o-uncle-newt

[o-uncle-newt]

FOUR: it's just so funny, guys

When last year I was doing my listenthrough, at a certain point I stopped including mentions of how funny a particular episode was because... of course they all were. In fact, there are only a couple of episodes that I could name as having plotlines that, IMO, aren't funny and yet even those episodes have some of the most classic joke sequences in the series.* If I sat here and listed every good joke, I'd basically just be reproducing 3/4 of the scripts.

*Qik has a not very funny plot anchored by a not-funny-at-all character, Nancy Whatsherface, but Le Bear Polar is legitimately iconic. Kuala Lumpur even JF doesn't like very much, but Arthur's steward training sequence is basically perfect.

He's just so so good at including the humor in the narrative, is the thing. I did a post last year about Ipswich that was about how good JF is, or rather grew to be, at plot, in particular seamlessly integrating plot and theme and humor. The thing is, even in episodes that aren't as brilliant as Ipswich, the humor is always amazing, and as is obvious given his simultaneous and ensuing comedy career in other formats, he just really gets comedy. But I'd argue that while lots of writers are good at writing jokes, he's really good at writing the RIGHT jokes and putting them in the RIGHT storylines in the mouths of the RIGHT actors.

I think it comes down to a few things-

He's SO good at mining existing situations and limitations for comedy. (Also for plot, which is separate but certainly related.) Obviously this would be a skill that would serve him in good stead in his sketch comedy career, but it's especially good here because instead of circling a sketch around a particular joke, the jokes have to be part of the broader plot, and so he has a more constrained field of search and takes the maximum advantage of it. According to an interview of him on a podcast, the entire conversation with Qik where Douglas convinces Martin that their plane can, in fact, do a polar expedition is essentially JF's replay of a conversation with his dad about whether the kind of plane he chose for GERTI to be back in Ipswich could do a polar expedition- he wanted to do the plot but was worried he'd hamstrung himself by defining the plane he was using, but instead he was able to take that exact limitation and make the actual situation far funnier (though again, I think Qik as an episode has limitations). (Incidentally, while on that subject I want to take the opportunity to appreciate his attention to detail overall. Recently I've been reading Admiral Cloudberg's series on air disasters and I recognized a shocking number of terms from lines that were essentially just him setting the scene for unrelated plots. No idea how overall accurate all of his plane-flying asides are, but the parts that matched up are super cool especially now that I know what a lot of it means.)

At the same time, he has such a great imagination and knew how to cleanly insert the products of it into an episode- obviously he repeats some standard sitcom beats (I think that Rotterdam, one of the funniest episodes, escapes classic status just because "characters get confronted with the cooler versions of themselves" is such a well-worn sitcom-episode plot) but even when he does he can be really original. Not sure where he got the idea of strafing a children's party with a hard-candy bomb and killing a koi from, but it was a stroke of brilliance. He's also surprisingly good at taking previously-written imaginative/comic sequences and putting them very deftly into his scripts- basically the whole "can you imagine 100 otters" scene is from a blog post and you can see exactly how he adapted the exact phrasing but it doesn't matter because he made it fit seamlessly into the new scene and into the overall plot. On a similar note, he's great at using his imagination to come up with different kinds of joke styles- for example, the running joke of them playing games in the flight deck, but then going wild with a) what kinds of games and b) how to mine maximum humor from them. There are just so many classic, brilliant games and he's so good at it that he'll even construct whole episodes around series of games (like Limerick).

He's so good at writing for particular people's voices! He's mentioned that for JFSP he will sometimes call the actors in to do a "silly voices day" and then write sketches based on it, and it's such a cool concept and also so clear how good he is at it. For some TV sketch shows, it can feel like someone wrote a sketch without knowing who in the cast would be available for filming and then they cast whoever would fit the parts- JFSP basically never feels that way, and on the sitcom side, neither does Cabin Pressure. He doesn't nail the voices immediately on day one but it's pretty dang close. And when he goes on to write jokes, not only do they work perfectly for the actors' ways of speaking, but they're nearly always funnier for having been said by that particular actor. The words "you mulled it?!" in context are already funny, but it wouldn't have been as hilarious if not for Roger Allam's impeccable delivery. JF knew he had a five star cast and knew exactly how to take advantage of their gifts- and, of course, he'd had plenty of experience writing for himself and so knew how to give himself jokes and dialogue that would sound perfect coming from his mouth.

The storyline thing... I mean, functionally, it comes down to what I was saying above about how good he is at combining plot arc, themes, and comedy. It's so good that it can be both hard and satisfying to dissect exactly how it was done, but suffice it to say, I think that's the thing that's his real talent. This week I had a few exchanges with a fellow fan on here about some limitations I have noticed in his sketch comedy- nothing major, but I think the thing that elevates him from being a good-to-great sketch comedian to being a sublime comedic-plot writer is his deftness with construction. Lots of people are funny, lots of other people are good at creating well done plots that incorporate theme, he's fantastic at both and at their integration and it's a really special gift.

[o-uncle-newt]

FIVE: it celebrates vulnerability

Sadly ended up in a big rush today so for this one I'll be kind of rehashing some themes that I wrote about at greater length in my 2023 advent. But they're themes that are incredibly meaningful to me so honestly I'd probably have done it anyway.

Sometime in the next couple of days I'll be writing more about the impact that Cabin Pressure has had on my mental health. But I'll start off with a particular facet of this- it contains stories and characters that demonstrate how difficult it can to be vulnerable, what kinds of conditions help make vulnerability easier, and, overall, how important vulnerability is.

