Royal Canadian Air Farce

Royal Canadian Air Farce is one of those comedy shows where you tune in, sit there, waiting to laugh... but you don't. The show never gets into anything story-wise by design, because it's a sketch show, so you're left trying to get a cheap laugh out of the (usually political) premises of the sketches. Problem is, they're not good.

According to Wikipedia, the comedy group started off in 1970 as 'The Jest Society', a play on Pierre Trudeau's goal of a 'Just Society'. Kind of a lame title. This tactic of taking a letter and changing it was repeated when the 'Jest Society' changed their name to the Royal Canadian Air Farce. When the current show started in 1993, the crew had Jean Chretien and multiple other targets of Canadian politics to satirize, and ample material in Canadian culture (like those silly Canadian Tire commercials). But even then, the sketches didn't move past a simple caricature of Chretien's accent, or any other one-dimensional premise.

I specifically remember a sketch about the 'War on Christmas' - and the premise being a guy was reading a Christmas story by a fireplace. What's the joke? Every time the word Christmas should come up, he says 'holiday' instead. And the sketch continues like this for about 7 or 8 minutes. Somewhere along the way, somebody should have said, "Guys - don't you think we should do something more? Make something happen? Have at least some kind of a story, at least?" I guess that didn't ever happen. or maybe it did, and they fired the guy who said it.

Sometimes I have relatives from outside Canada ask me what good Canadian TV shows there are, this show (plus the Mike Bullard show) always comes to mind. It makes me sad that this is such a poorly made show, and yet it's financed and probably shot on HDCAM and viewed by millions (funny considering Canada's population is only 33 million, give or take).

I know it's probably schadenfreudenic (I think that's right) for me to take so much pleasure hating this show. Maybe it wasn't always that bad, but it's just not funny at all. Anyway, to sum up: Don't watch it.

While the early episodes (in particular the first 3 years) were absolutely hilarious and thoroughly enjoyable, "Air Farce" has been on a downward spiral for about 6 years now. It just isn't funny anymore. All the jokes are recycled and unfunny, and the cast is boring. The writing just isn't good anymore and they haven't introduced a decent character actor since Colin Mochrie as 'Queer Guy for Al Qaeda Guy'. All "Air Farce" does nowadays is rehash old jokes and predictably pick on whoever is in office wherever in Canada by commenting on their physical appearance etc.

For solid, funny social/political commentary, see "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" or "The Rick Mercer Report". Both are still hilarious and feature a lot more talent than "Air Farce". How this show got to 300 episodes is beyond my comprehension.

Letter Grade: F

I have tried several times to find some amusement in this program, but I cannot. The jokes are not funny and to me at least seem to be written by some of the worst writers in the history of comedy. This is beyond bland humour, and if this is what other Canadians find funny, then we have some serious character issue problems.

It's not smart humour by any means and each time I happen to "flick" by the show (and watch several seconds in the hope I maybe wrong) I ask myself how anyone can find this funny? I really did try giving this a chance but it is well beyond me.

Anyone trying to catch some great Canadian comedy check out "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" or even better yet one of Canada's best new shows in "Corner Gas".

I understand most people hate this show and it is terrible but everyone seems to be blaming the cast. How about the writing? I assume they don't write their own jokes like on most TV shows. The writing is so horrible and stale, they are doing the same jokes they did in 1993 since the first season of Air Farce. This show used to be good but now it's just painfully awful, I feel bad for these people who have to go on TV and read such horrible jokes. But I think if they got new writers the show might still turn around and be funny. I'm not too optimistic about that though. Royal Canadian Air Farce is just sad and disappointing, I like new cast member Alan Park though, he is funny.

Up until John Morgan left, this was one of the funniest shows on Canadian tv. The jokes were mostly political, and poked fun at world leaders. After he left, and there were only 3 original members, they started getting guest appearances, which is ok. Then the jokes started to get more pop-culture based, but were repetitive and weren't as funny. The new episodes are terrible, and they need to take more risks.