you have any affection for this particular friendship and its brand of off-the-cuff comedy, Series 6 delivers exactly what it promises and is better for it.
There is a specific pleasure in audio comedy that works because the people involved are actually enjoying themselves, and French and Saunders Titting About sits squarely in that category. I cued up Series 6 on a commute that was running longer than expected, and the first episode, Dawn and Jennifer catching up since the last series, had me laughing at the detail about getting locked inside an electric car with a sincerity that surprised me. This is undemanding audio in the best sense: it requires nothing of you and gives a great deal back.
The format is simple to the point of transparency. Six episodes, each nominally about a topic, technology, stress, time travel, manners, gap year fantasies, but really about two old friends sitting in a studio with excellent snacks, pursuing ideas until they become absurd and then pursuing them further. The topics are pretexts. What the show actually delivers is the texture of a specific creative partnership that has been running for decades, and the texture is what makes it work.
The Bet That Runs Through Everything
One of the quiet structural pleasures of this series is the ongoing bet between Dawn and Jennifer about whether Jen has written an Ab Fab related script. The bet originates from a previous series and resurfaces in the first episode of Series 6 as an early payoff for listeners who have followed the run. It is a small thing, the kind of recurring joke that a genuine friendship produces without effort, but it gives the series a through-line that makes it feel more cohesive than a collection of standalone episodes would be.
The technology episode is the one that will date least well and is simultaneously the funniest in the set. Dawn creating a robot Jennifer, and the revelation that a new French and Saunders sketch was generated by AI (the description of the result is better than the result of most AI-generated comedy), land because neither participant is trying to have informed opinions about technology. The comedy here comes from two people with self-described scant knowledge applying their specific sensibility to a subject that defeats them, which is a reliable formula when the people involved are genuinely funny rather than affecting ignorance for effect.
Six Episodes About Nothing in Particular and Everything That Matters
Series 6 handles subjects that would be heavy in a different context, technology anxiety, stress, the passage of time, gap year fantasies that arrive in one’s sixties rather than one’s twenties, with the kind of lightness that only comes from not trying to be wise about them. The stress episode, which explicitly disclaims being a practical guide to managing stress, works precisely because the two coping mechanisms on offer (adopting chickens and plucking each other’s facial hairs) are both specific and recognizably real. Dawn and Jennifer have been friends long enough that their specific domestic textures are known to each other and audible in every exchange.
The time travel episode, which involves Dawn and Jennifer positing a French and Saunders Time Travel Agency, is the most purely inventive of the set, it leans into absurdism rather than anecdote, and the questions raised (what do you do if a customer travels to Tudor times and is allergic to stench?) are the kind of creative problem-solving that makes this partnership genuinely different from other double acts. They are not riffing on existing material; they are generating new absurdity in real time, or performing so convincingly that the distinction doesn’t matter.
Who This Is and Who It Is Not For
Listeners who come to this without familiarity with French and Saunders will find it charming but somewhat opaque. References to Christopher Biggins, Ab Fab, and the cumulative history of the bet will mean more with context, and the pleasure of the performance is partly a pleasure of recognition, not just recognizing the jokes, but recognizing the specific dynamic between two people who have known each other for a very long time. That dynamic is warm and occasionally competitive and always affectionate, and it is not really reproducible in summary.
At just over three hours, Series 6 is easy to absorb in a single session or across a few commutes. It does not build to anything, it does not change you, and it does not try to. What it offers is the experience of being a peripheral presence in an excellent ongoing conversation between two people who are funnier than you and know it and don’t mind. For a certain kind of listener on a certain kind of day, that is exactly sufficient.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to have listened to previous series of Titting About before starting Series 6?
It helps considerably. The ongoing bet about the Ab Fab script carries more weight if you’ve followed its development, and several references in the first episode assume familiarity with previous series. That said, the core format is immediately accessible, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders talking about nothing in particular with great mutual affection, so newcomers can follow without being lost.
Is this primarily a Dawn French production, given that she is listed as the narrator, or does it feel like an equal collaboration?
The credit reflects the recording setup rather than the creative balance. Both French and Saunders are present throughout all six episodes, and the comedy functions as a genuine double act. French’s listing as narrator is essentially an artifact of how the production is catalogued; the experience of listening is very much a duet.
How does the technology episode hold up given that it touches on AI and smart devices?
Surprisingly well, largely because the comedy does not depend on accurate observation. The fact that Dawn and Jennifer approach technology from a position of admitted ignorance means the jokes age better than ones that engage seriously with specific platforms or features. The AI-generated French and Saunders sketch bit is particularly durable because the humor is about the absurdity of the concept rather than any specific tool.
Is there strong language or adult content, as the synopsis warns?
The warning is accurate but the content is mild by most adult comedy standards. Expect the occasional profanity and the kind of frank conversation about bodies and aging that two women in their sixties who have known each other for decades would naturally have. It is not a show that leans on shock value; the adult content warning mostly signals that this is not edited for children rather than that it is particularly explicit.