When you look at it, vulnerability is an incredibly important part of pretty much every character's arc. (Obviously, some credit here to JF's Zurich farewell bear facts.) I wrote about it extensively in some of my last year's advent, like Douz, Fitton, Gdansk, Limerick, Uskerty, Vaduz... honestly it's all over the place and part of everyone's arc, and maybe that's just because it's such a human thing but it's so well conveyed here that it's beautiful.

I think what I love most about it is that it includes storylines that explain how difficult it can be to get rid of defense mechanisms and open up. All of these characters have defensive shields- Martin's captain's hat, Carolyn's airdot, Douglas's scheming and omniscient facade, and sometimes even Arthur's ignoring of consequences (even if part of that is also just dimness). All of these characters, at some point, have to break them down and let people in, and in all of these cases it is its own journey. For Douglas to open up about his divorce took a whole season from beginning to end, and sketched out beautifully- for Carolyn to realize that Herc was for real (and needed her to be real as well) took two seasons and two specials. We've already talked about how good these characters are, but this particular facet of them is so beautifully played out.

Given stuff going on in my own life, this particular theme is incredibly resonant to me and it means a lot that it's a consistent one.

[o-uncle-newt]

SIX: it spawned an awesome fandom!

It's late so I'll keep it short and sweet- despite in many ways spawning off of a... challenging fandom, Cabin Pressure has really managed to build an incredible fan base.

I'm not saying it's been drama free- though I'll fully admit that I try to keep myself away from it- but when you think about how the fandomy element got to Cabin Pressure, and how that happened through Sherlock and what a shitshow that could be sometimes (and yes, I was there too), it just makes it even more remarkable how people coming from that could coalesce into something like this.

One thing that I think is really cool is that as much as Benny C may have become the major fandom center in some ways (at stage doors, Martin becoming both the fandom woobie and [bafflingly] something of a fandom bicycle, a weird number of Sherlock crossover fics), people didn't let that creep into how the show itself, in its "real world" context, was received and perceived for the most part. JF mentioned in interviews at the time that he'd been nervous that fans would only come for BC and that they'd only laugh at his bits, but the show managed to make people fall in love with it on its terms, and no matter what they were doing with the characters in their own time, people really turned out for the show as it was, as the BBC Radio 4 audience had already been enjoying it for two series.

A lot of credit for this definitely goes to JF for being welcoming to new fans (I'm sure I'll talk about this more in the future) as well as to the show itself for being... well, the kind of thing appreciated by cool people lol (a bit tautological but whatever, it's true!). Regardless, super cool that the group that gathered around this show was able to integrate into the existing fans, adopt this new thing on its own terms, boost it, and in general just love it the way we all do. And I'm not only talking about the people who have stuck with it since then, or who have joined the JF fandom. Every time a Tumblr post or something goes viral about Cabin Pressure you can see people posting nostalgically about having loved it and how sweet and funny and well done it was. People love it whether they're like "Benny C is in it but everyone else is good too!" or "it's so good you even forget Benny C is in it." People just recognize its awesomeness and somehow people around it tend to be equally awesome.

[o-uncle-newt]

SEVEN: it has so much heart

It's just always wonderful to have characters who care about each other- and how each of them earns that care.

I don't recall where I saw this, but I have seen at least one comment about Cabin Pressure, encouraging people to watch it, that's like "if you start it and you're like, where's the found family, they hate each other, remember that the point is that they find it!" And that's probably the best part of the show- it's not just warm and fuzzy (and in fact in many episodes it's not warm and fuzzy at all), it has real and relatable human emotion and connections with each other.

Some claim that this was a later-season innovation when JF became more fanservicey/foregrounded Martin more because of Benedict Cumberbatch, but like... Fitton! It's the first really heartwarming episode that shows them all thinking about life, starting to understand each other, compromising- and it's a sign of where the show is headed. And it's done beautifully, in a way that I don't find at all saccharine.

It's also really well paced, in terms of how relationships develop. None of them ever stay static, which is a complaint I have about Parks and Rec (a show that I'm a big fan of BTW), where, say, April's big shtick is "she's so sarcastic and goth but she HUGS people once in a while!" and that just stays her shtick once every season or so through the end of the show, such that it loses its effect. Here, whenever a character grows in their self-understanding or relationship with another character, that stays their baseline until it develops further, which is much more satisfying narratively. (And that's not to say it's necessarily more REALISTIC than April. The problem there isn't that April hugs or praises or smiles at people every so often but otherwise stays the same- it's that each time, the role in the narrative is to play it as a big deal, when by the fifth time it really has lost the narrative kick that it had the first time. In Cabin Pressure, characters might backslide sometimes but the narrative itself relies on continuous development so it always feels fresh.)

And I do think it makes a difference, as I said two days ago, that the characters don't feel fully human- they feel sitcom. It means that they can bounce right back from crazy sitcom situations, preventing (MOSTLY) real cringe comedy situations, but JF is nimble enough that the human emotions that give it heart feel very real. Here, a comparison I'd make is Community, a show which nails the sitcom-zany characters but then the heartwarming codas at the end of each episode can feel a bit tagged on. JF is so good at integrating everything into one cohesive plot that that really doesn't happen. The warmth, the plot, and the humor all serve the same narrative.

