British Sketch Comedy series starring Matt Lucas and David Walliams of Little Britain fame and narrated by Lindsay Duncan, using the same style of narrated sitcom with a cast of strange, larger-than-life characters performed by said duo.
The show is a Mockumentary of shows such as Inside Gatwick, Airport and Airline, following the ins and outs of "one of the UK's most busiest airports".
Come Fly With Me contains examples of the following tropes, if you'll pardon the pun:
- Adam Westing: David Schwimmer, portrayed as a transexual-porn-loving pervert. He is put in an intensive treatment centre.
- Affectionate Parody: The fiction airlines FlyLo, Our Lady Air and Great British Air are ones to EasyJet, Aer Lingus and British Airways respectively.
- Alliterative Name: Mickey Minchin and Buster Bell, Fearghal O'Farrell and Keeley St Clair.
- Artistic License: A lot of the events that take place in the show simply wouldn't be possible in reality. Whilst a lot of them could be forgiven as Rule of Funny exceptions such as Omar's clearly illegal money-saving ideas, some are quite obvious to anybody with any knowledge of the airline industry. Some examples include:
- Ticket desks are manned by airline crew as they're trained sales staff, but Check-in desks aren't. They're manned by airport staff who have no loyalty or investment in the airline they happen to be checking in that day, and can often represent half a dozen different airlines in a single day.
- Averted in the case of Terry and John. Baggage handlers are airline-agnostic and so wouldn't be affected by the strike.
- Flight crews don't work as "teams". Each flight must be manned by a captain and an FO and are scheduled in advance, but there is no system to keep the same people together.
- EVERYBODY who works airside would be wearing a lanyard to show they are supposed to be there and aren't a passenger. No exceptions.
- Ray Wilkins would have been on his face before he got anywhere near the skybridge. Security personnel take a very dim view of people racing through departure lounges shouting at others.
- David Schwimmer's DVDs would not have got him into trouble as pornography of that nature is not illegal in the UK.
- Often, Kosher and Halal meals are prepared in the same place and supervised by both an Imam and a Rabbi, due to the similarity of the process. It's entirely possible to have a meal which meets both requirements, and often is standard procedure for regions where those who require a special meal are in a minority.
- The check-in agent who refused to allow the swords in the cabin should have asked the passengers to place them in the hold.
- "Hot nuts" are not commonly served on airplanes because of the risk of allergy in a closed environment.
- Awful Wedded Life: Simon and Jackie, so much so they end up separating in Episode 4.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Fearghal. In the first appearance, he happily holds a baby from her mother, before placing him in the overhead locker. And that's not even the worst of him.
- British Brevity: 1 Series, 6 Episodes.
- The Cameo: Geri Halliwell, David Schwimmer, Rupert Grint, Barbara Windsor, Germaine Greer, Anna Friel and David Winton.
- Camp Gay: Fearghal. Given his lisp and catty attitude, there's almost nothing ambiguous about his sexuality.
- Catchphrase: Wouldn't be Lucas and Walliams without 'em.Moses: ...if you'll pardon the pun.Precious:Praaaaaise the Lord for x.Taaj:Isn't it!Judith:We have had the holiday from hell!andJudith:Ho Hum.Peter:Sorry Judith.
- Epic Fail:
- When Tommy is requesting the code for the bathroom from the Supervisor, he screws it up by one number, but the cashier topples that in just seconds.
Customer: Can I have the code for the toilet, please?Cashier: (turns to Tommy) Can I have the code for the toilet, please?Tommy: (turns to Supervisor) Can I have the code for the toilet, please?Supervisor: 295.Tommy: (turns to Cashier) 245.Cashier: (turns to Customer) 361.- Chief Immigration Officer Ian Foot takes great pride in preventing illegal immigrants (really innocent travellers) from entering the country. When he ends up stopping an actual illegal immigrant with a blatantly false passport, Ian falls for it hook, line and sinker.
- Evil Old Folks: 92-Year Old Hetty Wolf. Claiming to be a first-time flyer, Hetty swindles Moses out of some items and reveals her ruse after given a first-class seat and boarding the flight.
- Exact Words: Omar is a master of this with his promotions. After all you can get proper safety equipment.....for a fee. There’s plenty of legroom.....If you’re a little person. You can get a seat that converts to a flat bed.....it just happens to be a vertical bed.Omar: Wake me up when we get to Birmingham.
- Hate Sink: Most of the characters are undeniably terrible people, but some take the cake:
- Omar is of the
Love to Hate variety - yes, he's a greedy, selfish, self-centered, snobbish, ignorant asshole with little to no redeeming qualities... however he's also utterly hilarious. - Ian, the Chief Immigration Officer, is a racist, arrogant jackass who is extremely uptight and ignorant of his own faults.
- Omar is of the
- Henpecked Husband: Peter, who is never allowed to talk by his wife, and when he does is silenced, only for Judith to then repeat almost word-for-word what he said.
