It frequently broke the fourth wall; characters would revert to their real-life actors mid-sketch, or the camera would often pan off set into the studio.

The show was punctuated with non sequitur vox pops in a similar style to those of Monty Python's Flying Circus, often making irrelevant statements and wordplay.

A sketch in the second series, in which a Conservative government minister is strangled while Stephen Fry screams at him "What are you doing to the television system?

The series made numerous jokes at the expense of the Tory prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and one sketch depicted a televised "Young Tory of the Year" competition in which a young Conservative (Laurie) recites a deliberately incoherent speech consisting only of nonsense political buzzwords, such as "family values" and "individual enterprise".

Alan (Laurie) is hired as a secret agent by a mysterious organisation known only as 'The Department', before which he was a gun-runner, supply teacher, and Home Secretary.

Control (Fry) and Tony Murchison (Laurie) are two excessively nice secret agents who first appear in series 1 of the show.

Tony Murchison is Subsection Chief of the East Germany and Related Satellites Desk, who brings Control his morning coffee.

The characters discuss issues of national security with childish simplicity to parody the typically sparse details viewers were often afforded in British films of a similar genre.

[10][11] Gelliant (Fry) is the host of short horror programme The Seventh Dimension, who presents bizarre and nonsensical stories such as "Flowers for Wendy" and "The Red Hat of Patferrick".

Eventually, Marjorie defeated the pair in the health club business off-screen, leading the two to run a public toilet and later the Diocese of Uttoxeter (John as Bishop, Peter as Executive Vice-Bishop).

The sketch is a parody of television drama of the period such as BBC TV's Howards' Way, which depicted relatively small-scale businessmen as larger-than-life, world-weary, passionate, and tormented.

John and Peter are invariably exhorting one another to greater efforts on behalf of their relatively insignificant businesses, with their shouted catchphrases "Damn!"

The different shows are, Trying to Borrow a Fiver Off..., Introducing My Grandfather To..., Photocopying My Genitals With..., Realising I've Given the Wrong Directions To... and Flying a Light Aeroplane Without Having Had Any Formal Instruction With....

The character was originally modelled upon a similar figure named Peter Mostyn whom Laurie had earlier portrayed on Saturday Live.

Between sketches, both Laurie and Fry appear as people in the street, including a police officer, a drifting geek, a woman who suddenly remembers she has "left the iron on", a pensioner who says that he "wouldn't suck it", without specifying what 'it' is and then walking off laughing, an old conservative and others.

After much fan-driven petition, the first series of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, plus the pilot, was released on DVD on 3 April 2006 in Region 2.

Series two was released on 12 June, with a bonus feature, the 45-minute Cambridge Footlights Revue (1982) in which Fry and Laurie appear with Emma Thompson, Tony Slattery, Penny Dwyer and Paul Shearer.

There is a copyright-related music edit on the series 1 DVD during the final sketch of episode 6 ("Tony of Plymouth (Sword Fight)").

On the series 3 DVD for Region 1, the sketch which features Laurie and Fry singing The Beatles' "Hey Jude" has been omitted.

The official authorised Fry & Laurie story, Soupy Twists by Jem Roberts, was published by Unbound in 2018.