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Matt Lucas defends Come Fly with Me

Little Britain stars have defended their new UK airport series Come Fly with Me after being accused of racist comedy.

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David Walliams and Matt Lucas have defended their new UK airport series Come Fly with Me after being accused of racist comedy.

The new show premiered in the UK over Christmas.

Twitter users got stuck into them writing: “Watching replay of Come Fly With Me. Black & White Minstrel Show comes to mind.”

Another viewer remarked: “Come Fly with Me. Weak, uninspired parody that stepped clumsily over the line into overt racism. Stupid and unfunny.”

Matt Lucas responded: “Comedy has a social function and part of that function is to ruffle feathers. But it’s not as scatological as Little Britain. There are no F-words or vomiting or peeing.

“Like in Little Britain we try to reflect, affectionately, the multicultural Britain we love. No offence is intended.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjulXkPrLtM[/youtube]

Source: Digital Spy

30 Responses

  2. I saw the show and I thought it was funny. Didn’t think it was hillarious, but in my opinion it was definitely not racist. There were just more cultural minorities present in the episode compared to Little Britain. Lucas and Williams have always played with stereotypes, I mean, Vicky Pollard is your typical white trash isn’t she? So why would it be wrong to put Japanese schoolgirls in a show when we’ve all seem em and know they excist…

  3. I assumed they would receive a fair amount of complaints. However, the biggest problem I saw was that it just wasn’t funny. Maybe it was just episode 1 finding it’s sea legs, but I didn’t laugh out loud at all.

  4. @rickard lomez – ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ was mad in a time when that was more excepted.

    I haven’t seen ‘Come Fly with Me’ and probably won’t since I was never a fan of their other work.

  5. I work at an airport and found it quite funny. There are no catchphrases as yet but I don’t think there will be. I liked it and it was as I had expected, not hugely hilarious but a chuckle or two here and there.

  6. It wasn’t that funny partly because of the way they overtake the whole show.

    It would be 10x more funny if they either cut down the characters or used real people (acting) in some of the parts instead of everyone being Matt Lucas & David Walliams.

    I know that’s their shtick but seriously it’s gets tiring, just from the pilot ep they could have had a real old lady as passenger or a real Jamaican lady who worked at the coffee shop and it would have been so much better. But I guess that’s British humour for you a bunch of guys dress up as women and everyone thinks its hilarious!

    I never found Little Britain funny either.

  7. From the previews I have seen, it seems to be quite funny, but I hope it isn’t rife with lame catchphrases like Little Britain. Is it racist?, it portrays racial stereotypes, but doesn’t imply that all in such ethnicities portrayed have such characteristics that were portrayed, unlike what is implied by racist accusations in the first place.

  9. @Armchair Analyst Belittling someone due to their race is racism. Whether you think they have done that is subjective and will never be (ahem) black and white.

  10. Apparently this was supposed to be less rude then little brittain, well that is what they said on the Graham Norton show on ABC 2. Last week. I guess political correctness is still in the air. I think we need to have a debate and a serious discussion on what actually is racism? Because by everyone saying a show is racist or something or someone is racist then i think racism gets trivialized, especially when its mentioned whenever a new show is on and its not safe.

  13. It should be noted that the characters I described in my earlier comment do not appear in the YouTube clip attached to the article (with the exception of “Precious” briefly in the titles)

    Until you have seen and heard these characters – you might want to reserve judgment. Personally, I’m not offended by these characters, but I can see how someone would be. They are clearly racial stereotypes.

  15. I’m a huge Lucas/Walliams fan, to me this comes off the same as Little Britain, no more offensive than that was. and I chuckled a few times 😉 maybe not hilarious, but i didnt find it racist, not any more than any Little Britain character. 😛

  16. It’s difficult to know whether they have not been especially creative in selecting their characters or whether they are simply mirroring the standard slew of stereotypes that are selected by the producers of the type of discount airline reality show that this is a spoof of, to be highlighted in each episode.

    It was really well done but not that funny. It’s no more racist than it is sexist, sexual orientationist, ageist, or social stratist. They have to “black-up, “frock-up”, etc in order to play those characters. People would have been complaining if they had only featured white English characters.

  20. I watched the first episode of “Come Fly With Me” (during a recent trip to the UK :P) and I have to agree with what people are saying. Many of the characters are little more than racist stereotypes. Japanese schoolgirls, a Jamaican/West African woman who yells “Praise da lord” randomly etc are hardly clever or original.

    Considering how brilliant Lucas and Walliams are, I’m surprised they’ve come up with something as weak and downright offensive, especially given how much time and effort they have put into developing this series.

  22. I loved episode 1 … it was very funny and the characters were very typical of what we see at airports and in particular, in those “reality” airline shows …
    It deserves to be a big success … didn’t Little Britain get the same attacks at the start??? Little Britain was far more racist!

  23. having seen the show in question, I would not say the show racist, and whilst true they are blacking up, that act is done in the same way they put make up on for all there characters, the shows biggest crime is that it just isnt very good, and the characters just are not funny.

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