The show is certainly not all warm and fuzzy, and mean-spiritedness is definitely deployed in some episodes, though not always to equally good effect (I still hate Qik...). But there is still a heart and warmth, even in those situations, that is palpable in how the characters relate to each other, and I don't know if it's the writing or the portrayals, but actually, it's probably both. And having something like this on tap, anytime I want, is incredibly impactful and has been since my first listen.

[o-uncle-newt]

I promise I didn't forget about this, just want to do it justice!

I totally agree that it's not as hard as I made it out to be to find episodes that are mostly great sketches (or even entirely great)- and I personally think S6 is a particularly mid season so I usually just ignore it with the exception of the sublime piano musical. But S2-4 are generally excellent and that's usually where I get my airplane/dentist/grocery store drive/etc listening from.

In terms of your excellent point about the more character driven element, I'd say a couple of things, one of which relates to the other thing we were talking about. The first is that I genuinely think that JF's biggest talent is his story construction. I don't only mean plot- I mean in sketch form as well. The thing that I think makes his sketches particularly good is that he's really good at finding the shape of the sketch- and that extends, as you point out, to finding the shapes of ongoing stories as sketch themes repeat over time. Bringing back a popular character (or even just one that he likes) never really feels gratuitous in the way that these things sometimes can- he's really good at figuring out how to convey whatever idea has sparked the sketch he's working on most effectively.

And that leads to another point, which is that his observational comedy sketches (like pretty much everyone's) are only as good as their construction. There are very few things that any comic is observing for the first time, and so it always comes down to delivery- and as you note JF's generally really good at developing micro-characters and micro-stories in order to do that. Take the seashell sketch- the two observational comedy points there are "well people THINK you shouldn't sell seashells on the seashore but of course it's the best place to do it" and "management consultants SUCK, don't they?". The first is a fun point, the second needs a bit of finesse so as not to come across too blatant and therefore obnoxious (especially as their idea is the usual "shower thought" one that JF is trying to debunk), and the excellent framing device of this sketch allows both of them to be built into one of his best sketches- having the first point be explained via tongue-twister-like poem, having it be set clearly in the world of nursery rhymes and with very rhythmic dialogue even besides the poem, the management consultants being cartoonishly obnoxious in their own right even besides their idea... just in general it builds up a whole mini-world that beautifully conveys everything the sketch is trying to do in a way that takes different observational points and integrates them into a whole story.

(I'd also note- this is also SO down to his incredible crew of actors. He writes for their voices and they have a lot of fantastic voices. He really gets the rhythm of how people speak and it's just great. The fact that he also knows EXACTLY how to write for himself helps too.)

And that brings me back to that final point, about the kind of sketch of his I DON'T like. He's actually talked a bit semi-autobiographically (I assume?) in... I think it was Now Show segments about how he grew up largely atheist/agnostic in British schools that had sort of everpresent religious content, and about the UK being a basically Christian country (in the context of "conservatives need to stop moaning about how it's not a Christian country, and tied in with this stop being weird about people of other religions"). The interesting thing is, his Now Show stuff on religious topics I thought were fine. I don't really go out of my way to listen to him on politics/current events, but on the occasions that I have, his approach is "I may find religious stuff silly but the people who do it have the right to," which on a practical level is probably one of the better ways that someone can approach being atheist/agnostic in a multicultural society. It's a useful framing when discussing events that relate to religion in current events (IIRC he did sketches on people complaining about saying/not saying prayers in the Bideford town council, and one about separate swimming hours for women and resultant media hysteria... not sure what else but I found both of those basically well done and measured).

The thing is... that's not really a basis for observational comedy! Hence my complaints in the tags of my other post- if he says "this is silly and they have the right to do it" then fine, he has the right to think that what I do is silly. If he describes the particular silly act to an audience, explains exactly what's silly about it, and then says "well of course they have the RIGHT to do it and there's nothing wrong with it," then at a certain point that's just a form of mockery that he thinks he's actually too open-minded and tolerant for, as the rest of the sketch (IIRC) is all about. It's totally possible that it actually is funny observational comedy, in which case don't apologize for it- but if it makes him too uncomfortable then you can't split the difference by being all "I'm not ACTUALLY making this joke because I'm too openminded and tolerant for it."

Part of it, and that speaks to my point above about construction, is that he was making that particular joke as part of a more standup-style joke. Basically, there's a reason why JF isn't a standup- I'm sure he'd be perfectly good at it, but he's much much more than perfectly good at doing sketch and narrative comedy! The other kind of sketch he does where he tries to sneak in these kinds of "well obviously I'm not ACTUALLY making this joke" jokes is his meta sketches, and while he does have some really good meta sketches these sorts are some of his worst. One particularly weird one that I don't remember super well is where someone asks why he doesn't have diverse characters and he's like "well it would be really weird to give diverse characters to my all-white cast." Like, maybe, but in that case the easy rejoinder would probably be "well um maybe diversify your casts" but that's a different thing.

(Also- and I now think that this may have actually been the sketch with the observant Jew at the traffic crossing- at one point he's like "what, I should deliberately bring in diverse/minority communities just so I can make jokes about them?" to which I'm like "dude, if that's the way you think about it then just don't bring this whole thing up at all." Like, he's clearly uncomfortable with that idea, and in a one-writer show that's not actually unreasonable, but by attempting to get ahead of/subvert insecurities he may well have about the show's lack of diversity, IMO he's just accentuating them and not in a totally convincing way. And he STILL manages to bring in a minority community just so he can make a joke about it.)

