Royal Canadian Air Farce

Royal Canadian Air Farce is horribly bad television.

Please don't get me wrong, I know that there was a time when they were apparently comedy icons in Canada and their radio show was listened to by thousands of Canadians from coast to coast and they did popular live shows that my grandparents and their friends honestly enjoyed (yes I said grandparents and I am 40!). I'm sure they deserve appreciation for a job well done, but there comes a time when it's time to hang up the skates and gracefully step aside before it just get embarrassing, and I'm afraid that date may have already passed them by.

I don't find them funny at all. The jokes are terrible and worst of all they keep repeating the same characters and sketches over and over! Air Farce belongs in a museum, not on TV.

Alright, it's been said but I must say it again. This show got old a LONG time ago. I remember telling some teacher in grade nine that I thought it was awful, tired and unfunny (1997?). I believe she disagreed. I could never stand watching Luba Goy or Abbott as they can NOT act, and are so odd in appearance that all you see in their impersonations is them. The political satire never seems to focus on anything beyond the news headline.

Lots of good shows have come from the CBC. This is not one of them. It's safe, middle-class suburban and DULL. This Hour has 22 Minutes, though suffering at times from cast changes, was always funny. Kids in the Hall was funny. Air Farce has always played to a lower denominator. I find it unwatchable as I find SNL unwatchable. I might have enjoyed it briefly when it first came on TV when I was ten, but that didn't last very long. Though my parents seemed to have enjoyed it on the radio back in the day, the radio has the bonus feature of not having to WATCH who's speaking.

Finally, this show reinforces an incorrect view of Canadians. C'mon, no one likes to see stereotypes reinforced in the same way, over and over.

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.

The jokes on Air Farce probably were never funny but if they ever were it was back in World War Two.

They have a chicken cannon. They put garbage in the cannon and then shoot it at pictures of politicians.

It's like watching half an hour of a nightmare where you're stuck in the audience of a community theatre show at an old folks home where nobody is allowed to walk out.

It's just painful.

They do impersonations where they put on a wig and then say for example "Hi I'm Bob Rae" but then they just use their own voice. That's not an impersonation, it's just a confused senior citizen wearing a wacky wig telling jokes that for some reason they think might be funny to somebody else.

What is CBC thinking? The people writing the jokes for CBC must be world war veterans who think that wacky wigs and puns are the peak of comedy, maybe in ten years they'll start writing the latest craziest kind of comedy, knock knock jokes!

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