Come Fly With Me

Reading the BBC duty log, I see pages and pages of complaints about the new comedy 'Come Fly With Me'. "It's racist" claim the comments, "blacking up has no place on TV" they pour. "How dare Walliams and Lucas poke fun at a disabled child!"

The comments strike me as surprising, because I find the programme quite funny; it's certainly improved since the first episode. I just think that those who complain about the show, or find it racist, are too dumb to "get the jokes" because in Come Fly With Me, everybody is sniped at - even the white British.

The main issues raised are with the racist characters - but openly racist immigrations officer Ian Foot is a criticism of irrational, xenophobic Brits; it is not a sketch promoting racism towards black people. When Moses is insulting to a "chinaman", the comedy lies in the sheer offence and inappropriateness of his conduct. We laugh because we know it would be thoroughly unacceptable to treat a customer that way; but also because we've probably seen people raise their voice to foreign customers who don't understand them.

As for Matt Lucas 'blacking up' to play Precious, I don't think this should cross an unacceptable line in 2011. Lucas can don wigs to play a lady, slip into a muscle suit to play an American jock, or even use all his acting skills to play a heterosexual man. Why do people still have an issue with a white person playing a black character? Lucas is allowed to put on a fake beard and do a Bradford accent... but if it's a black character, that crosses a line? Taj Manzoor is, arguably, one of the most likeable characters in the programme!

Furthermore, the characters never claim to represent an entire community. I find it so tedious when characters like Precious are accused of showing racism towards the entire black community. She is a fictional character, larger than life, if anything she takes the best parts of black Jamaican culture - jolliness, happiness and a zest for life - and it's twisted into something ridiculous, like taking time off work to go for a manicure.

The sketch where customer assistant Moses decides to use the "Wish Wings" charity money to send himself on holiday doesn't take the mick out of disabled children, it takes the mick out of Moses, a fictional character, and shows him to be a not-so-trustworthy, unfriendly and unprofessional 'customer relations assistant' - therein lies the comedy.

A huge batch of the complaints are about the Christian characters; Christianity is an open target for the comedy in Come Fly With Me, and this is the only area where I think the complaints could be upheld, because the BBC would not dare have jokes along the lines of "what would Jesus do? Jesus would offer us a full refund" made about, for instance, the Islamic faith.

So, aside from whether or not you find the programme funny; do you find Come Fly With Me grossly offensive and inappropriate?

Where can you read the BBC duty log?

But Remember these are the same people who complained about Jews, Chinese, and having a sensibleness catholic on the bbc instead of Terry wagon

I think that the programme would be fine if the duo didn't black up for characters--it is simply not acceptable and portrays extreme racism, no matter if those characters are supposed to mock racism, it's simply not on--there is plenty of black British comedy talent out there--think Stephen K. Amos, Lenny Henry, Richard Ayoade, and even the American Reginald D. Hunter could work with Matt and David to portray black characters in the programme. Aside from blacking up, I do think all the other characters are particularly well performed, in particular the photographers and check in staff.

Didn't he star in the musical, "Paint your Wogan"?

With regards to the blacking up, I think the complainers are just looking for something to complain about. None of the humour of the Precious scenes is derived from the fact that it's a black character, or from the fact that it's a rotund white bald bloke with some facepaint on. If it was a radio programme, nobody would complain at all about those exact same sketches.

How ridiculous. The whole basis of the programme is that they play all the major characters, whatever sex, race or colour.

Should they get women to play women, Irish to play Irish etc. etc.

There's was a review in the Guardian about the series,

The author Balaji Ravichandran really does need to lighten up (no pun intended), he sounds like he must be a right old laugh at parties !

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/28/come-fly-with-me?INTCMP=SRCH

The series is no great shakes, but it's perfectly harmless 'end of the pier' stuff. Lucas and Walliams haven't got a racist bone in their bodies, that's evident when you see or hear them interviewed.

I really like the show actually. It's the best they've been since series 1 of 'Little Britain'.

But how is it 'racist'?

Racism, to me, is not letting certain people vote. It's kicking people off a bus for having the wrong skin colour or shouting abuse in the streets. It's treating people differently because of the colour of their skin.

Lucas and Walliams haven't treated anybody differently. They've treated all races the same by having a host of different characters. None of the characters really refer to their race as part of their comedy - Precious is funny because she's lazy, not because she's black. Moses is funny because he's inappropriate, not because he's black. Omar is funny because he's reminiscent of money-grabbing, senseless managers - not because he's a non-white.

People have complained about Taj being a stereotypical Asian Muslim "complete with beard". He's not Asian, he's British, he says so; and his religion is never revealed.

Now I'd agree that they do mock religions a little bit in the programme, but I think religions should be free to lampoon in comedy because they're just nonsense anyway.

The only thing I think they've got wrong is the Japanese schoolgirls. Here, the only joke is that they have slitty eyes and can't speak very good English, and I didn't find those characters very funny.

I thought the whole thing was a pile of gash myself; and I didn't make it past the Christmas episode.

Playing devil's advocate - if the joke of the Chinese girls is purely "because of their 'slitty eyes' and failure to speak English", then would that suggest that they're pushing the limit of offensiveness?

Comedy comes from characters and situations. Aren't they being a bit lazy if they're bypassing that bit?

Yes, I'd agree that those characters are nothing but stereotypes / "racist". I've not seen them in it since which makes me wonder if they've been cut, because they're inexcusable. Nobody's really picked up on them though, the only comments I've read online are "blacking up = racist".



The first episode was so, so dire and really undersold the series. I suppose they were trying to set up the recurring characters, which are actually the weakpoint of the series. The one-off characters are the best.

There's some great moments in Episodes 4 and 5 and some great one liners. I'd give episode 4 a shot Gavin.

I'll give that a whirl.