(Also also- if he's really worried about diversity, maybe don't have totally-white casts for any potential future series of Double Acts. Nobody's telling him to change his longstanding sketch program cast, but a diverse Double Acts cast is very very doable. Also I just want more Double Acts.)

The thing is, he has other religion-based jokes that I don't particularly love (and some that I do actually like), but they are at least well-constructed! He's able to give them dimension and entertainment value beyond the particular religious thing that he thinks is funny, and they as a result work much much better, because he's taken full advantage of the thing that he's actually incredibly good at rather than done a less constructed, more indulgent soapbox sketch. Actually, the example I'll give here isn't a JFSP sketch- it's his Good Omens S2 minisode, which is definitely biblical satire (which was obviously already on the menu, because it's Good Omens) and is by a mile the best thing in that season despite, honestly, not being a particularly imaginitive biblical satire. Like, Job is honestly pretty low hanging fruit, and his take is kind of what you expect a Good Omens take to be. But it's still an absolutely BRILLIANT minisode, because he used a relatively basic observational premise and beautifully shaped the story, integrated impeccable character work, and of course made it incredibly funny.

Basically, his gift isn't observational comedy per se (not that he's bad at it), it's turning that comedy into more than just the observation.

Hi! I hope you're doing well and having a lovely holiday season :)

Sorry if you've already talked about this before, I haven't been following you for a long time - but what do you think of the other series of JFSP apart from series 9?

Personally I love them to bits, I have listened to every episode more than 30 times and they're probably one of my favourite things in the whole world. I just love the humour, the characters, the situations - it feels very safe, no mean spirited jokes, very comforting. The sketches feels very autistic-coded to me as an autistic person, much like Martin from Cabin Pressure - some of the sketches are things I doubt a neurotypical person would notice or comment on from the angle he chooses. Like the geek sketch and the 'friend I'm in the mood for' sketch from series 5.

What are your thoughts on these series?

Thank you for asking, that’s an awesome question!

The basic answer is that I am, of course, a big fan. That said, I’d say that as much as I overall enjoy sketch comedy, I do tend to find it hit or miss; and while JFSP has a higher hit rate than most, and plenty of sketches are fantastic*, it definitely doesn’t get there ALL the time.

*Notable faves- Spooktacular, seashells, reincarnation/past lives, “Stop Saying G’nus,” tricyclist… there are loads and loads more, just off the top of my head! Not to mention the excellent ones you already cited…

The functional difference for me ends up being that while I don’t think there’s a 100% hit rate on Cabin Pressure or Double Acts either, I know that if I pick one episode that I like I will enjoy myself for a full half hour. Because I’m less familiar with a given episode of JFSP given how many there have been and how many sketches are in an episode, I don’t have that same sense of instant “ahhh” from turning on an episode of JFSP* as I would from the other two shows, where a lot of my emotions about it come from knowing it like the back of my hand.

*Major exception- S7E6. A perfect episode of sketch comedy that I can listen to literally whenever. No notes.

This isn’t to say that I don’t really enjoy JFSP! I just wish I could pick off a menu of sketches, not simply because I like some better than others but because I like the feeling of “oooh this” on demand that I get from turning on a favorite half hour episode. I will say- I find JFSP to be PERFECT for things like dental procedures and car trips, where I might be in the chair for anywhere from five minutes to two hours and can just turn on a bunch of sequential episodes for as long as I need. But it doesn’t necessarily have the same immediate impact for me as the episodes I love of the other shows.

That said- some of the best things JF ever wrote are Since You Asked Me sketches. I want them pumped into my veins.

[o-uncle-newt]

EIGHT: audio is amazing!

In some of these I might, like I did in the last one, go into analysis of the actual episodes- here though I’m just gonna talk about how impactful it was to me to learn about the existence of spoken word audio and how important the audio medium has been for me personally as a way to experience Cabin Pressure as comfort media.

Here’s the thing- except for a couple of story tapes when I was a child and Harry Potter audiobooks that my mom used to play in the kitchen and I usually ignored (could never really follow audiobooks- still can’t), as far as I can recall Cabin Pressure is the first spoken word audio thing I EVER experienced. (And on the radio…! To me the radio was traffic and weather, and sometimes sports.) This was in the relatively early podcast era, and while other people were into them already I wasn’t. Like for so many other basic early-2010s teens, my first audio fiction exposure would be Welcome to Night Vale, my first nonfiction podcast Serial. Both came after Cabin Pressure for me, and I have no clue if I’d have ever tried them if not for knowing that this medium can be brilliant like that. (In fact, I’m 99% sure I got into Night Vale because I recommended Cabin Pressure to a college friend and she was like “oh if you like audio drama, I love this thing Welcome to Night Vale…”)

And, of course, and this has been often discussed in reviews, this allowed me to learn what audio can be that other media can't be- all the ways in which it's not just a runner up but the main event, to mix metaphors. Even when audiobooks work for me, I know that that's not what they're MEANT to be- Cabin Pressure isn't just a sitcom without visuals, it takes full advantage of being audio by doing so many jokes that they could never do on screen- whether in Qik, Rotterdam, Ipswich... he takes what is already an art form and hones it further. It's incredibly impressive and opened up my eyes to what audio can do in ways that I had just been totally unaware of.

