Red-Barracuda Written and performed by Matt Lucas and David Walliams, creators of 'Little Britain', Come Fly with Me is a fly on the wall mockumentary set in an airport that spoofs the many British reality TV shows that have followed this format. It features a wide array of characters such as owner of low-cost airline FlyLo Omar Baba, work-shy coffee kiosk worker Precious Little, highly camp passenger liaison officer Moses Beacon, racist immigration officer Ian Foot, quirky ground crew worker Taaj Manzoor, catty air steward Fearghal O'Farrell, serial holiday-makers Peter and Judith and the extremely thick burger joint worker Tommy Reid who has ambitions of becoming a pilot.Firstly, this is a well written and very well performed comedy. There have been criticisms of it but to be honest I thought it was very funny on the whole. Lucas and Walliams are very amusing and talented comic performers and they are on very good form here. I can't compare it too much with 'Little Britain' seeing as I have only seen bits and pieces from that on-going series. But suffice to say, I think the idea of setting the comedy around a specific place works very well and means that there has to be a bit more discipline in the writing in order for the characters to all fit within the specific confines of the airport setting. Sure, it could be accused of being repetitive to a certain extent with some characters being slightly more one note than others. But on the whole Lucas and Walliams extract a lot of varied comedy from their characters and I have to admit I laughed quite a bit at this one.As far as the accusations of racism I have often seen, I simply can't agree with this. It's actually quite lazy to label the show racist on the basis of these white actors applying dark make-up to their skin in order to play ethnic characters. To say this is not acceptable is illogical and lazy thinking, seeing as Lucas and Walliams play an assortment of characters from various regions around the UK. To say that they can play characters with different accents and hair colours but not different skin pigmentation is simply absurd. The fact that they do play these characters is in fact the opposite of racist – it's inclusive and treats types of Britons in the same manner irrespective of skin colour. Aside from this, you need look no further that the character of the immigration officer Ian Foot to understand what the creators really think of such narrow-minded thinking.This is for sure a funny show that is probably a little under-appreciated.

kodabar-1 Little Britain was very successful. The problem was what they were going to do next. Expectations were very high. Little Britain USA was sort of okay, but nothing new.Eventually they had to do something else. Come Fly With Me is it. It's got a surprisingly high score on here for something that died. The BBC threw money at their new comedy geniuses and waited for them to come up with the goods. They rented entire airports and shot at film studios, unheard of for a UK comedy show. They had their pick of writers, actors and comedians. They could have had anyone they wanted.What we got was a series of grotesque characters in the mould of a reality TV series from ten years before. Many of the characters were racist themselves or were portrayed in a racially insensitive way not seen on British TV since the 1970s. That's not to say that these things are so taboo that one cannot make good comedy out of them, but Lucas and Walliams didn't. The characters were flat, lazy clichés. A low cost airline that screws people for every possible add-on? A black woman who is devoutly Christian shouting "Praise the Lord!"? A drunk airline pilot? Are we sure it's not the 1970s?It didn't get a second series. If it had been even half-decent the BBC would have at least have limped out a second series. But no, pretty quickly the announced that it was over. And Walliams and Lucas haven't done anything together since. Walliams has sensibly got out of comedy and moved into children's books, whilst Lucas has sort of stayed in comedy but hasn't really done anything.I saw some people in other reviews suggest that Come Fly With Me is not comedy for mainstream audiences - "not a show for normal people". That's overselling it. For some Americans, this show can be seen as quirky or niche simply because it's British. The truth is, this is mainstream British comedy... from the 1970s... with pots of money thrown at casually-racist prosthetics and unnecessary locations.

Elain-ee People compare Little Britain and Come Fly with Me unfavourably. They say the humour is different, or that the latter is not as funny as the former. Having watched the two series' back-to-back in a matter of weeks I have to say I disagree. The humour is essentially the same. The difference is a matter of targets.Little Britain famously made fun of the disadvantaged and peripheral elements of the UK population: the people that everybody prefers not to see. At the same time it celebrated the English eccentricity in a weird way. We saw the disabled, the flaming queers, the transsexuals, the illegal immigrants, the chavs & council estate skivers as players in the national drama, even if only satirically. That was a first for British telly. The catch, and what made their style of satire acceptable, was that many of these people were not actually what they seemed: Ting Tong was actually a man from Tooting, Andy was actually able bodied, Dafydd was actually a repressed queer-hater, etc., etc.The characters satirized on LB were freakish, fringe characters who were almost guaranteed not to be part of BBC's viewership. They were people that you would be more likely to see terrorizing the streets and the newsagents, stuffing themselves with cakes over a bodice-ripper or (as I imagine in Lou's case) watching obscure documentaries and re-reading newspapers from the previous decade. It was satire with a large element of "I'm glad that ain't me" humour. Those two styles of comedy are usually incompatible but in LB they found a balance; half the audience seemed to be laughing at the Walliams & Lucas duo while the other half was laughing with them. But the humour in Come fly seems to have sent those two camps scuttling back to their respective sides of the humour divide. Come Fly With me targets more familiar faces and it's failing seems to be that it is set in an average setting, peopled by average characters. It satirizes people who have the time and money to use airports regularly - people with respectable dayjobs, authority and status; people with a shot at a managerial role. Basically, it targets the half of the audience that laughed AT the freak parade that was Little Britain. They are much more stable, affluent and secure characters than inhabited Little Britain - the kind of people who like to think of themselves as 'average' men and women, and that they should be able to hide behind their averageness.I suspect that Little Britain fans who dislike Come Fly with me makes me are the same ones who never really understood LB's more satirical elements. They might have laughed at Little Britains' freakshow because, "I'm so glad that's not me" but they never recognized that the joke was also on them, at least in part. Walliams and Lucas took mainstream preconceptions to extremes and subverted them in unexpected ways. Basically, I think that Come Fly with Me hits hits too close to home and has dented the vanity of a certain BBC-watching demographic. That's why less people can take it and it's also exactly why it makes me laugh. I really hope there will be a second season of this!

Jackson Booth-Millard We wondered whether the stars of Little Britain could come back with something just as good, not necessarily a sketch show, but that was a good option, and they did it. Matt Lucas and David Walliams bring us this mock documentary series set in a fictional airport with various characters working and hanging about in it, basically, taking the mick of programmes like Airport. Characters included foreign FlyLo owner Omar Baba, lazy coffee kiosk manager Precious possibly my favourite character), passenger liaison officer Moses Beacon, chief immigration officer Ian Foot, ground crew member Taaj Manzoor, camp Irish steward Fearghal O'Farrell, holiday makers Peter and Judith, and there were many more besides, all making us laugh with mildly racist material, disgusting stuff, and well written dialogue. Narrated by Lindsay Duncan, with guest appearances by Geri Halliwell, David Schwimmer, Rupert Grint, Barbara Windsor, Anna Friel and many more. I was expecting appearances from characters like Vicky Pollard and Daffyd Thomas, but it doesn't matter, Walliams and Lucas have created a pretty funny follow up from their big successful show, and I certainly wouldn't have missed this. Very good!