Joanna Lumley's lengthy career in television has been marked chiefly by two components-her image as glamorous and refined, and the characters she has played in three popular series, which span three decades. Her work over the years has been varied, encompassing theater, film, and several major advertising campaigns, as well as television drama, comedy, and regular celebrity appearances. Equally, her work has been of widely varying standards, ranging from the flimsy and trite to award-winning performances.

     A former model in the Swinging Sixties, Lumley landed her first major television role in The New Avengers (1976-77), in which she played special agent Purdey, alongside Gareth Hunt (Gambit) and Patrick Macnee (Steed). The show evidently seemed to be more concerned to promote Lumley's legs than her character's crime-fighting skills-not only did her costume consist of a skin-tight trouser suit and kinky high boots, but Purdey's prime weapon was her immobilizing karate kick. In spite of this fetishistic fixation, Lumley became most synonymous with the pudding­ bowl haircut named after her character, Purdey, and widely imitated by women and girls alike.

     Shortly after The New Avengers came Sapphire and Steel (1979-82), an offbeat science fiction series in which Lumley co-starred with David McCallum. The two played mysterious agents who traveled through time and space, whilst the ethereal Sapphire (Lumley) costumed in a long, floaty dress communed with psychic forces. Although this and the previous show were popular with both children and adults, Lumley claimed she was becoming frustrated with the parts she was playing, primarily as they did not mimic real women.

     For the remainder of the 1980s, Lumley was involved in less memorable productions, although she remained in the public eye, as the face for several advertisements, as a regular guest on TV chat shows, and with certain notable film appearances, particularly as head girl­ turned-prostitute in Shirley Valentine (1989). However, it was her performance with Ruby Wax (on The Full Wax) as a washed-up, drugged-out actress that initiated the revival of her career. This performance instantly transformed her from an idealized myth of feminine perfection to a more complex and humorous persona. Shortly after revealing her talent for comedy and self­ parody, through a stroke of pertinent casting, Lumley became Patsy Stone, the aging, neurotic "Fash-Mag­ Slag," conceived of by Jennifer Saunders for Absolutely Fabulous (1992-96). This casting was central to the success of Absolutely Fabulous and to the renaissance of Lumley's career. Lumley gives an immensely entertaining performance, but also, because of her on- and off-screen persona, she creates in Patsy a hilarious and hideous satire around the expectations of glamor and refinement assigned to her. As a character, Patsy has several functions that covered new ground in television culture: she overturned ageist assumptions by opening up a space in television for the representation of women of all ages as humorous; as an "unruly woman" she violated, in a highly entertaining way, the unspoken feminine sanction against making a spectacle of herself; and she confronted and redefined the values of beauty, consumerism, and decorum inferred upon women, particularly of a certain age and social class.

     Since playing what must surely be her ideal role, and achieving high critical acclaim with several awards, including BAFTAs and an Emmy, Lumley's subsequent work was not nearly so demanding on her talents. She played a down-at-heel aristocrat in the mediocre A Class Act and in a documentary-drama, Girl Friday, she had to fend for herself on an inhospitable desert island, with emphasis on how she copes without couture clothes, haute cuisine, and cosmetics. Both of these shows revolve around Lumley's conventional image, but neither seeks to recognize the contradictions apparent since Absolutely Fabulous in Lumley's persona as the epitome of high class. While there may generally be a lack of recognition of Lum­ley's specific capabilities as an actor, all her major roles share a common interest in casting her as an independent woman-she is nobody's wife or side-kick. However, it seems ironic that Absolutely Fabulous, while giving Lumley a new lease of life and promoting her to an international audience, has remained an almost unique forum for her talent as a comedy actor.