Since then… I’m not going to say I’ve dived fully into the medium exactly, as I have learned about myself that I am prone to getting voices mixed up and to getting distracted and losing the narrative. But it got me ready for the mass-podcast era which has led me in some cool directions, it was a gateway into other British radio like Bleak Expectations and The Unbelievable Truth, not to mention JF’s other shows- and I discovered that audio, in the form of Cabin Pressure and some of JF’s other work in particular, was particularly valuable in audio form.

Audio is just kind of perfect because you can fully enjoy something without needing to stop doing whatever else you may be doing that might otherwise be occupying your eyes, or your legs, or your arms, or who knows what. And- and I'll talk about how important this has been to me more in a future post, probably- Cabin Pressure has been basically lifesaving in that kind of a way. It doesn't really matter what I'm doing, whether driving, walking, commuting by bus or subway, working, flying, exercising... and of course so much more, popping in some audio entertainment always slots in, and Cabin Pressure in particular is just beautifully calibrated to always get me in a better mood. It's been practically lifesaving in that regard in some of my worst moments, in fact.

I'm not sure what my life would look like without spoken word audio in it, and I have no doubt that with the podcast boom I'd have gotten into it in some other way. But Cabin Pressure gave me a high bar by which to measure everything that comes later. (And honestly- not just audio! At a certain point I'm like, if JF can do all this with just a script and some people with microphones...)

[o-uncle-newt]

Hi! I hope you're doing well and having a lovely holiday season :)

Sorry if you've already talked about this before, I haven't been following you for a long time - but what do you think of the other series of JFSP apart from series 9?

Personally I love them to bits, I have listened to every episode more than 30 times and they're probably one of my favourite things in the whole world. I just love the humour, the characters, the situations - it feels very safe, no mean spirited jokes, very comforting. The sketches feels very autistic-coded to me as an autistic person, much like Martin from Cabin Pressure - some of the sketches are things I doubt a neurotypical person would notice or comment on from the angle he chooses. Like the geek sketch and the 'friend I'm in the mood for' sketch from series 5.

What are your thoughts on these series?

Thank you for asking, that’s an awesome question!

The basic answer is that I am, of course, a big fan. That said, I’d say that as much as I overall enjoy sketch comedy, I do tend to find it hit or miss; and while JFSP has a higher hit rate than most, and plenty of sketches are fantastic*, it definitely doesn’t get there ALL the time.

*Notable faves- Spooktacular, seashells, reincarnation/past lives, “Stop Saying G’nus,” tricyclist… there are loads and loads more, just off the top of my head! Not to mention the excellent ones you already cited…

The functional difference for me ends up being that while I don’t think there’s a 100% hit rate on Cabin Pressure or Double Acts either, I know that if I pick one episode that I like I will enjoy myself for a full half hour. Because I’m less familiar with a given episode of JFSP given how many there have been and how many sketches are in an episode, I don’t have that same sense of instant “ahhh” from turning on an episode of JFSP* as I would from the other two shows, where a lot of my emotions about it come from knowing it like the back of my hand.

*Major exception- S7E6. A perfect episode of sketch comedy that I can listen to literally whenever. No notes.

This isn’t to say that I don’t really enjoy JFSP! I just wish I could pick off a menu of sketches, not simply because I like some better than others but because I like the feeling of “oooh this” on demand that I get from turning on a favorite half hour episode. I will say- I find JFSP to be PERFECT for things like dental procedures and car trips, where I might be in the chair for anywhere from five minutes to two hours and can just turn on a bunch of sequential episodes for as long as I need. But it doesn’t necessarily have the same immediate impact for me as the episodes I love of the other shows.

That said- some of the best things JF ever wrote are Since You Asked Me sketches. I want them pumped into my veins.

[o-uncle-newt]

NINE: characters you love to hate, then love to love

I was going to write "characters you identify with" but honestly... do I identify with any of them, per se? Not so much- they're all very sitcommy, in a good way. I've never been the kind of person who wants to see "real people" end up in sitcom hijinks; that just ends up being cringe comedy. I want to see the kinds of weirdos who can handle it, who were written for it.

The Cabin Pressure crew are perfect for this. They're all at least a bit (at LEAST) over the top, and all have something that makes you, occasionally, want to punch them (if gently, in Arthur's case) in the face. They all have a kind of a grandiosity that means that no amount of plot-related deflation can truly diminish them- even putting "Dougie" in a life jacket and making him explain how a whistle works isn't going to change the fact that, once that's all done, he's Douglas again. Of course, Arthur will always be Arthur no matter how often he's called a clot- in fact, he becomes more Arthurish the more that happens, because part of what makes him larger than life is his near-impermeability.

I think that that's kind of the point of what makes the characters so moving, though- they’re given a tremendous humanness that is, very often, linked to exactly the thing that makes them larger than life as a sitcom character. And yet, somehow, exploring those human foibles and feelings never diminishes them as sitcom characters to the point of making things actually uncomfortable (except possibly Kuala Lumpur and Qik for Martin, and those are rare bottom-tier episodes for me anyway).

It’s just pretty awesome- the very thing that makes a character larger than life also ends up being the thing that makes them lifelike. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

For example, let’s take Carolyn. What makes her larger than life is the sheer extent to which she takes being a boss- and, in many ways, a control freak. It’s what makes her hilarious but it’s also part of what is holding her back as a person, in the sense that she doesn’t feel like her crew would be there for her if she WEREN’T a control freak. So this natural part of her personality ends up becoming a barrier to her happiness because of the way it interprets how she sees the world, the lack of trust that she has in people who care about her (of course, except for Arthur, but he loves EVERYONE and isn’t trustworthy for other reasons lol). This of course extends itself to meeting and being with Herc, whose feelings for her she can’t fully trust- and as a result she can’t trust him.

