Джон Финнемор - все книги по циклам и сериям | Книги по порядку

Stephanie Cole, Benedict Cumberbatch & Roger Allam star in the fourth series of the hit sitcom about the tiny charter airline for whom no job is too small, but many, many jobs are too difficult. By John Finnemore ( The News Quiz , 'Mitchell & Webb ) Run by the forbidding divorcee Carolyn Knapp-Shappey (an unfortunate marriage, namewise, but in Carolyn s opinion, marginally better than Carolyn Shappey-Knapp), her two pilots are the smooth, experienced and almost-certainly-fired-by-a-big-airline-for-all-round naughtiness Douglas, and struggling almost-competent pilot and sweaty man Martin. All-round help is provided by Carolyn s near-idiot son, Arthur...

John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (BBC4) is a traditional sketch show written entirely by one man – which makes it a very rare beast indeed. The man in question – the eponymous John Finnemore, likely best known to listeners for his stand-out performances on The Now Show – writes with a shameless pedantry and an infectious joy in the precise use of the English language.
In fact, about half of the programme is spent taking to task those who misuse or denigrate the language, with the opening sketch singling out the white van man who claims there's no job too big or small. Elsewhere, laughs are spun out of particularly apposite descriptions ("Kanga, Tigger is a psychotic tiger with a steroid addiction") and neat twists on cliche: "The weather was unusually hot for February, but then, of course, it is July."
Finnemore – who is also one of the four performers – has a fantastic line in pushing things to their most absurd, from the door guards who speak only truth and lies, to the interminable old-fashioned ghost story, dragging the latter out to more than six minutes without letting the laughs abate for a moment. It's not ground-breaking, edgy or in any way shocking, but it is one of the most consistently funny sketch shows for quite some time.