Several months ago, one of my coworkers mentioned how much he loved a BBC radio series called Cabin Pressure. It took just one episode to make me a fan.
Cabin Pressure is British humor (sorry, humour) at its best. It’s made up of 27 episodes, each named for a destination. The story involves a charter airline, MJN (My Jet Now), with one airplane and four crew members. Stephanie Cole plays Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, the tight-fisted owner who’s trying to keep the airline afloat. Benedict Cumberbatch is the airline’s pilot, Martin Crieff. Having worked hard to attain his dream, his rank means everything to him, and he’s frustrated when people assume first officer Douglas Richardson is the pilot. In fact, Douglas (Roger Allam) is a seasoned pilot, but he’s lucky to have his job; he was fired from a previous job for smuggling. John Finnemore rounds out the cast as Carolyn’s son, Arthur, who serves as steward.
My favorite characters are almost polar opposites in terms of intelligence. Douglas is very clever and very full of himself, and I couldn’t help but love him for his playful sense of humor. There are few things he enjoys more than playing a good game on the flight deck, such as inserting as many Hitchcock titles as possible into a flight announcement.
Arthur, on the other hand, is extremely dim, though he occasionally surprises everyone with a good idea. While I love Douglas for his wit, Arthur quickly won me over with his enthusiasm and optimism.
It took me a while to warm up to Martin. He can be an annoying stickler for rules. You can just imagine him as a kid, standing on the fringe of a group of misbehaving peers and saying, “You guyyyyys. Stop! We’re going to get in TROUble.” Unfortunately, I’m probably more like Martin than any of the other characters, which may be why I prefer Douglas and Arthur. Martin grew on me as I got to know him better over the course of several episodes, and by the end, I came to love him almost as much as Douglas and Arthur.
Carolyn was another character I had to warm up to. Although she is occasionally playful, she generally comes across as cheap and irritable. But as you learn about her struggles to keep her airplane from her ex-husband, and as she begins a very odd relationship with Herc, a captain from another airline, Carolyn becomes more human and easier to sympathize with.
More than anything, Cabin Pressure has made me a fan of Finnemore, who not only played Arthur but wrote the script. To quote Arthur, Finnemore is “brilliant” — a very funny man.
Cabin Pressure may be available at your local library; otherwise, you can buy a compact disc set from retailers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It’s a bit pricey, but definitely worth it.