The key ends up being- her journey is not about Carolyn needing to be sweeter or softer. It’s about people realizing that she’s not sweet or soft, people like her anyway (or maybe even BECAUSE of it, in the case of Herc), and she needs to trust that they do. She didn’t need to cut back on any part of herself- she needed to open herself up to more, keep the parts of herself that make her her while also not letting them mislead her into being closed off. She remains the same person, but expanded. And that’s pretty beautiful. The thing that makes her a sitcom character isn’t a character flaw that needs to be fixed, it’s a character trait that can be both used well and misused. Misused is funnier but used well is happier- and both are her.

On a similar note- if there’s a character I come close to identifying with, it’s Martin, which I’m sure is the case for many (though if you identify with Douglas, I’d be fascinated to know you lol). I don’t identify with him all as a human being, though, which is a comfort because, like, oh my goodness that would be depressing! I think that the things that people identify with about Martin are his constant striving and, yet, his constant failure- but his core trait is beyond that, that he wants not only to be doing the thing he loves but to be both GOOD at it and RECOGNIZED as good. This is of course intensely relatable, and the thing that is maladaptive is more the extent to which he goes to achieve this than that actual fact itself. By the end of the show, he’s basically brought to normal-human levels of achievement and competence at his dream and is newly satisfied with it, and that’s something we cheer him on for because it just feels achievable- if someone like him can, surely I can too. (This is, of course, mildly undercut by him becoming the boyfriend of the Princess of Liechtenstein lol.) Whatever Martin goes on to achieve will be BECAUSE of his core sitcom trait of wanting to excel at a thing that he loves, but he will have become mildly less annoying about how he achieves that because of how he’s grown. After all, too, part of how he’s going to achieve it is to take on a sitcom trait (a mask of invulnerability) of another excellent sitcom character, Douglas, even if it came via Rory!

Essentially, I think, the key to Cabin Pressure is that it recognizes not only that the very things that make you laugh at a person are the things that can make them deeper and richer, but that there is nothing about the process of them improving themselves that has to make them less funny, because they’re not fixing their sitcom flaws, they’re becoming better about how they use them. They’re still recognizably the same people.

I could go into a whole ramble about sitcoms that I think do and don’t use this well (Frasier, for example, was very good at this for a while but lost it; Parks and Rec, in contrast, got the principle very well but was extremely uneven at applying it on a character by character basis). But I do want to single out Ted Lasso as a show that really fumbled its attempt at this. I loved S1 and really went off it after that, and part of it is that it decided that everything that made Ted distinctive as a character had to be inherently maladaptive. At a certain point, he became Ned Flanders in the Simpsons episode where it turned out that he was essentially psychologically abused into being cheerful all the time- not only was he less funny, he just didn’t feel like the same person. Now, Ted Lasso was more of a dramedy than a sitcom, and maybe that’s why they thought this was necessary/warranted, but if so they were wrong, IMO.

I mention other sitcoms in comparison, and I guess the real clincher that makes Cabin Pressure special is that it lets all its characters grow, to some degree. There’s a kind of an acknowledgement that a sitcom “rule” is that the main character can’t really change, or the show won’t be the same. It explains, for example, why Frasier doesn’t develop to the degree that Niles does in the first two thirds of the show. And the thing is that JF defied this because he got that a great sitcom character needs to have a funny personality trait, but it doesn’t always have to be (equally) a flaw. Cabin Pressure’s crew will always have those same traits, and sometimes they’ll use them well and sometimes they won’t/those traits will clash with others’, and in the latter cases (and sometimes in the former too!) that will make for funny episode premises. A character growing enough that a particular maladaptive element of their sitcom trait is no longer a big issue is great, but doesn’t make them less them, and therefore they’re still going to be funny even if it’s in a different and more self aware way.

Now, you might ask, how does this all play in with JF’s concept of sitcom graduation, where there’s a natural endpoint? I’m glad you asked! To me, the answer is that this is their graduation from THIS scenario. Martin had definitely graduated from MJN, if not from the crew family; Carolyn had graduated from running a dictatorship where she felt like she couldn’t trust, and even reward, people who believed in her; and Douglas had graduated from his feeling of ironic detachment. But we can feel confident that the sitcom traits that they have won’t stop being relevant, that they won’t stop being them, and that they won’t stop being funny. It’ll just be with a different dynamic and different sets of flaws related to that sitcom trait. There will always be situations where their sotcom personalities will be funny!

And I think that the key example of this was Cabin Fever, honestly. While Arthur, who is the only character who couldn’t completely change, obviously didn’t, the other characters brought up retain all of their key traits from the show, just in a different kind of an environment. It becomes clear the extent to which their sitcom traits were just particularly pronounced elements of well drawn personalities with constellations of related traits, and a Douglas/Herc trivia-ranking rivalry shows all the same Douglas sitcom traits that he always had, just applied in a different way. These people’s stories and never really ended- it’s just that particular page that turned. They’ll always be them, outsized personalities and all.

And maybe that’s why the characters live on so much to the fans. We can plop them into new imagined situations and know not just how they will react in a human, but how funny it will be. They’re not merely human, they’re sitcom characters, and that’s the best part. They’ll never lose that.

