The High Life

I used to watch 'The High Life' with my best friend religiously. We were huge fans of this great series! It was hilarious! We still to this day remember the opening title song word for word and the characters constant teasing of Shona. It has become one of my fondest memories of growing up. We watched every single episode made and we loved Alan Cummings performance in The High Life. I am just sorry that it is not available to buy so I can take a trip down memory lane and enjoy once more... 'Living the High Life, we're living it well!'

STARRING Alan Cumming, Forbes Masson, Siobhan Redmond, Patrick Ryecart

Camp classic The High Life ranks right up there with Absolutely Fabulous as one of the funniest sitcoms of the 1990s. Written by its two comic leads, Cumming and Masson, The High Life delights viewers with its mix of Scottish sensibility and camp outrageousness.

The High Life revolves around the lives and loves of flight attendants who work for fictitious Scottish airline Air Scotia. Cumming (Sebastian Flight) and Masson (Steve McCracken) demonstrate perfect comic timing, while Redmond (Shona Spurtle) proves adept as the antagonist who always wants to show Sebastian up as a narcissistic egocentric. Ryecart (Captain Hilary Duff) is hilarious as the absentminded captain, who, despite never being 'all there', has control of the plane!

The Scottish accent is, at times, a bit hard to follow, but is funny nonetheless. Versatile Scot Cumming, who has done a few accents in his career: a Russian accent in GoldenEye; an American accent in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion; has a ball spouting all the lines in his native tongue! And speaking of accents, I think this must be the only sitcom to ever include the F-word. In one episode, Steve asks Sebastian: "You for coffee?", but with a Scottish accent it sounds very similar to: "You F*** off, eh?"

It's a shame this comedy gem ran for only six episodes. Who knows what other story lines Cumming and Masson may have come up with.....

A MUST SEE!

An excellent programme with characters who were already well-developed when they first appeared.

Admittedly, the captain of the plane was very reminscent of Commander Bell, played by Ronnie Barker (qv) in the early series of the BBC Radio programme "The Navy Lark" but that made a new programme nostalgic!

Some of the best situations arose from people who really didn't like each other having to work together in a place where a) they couldn't get up and walk out, and b) they had to be all happy and smiling to the customers and pretend they were all part of one big happy family.

I am sure that, had the programme's run not been cut short after only a few episodes, the writing team would have been able to develop a lot more, and different, situations as they had the ability to include things which didn't only belong in an airline but benefited from the setting. It would have taken quite a while for the show to become one-dimensional. Great stuff!

I'm not sure what exactly struck me and my partner about this relatively obscure Scottish aviation sitcom from the mid nineties. We'd not long returned from a rather unaccustomed set of galling long-haul flights when it was repeated by BBC Scotland and it's beguilingly silly mix of camp foolishness and nostalgic nineties beige was rather intoxicating. Plus Alan Cumming is magnificent at all times.

Loosely based on a set of exaggerated cabaret characters that Masson & Cummings used to perform as, Steve is a lovesick buffoon and Sebastian is a fame-hungry slugabed. They are opposite the acidically prim Shona Spurtle played by (the usually very dry) dramatic actor Siobhan Redmond and the possibly deeply insane hammy English captain Hilary Duff. It's an odd set-up, more cheeky pantomime than sharp comedy and the series is at its best when they abandon all pretence at sitcom structuring and delve into strange parody as in the steward "boot camp" episode or the wildly silly spoof of Batman in the final episode. The entire endeavour is enlivened by Masson & Cummings road-sharpened chemistry and the particularly the latters' magnetically mannered performance.

Apparently there was a second series written but it was scuppered by Cummings (well deserved) ascending stardom although part of me still hopes they come back together and try it again one of these decades. As such, it remains a strangely comforting slice of 90s Scottish sitcom silliness.

The High Life, was unfortunate to be cast among the often discarded sitcoms of the BBC's dustbins. This was a brilliantly written comedy set around a scottish airline called Scotair. Although only six episodes and a pilot were ever released, they certainly brought pleasure to myself and many other people. Sadly it has only been aired once, although I think it was repeated in the week for those not fortunate enough to catch it on the Sunday. Again another series as indeed the Brittas empire not released on BBC video. (Although there was one 6 episode VHS tape released of Brittas.

High life was very camp but extremely funny, and it saddens me that a second series was canned.