- Also Simon, who had an affair and his wife Jackie simply won't let him live it down.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Mickey and Buster, the Airports paparazzi.
- Hidden Depths: According to Mickey and Buster, Kim Jong-Il and Colonel Gaddafi are actually decent blokes.
- Hurricane of Excuses: Taaj funnels through a series of excuses in an attempt to buy time for the plane's wing to be fixed, ranging from a volcano erupting in Bradford, to the pilot forgetting where he parked the plane.
- Hypocritical Humor: Penny is snobbish, picky and unwilling to work with the budget class, yet in Episode 4, she calls out the representative of the Princess for being a snob.
- Precious calls out the FlyLo airline for going on strike, despite the fact she tries to make up any excuse to go on break, such as disposing of the coffee.
- Ironic Name: Tommy Reid. He can't read.
- Irony: Speaking of Tommy, his ambition is to become a pilot, yet reveals that he has a fear of flying. Good luck with your backup plan as an astronaut, then...
- Japanese Tourist: Nanako and Asuka, two Japanese girls who are wating for Martin Clune, their number-one idol. His plane gets diverted to RAF Northholt because he knew those fans were waiting for him.
- Jerkass: Pretty much every employee at FlyLo is either cheap, lazy, insensitive, bigoted, an/or self-serving. The sole exception to that real seems to Taaj, who, while certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed, at least seems to have the best interests.
- Another exception would be Helen the check-in manager. Being one of few characters not played by either Walliams or Lucas, she's definitely one of the nicer people working at the airport, and genuinely tries to make an effort at being friends with her bitchy co-workers.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Moses. While he does seem like a Nice Guy who started up his charity WishWings as a noble cause, it appears that he's partly wanting to do it to be famous, and partly because he wants an excuse to go on vacation. He also isn't the most accommodating to disabled children. In fact, he doesn't even remember children's names very well.Moses: I love you, child.
- Lazy Bum: Precious always seems to find any sort of excuse to stop her working at the coffee shop.
- Mile-High Club: Omar converts the bathroom stalls into "love chambers" on the planes, including cushioned toilet seats and a suggestion of sexual positions on the back of the passenger information card
- Mockumentary: The overall series is a crack at a failing airline service and how unproductive and unhelpful the staff is.
- Nice Guy: Taaj, a member of the FlyLo ground staff. In one episode he gets question by Ian about his origins, and goes on a rant about how he hates racism and how he has been insulted, only to happily point out with a thumbs up that the interview got him half an hour off of work.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The owner of low-cost airline FlyLo, Omar Baba, is a parody of real life low-cost airline EasyJet owner Stelios Haji-Ioannou.
- Not Helping Your Case: Ian, who is Chief Immigration Officer claims that he is not in any way racist, stating that a friend of his friend happens to be black.Ian: And he is very black. *whistles*
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Simon's affair. Goes to a head at Episode 4, when Simon plans to separate from Jackie when she slanders Sally Wicks, the woman Simon had an affair with, as the flight was about to take off.
- Oppressive Immigration Enforcement: Gatwick Airports Chief Immigration officer Ian Foot is a recurring character, and presented as moronic racist who blatantly abuses his position to exercise his bigotry, regularly detaining, insulting and harassing anyone who comes through the airport who isn't a white Englishman. Boasting to stop anyone who's name he considers foreign sounding, and even harassing his fellow staff at the airport like Taaj (a Bradford-born English Muslim). Despite this is he is also utterly incompetent, with Ian being effortless fooled by a genuine illegal immigrant, an elderly foreigner, cause they had a fake passport saying they were a 12 year old British girl.
- Pervy Patdown: One episode has a security officer doing pat downs and touching people in inappropriate areas. We then learn that the man is not even a genuine security officer as he is seen scarpering when he is asked for ID.
- Refuge in Audacity: Ian Foot's Keep 'Em Out board game, reeking of Fantastic Racism. No wonder Waddingtons didn't pick the game up.Ian: Final square. Congratulations, you have been given a luxury penthouse at the expense of the British taxpayer. End of the game.
- Rousing Speech: Omar Baba gives one to his entire staff centering around the one word in 'family', only to fire all of the FlyLo staff the next day and replace them with Vietnamese children.
- Running Gag: Several:
- Omar cutting every corner.
- Precious having some excuse to close the shop for the day.
- Judith and Peter having The holiday from hell. Then Judith never letting Peter explain anything.
- Shout-Out:
- Taaj is a huge fan of the movie Avatar.
- Taaj in general is a fan of critically panned films, such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Transformers.
- Token Good Teammate: Helen is one for the check-in desk. She's probably the nicest character on the show, and that's likely only because she isn't being played by either Walliams or Lucas.
- Taaj, to a lesser degree. He comes off as quite a Nice Guy, however he does have his moments of insensitivity, though these do tend to come from him not being too bright rather than any genuine malice.
- With Friends Like These...: Keeley and Melody appear to be work friends, yet their friendship begins to deteriorate when they fight for a promotion, and Melody is nowhere to be seen in the final episode.