[o-uncle-newt]

TEN: it's just really good, y'all

This is a short one because it's Day 1 and I already posted something today, but I mean, Cabin Pressure is fantastic, unbelievable hit rate.

I made this tier chart of the episodes and as you can see, it's a bit sad in terms of how poor a job it does in terms of actually ranking them because I love so many of them so much:

It's not even definitive, I spent so much time fiddling with it! Basically, for me S tier is any episode that I have kind of emotionally imprinted on, A+ is basically just Rotterdam because I do think it's hilarious but it never captured me in quite that way, then there are a few that I think have fun but are a bit more outright flawed, and then the five episodes that I actually actively dislike. But, like, seventeen of twenty seven episodes are SO GOOD that I couldn't get any of them out of my S tier, no matter how much I tried! (And I really, really did!)

It's just crazy to me, because there are very, very few shows that I can think of that have this high of a hit rate for me- and for most shows I like, what I consider D tier here would be considered a mid-range episode of them. The overall level of quality is just remarkable.

But it's crazier because the episodes in my S tier... many of them I have listened to literally dozens of times, if not over a hundred for some of them. I wish I could see stats because as unlikely as it sounds, it wouldn't surprise me at all if I've broken 100 listens on Limerick at least. On one level, I'm a rewatcher/relistener in general and rarely get bored, but to me Cabin Pressure takes it to another level in terms of relistenability. I can listen to pretty much any of my faves at pretty much any time, I never get sick of them, and yet they always feel worn and comfortable like a good pair of slippers. It's so soothing, but I also laugh the same as if the joke had been fresh.

This is just so key to the show's being as much of a comfort listen as it is- it manages to be consistently hilarious despite being familiar. Knowing the expected beats of a joke can sometimes take the zing out of it in future listens, but I can't remember that ever happening for me. Maybe it's the brilliant plotting and characters that keep that from ever happening- but the comedy itself just consistently works for this. It's amazing.

[o-uncle-newt]

I missed CP Advent, here's what I'm doing instead

I had had an Advent plan, but in retrospect I'm actually not sure it was the right idea for this (I may save it for next year!)

Instead, my plan is to do a ten day countdown, ending on the 24th- the day that Zurich Part 2 aired. I'll be listing ten ways that Cabin Pressure has impacted me, one each day. Some might be a bit repetitive of my advent listenthrough last year (you can find that if you search my account for the tag "cabin pressure advent 2023"), but some will be based on some general additional thinking.

I was considering doing another relisten- not necessarily daily, but just going through a few random episodes each day- in order to prep for this, but I decided not to because honestly, I rarely do relisten in order. If you read my listenthrough you'll see that I hadn't listened to Kuala Lumpur since the first time (with the exception of skipping through for the Carolyn and Arthur scenes). Honestly, I'm not even sure I remember listening to Cremona in the first place, though I'm sure I did! So this next ten days I'll be relistening to Cabin Pressure, but not in order and not all of them- I'll be returning to episodes that I love and that bring me joy, the ones that I use to boost me up and to, to be frank, resuscitate me when I need it.

Looking forward- hopefully it will be fun, and please feel free to share how Cabin Pressure has effected you!

[o-uncle-newt]

OK I've talked here, I think, about my strong belief that we need a Miss Climpson's Cattery TV show to jump on the mystery period drama bandwagon- and I've been thinking about what it might look like and have some ideas

Please feel free to add some in comments or reblogs!

The overall cast structure is basically like Call the Midwife S1 (or, more accurately, S2-3)- we have a POV "new to the crew" character who is purportedly the main character (but significantly lower-drama than Jenny lol) but it's functionally an ensemble. Miss Climpson is the Sister Julienne character, aka the on-the-ground boss, and then there are a bunch of other operatives, who all show up at SOME point in most episodes but only a few of them take center stage each episode in a particular case or two. There are also the support staff/actual typists, who are fun side characters.

Wimsey is a side character, and is played by a non-super-famous actor. He only appears in a few episodes at most in each season, usually as someone who is giving work to the operatives. While he can bring in operatives to help him on his cases, he is never allowed to solve any agency cases.

Harriet is a one or two episode max character. She meets Miss Climpson and possibly Miss Murchison but nobody else (as discussed in Gaudy Night). Honestly, if they don't show her that's fine too. At most she's brought in to provide help/insight on a literary world case.

The show starts right after the events of Strong Poison, and it's discussed as a recent case among the team. That said, unless it can be fit canonically into a Sayers story without undue bother, the episodes do NOT circle around existing Sayers plots.

Miss Murchison is a significant character, and has a love interest to whom she gets married sometime toward the third/fourth year of show canon (as we know that canonically she gets married sometime before the events of Gaudy Night). It is a cute older-nerd romance and everyone ships it. There is no "drama," just sweetness.

This is optional, but it is POSSIBLE that Wimsey brings Miss Meteyard into the firm, likely not permanently but possibly on a one-case basis for her advertising world expertise. She is initially snobbish about it but soon grows out of it.

As I've alluded to above, the main rule is- Sayers canon can never be violated. There is SO much space for great story and characterization that falls totally in line.

Everything else... is totally up to whoever! And I'm absolutely up for other ideas! These are just the main things I've thought of and I may come back and make additions/edits but here we go for now.

Though... casting idea- I'm not usually very good at this but I really feel like, speaking of Call the Midwife, Georgie Glen (Miss Higgins) could be an interesting Miss Climpson. Quite different than the excellent one in the Petherbridge/Walter adaptation of Strong Poison, but still good. I'm completely open to other suggestions though, as well as casting suggestions for other characters (including just actors who you think would be good for random currently-nonexistent/hypothesized ones- it's just so open ended, there are so many choices!).

[o-uncle-newt]

I MISSED THE FIRST FEW DAYS OF ADVENT, CRAP

Which is so stupid, I was off work and had so much time... should I just start late and combine days? Or admit an embarrassing defeat and just do a weeklong countdown or something? (Or maybe I'll start off tomorrow with Douz because it's the first episode that made me Feel Things?)

What should I do?!

[o-uncle-newt]

Finished dinnerladies and while I knew that JF had mentioned being a fan of Victoria Wood before, making it to the finale made it VERY clear how much of one lol

(I think overall Cabin Pressure did that ending better than dinnerladies, for what it's worth.)

While the actual comedy of JF vs Wood is clearly very different in terms of the kinds of jokes (to his credit, he doesn't assume that mentioning sex or pelvic floors is an automatic laugh), he definitely does sometimes borrow from her REALLY well done absurdist yet human style of dialogue and conversation in ways that are always fun. And even more significantly, she is clearly so focused on story and dialogue construction and he takes a leaf out of her book in that regard (and I think generally exceeds her in that way, particularly in Cabin Pressure).

I think the emotional beats in dinnerladies could be a bit hit or miss tonally for me (which annoys me because I WANTED to like them more than I did), but when it hit it REALLY hit, and JF clearly gets that too- he just nails the balance.

Overall, Wood is super talented (and so are the people on her shows), even if I don't completely love her overall style, and it's fun to trace the ways that JF clearly learned from her- and it was even before it got super blatant at the second half of S2.

[o-uncle-newt]

Random Wimsey/Vane thought

I'm honestly kind of surprised that more isn't made in the Wimsey/Vane books of the fact that Harriet, once married to Peter, gets his title. By which I of course don't mean Lady Wimsey, and certainly not Lady Harriet Wimsey- she's Lady Peter Wimsey.

I know that back then Mrs Husband'sfirstname Marriedname was a much more common construct, but there you have the option of Mrs Marriedname, or even Mrs Firstname Marriedname, which can mitigate things a lot. Harriet doesn't have that option. She's either Harriet Vane or Lady Peter Wimsey, entirely her work identity or entirely her married identity- and with her married identity completely subsumed by her husband's name.

That could have been interesting as a plot point in one of the getting-together books, given all the discussions about identity and power dynamics in marriage, but the fact that it's brought up a couple of times in passing in Busman's Honeymoon (Miss Twitterton's knowledge of Harriet's new title is a sign of her gentility, Harriet introduces herself by it to Mrs Ruddle, etc) but no implications of the title ever are- despite the fact that they have lots of discussions about what being married means to them- is kind of strange to me. At the very least, seeing as Busman's Honeymoon was written as a play first and written mostly before Gaudy Night, put the discussion in Gaudy Night! It just feels like a thread that is dropped, or in some ways never even picked up, for no real reason.

We DO see Harriet writing "Harriet Wimsey" on the chimney pot, so we know that she obviously doesn't THINK of herself as Lady Peter- why should she?- but the title is both pretty uncommon and a pretty big imposition on a woman (and one that, say, Parker doesn't have to live under as the husband of Lady Mary) and I honestly am a bit surprised that it doesn't come up at all.

Maybe it does somewhere, like in the Paton Walsh books?

[o-uncle-newt]

....oh wow, I just realized that Timothy West (the actor who played Gordon) died on Gerti Day... such a weird coincidence and a great opportunity to celebrate a fantastic actor who made an incredible impact in just three episodes.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

welcome to Gerti Day 2024!

Do you remember the Episode Fitton? Carolyn talks about how Gordon calls every twelfth of November in order to buy Gerti back - I am taking that chance every year to post all things Gerti & celebrate the sweetest old decrepit airplane with a heart of gold. And if you guys want in, PLEASE! Draw me a lil airplane! Fold a papercraft airplane and post a pic! Write a drabble! TAG ME IN IT!

(If you think, nah, thanks, not my cup of tea: no problem! Everything here on this blog will be tagged as “gerti day 2024″ so you can blacklist!)

[o-uncle-newt]

Considering either starting to Sherlock Holmespost on here or starting a sideblog...

I'd say a mix of canon, the Game, and mostly-Granada adaptation stuff- but I feel like I already have two main topics for this one and that's probably enough. Will think about this.

I will say that the fact that I don't already have a Holmes blog is crazy to me- I've been such a fan as long as I can remember, I did a tenth grade music class presentation on Sarasate because he was the one who played the concert that Holmes and Watson go to in The Red-Headed League. (It made it especially fun when Granada not only showed them going to that concert in the adaptation but literally cast someone as Sarasate!)

[o-uncle-newt]

Another Cabin Pressure-as-mood-stabilizer post

Had a really difficult day yesterday where I felt like a failure and imposter, then needed to wake up this morning and do the whole thing all over again, my confidence shot

So I’m listening to Zurich and actually not only is it just generally hilarious and heartwarming it has so much to say about this particular feeling, it’s incredible

And also, just saying, the skill with which JF literally spells out the exact Chekhov’s Gun he’s laying out and then immediately distracts us from it with the worst ice cream guy chimes ever is masterful, I admire him so much