User Reviews

The High Life is one of the most singular sitcoms produced in the nineties thanks to its verbal dexterity and the brilliant partnership between Forbes Masson and Alan Cumming. In fairness, the six episodes was probably the limit for what is essentially a two dimensional plot concept (the attempts to leave the confines of an aeroplane coming with mixed success), but it survives on the wit and clever dialogue created by its two stars.

For most people this will have been their first experience of the now (relatively) famous Alan Cumming but it is clear even here that he is a master at the character comedy roles that have been the backbone of his career in Hollywood. The less well known Forbes Masson (the only other time I've ever seen him is playing Stan Laurel in the "Waxworld" episode of Red Dwarf) also plays well in this tailor-made role in an elegantly self-deprecatory fashion. Check out the pilot episode (available on the DVD) and you'll find his character to be much less pathetic and more masculine; it's just not as funny.

Of course, I can hardly comment on The High Life without mentioning the theme song. Accompanied by a dance routine that any golden age musical would be proud of, the song itself is possibly the most fitting theme song I've ever heard, summing up the spirit and character of the show in a neat thirty seconds.

Well worth an investment in the DVD as I doubt this will ever be repeated on television.

I watched this when it first came out in the 90s. I found it hilarious then. Rewatching it now I still found it far funnier than anything that currently passes for comedy. It was interesting to see the young Alan Cumming. How he come on as an actor. Mark you watching this makes me realise the Scots have a different sense of humour. I really couldn't stop laughing. A real treat.

The High Life was a mid 90s supercamp riot of a sitcom that really should of run on and on into the next decade, but was confined to one series. Most likely explanation was the taking off for Alan Cumming's career towards Hollywood. Set on a plane doing the Prestwick - Heathrow run, funnily enough shortly before Easyjet kicked in.

What I particularly enjoyed was Siobhan Redmond's supervisory character Shona Spurtle. From my days in retail I met a few of her. Little catchphrases like 'eh' and 'deary me' also add to the nonsense.

And you just wonder what percentage of the budget was spent on that OTT opening number, wonderful.

Pif Paf Pof, I want to have it off! Enough Said.

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!

My best Christmas gift this year was the DVD of this short-lived and under-appreciated sit com set around a low-cost airline working out of Prestwick Airport in the west of Scotland. Of course, it helps if, like me, you're from that self-same part of the world, where it can be seen as a trailblazer for popular shows in later years like "Chewin' The Fat" and "Still Game" - in fact I'm still at a loss as to why Alan Cummings and Forbes Masson's Sebastian and Steve didn't enter the national psyche like the latter's Jack and Victor. There's even Mark Ryecourt as an eccentric pilot who may also have been in the minds of Father Ted's writing team when they created the "out-there-where-the-buses-don't-run" Father Jack character, as well as a Eurovision Song contest themed episode, also aped by Ted and his cronies on Craggy Island.

As almost every reviewer has said, it boasts a terrific theme tune which will stay in your head forever, while the device of employing great Scottish slang words as episode titles (for example "Choob" and "Feart" meaning idiot and scared, respectively) was certainly copied by Messrs Hemphill and Kiernan in "Still Game".

There's a high gag-count in each show and if many of them rely on a familiarity with the Scottish vernacular, not to mention slang, profanity and of course good old-fashioned innuendo then that's just hard cheese for any outsiders looking in. Although Cumming's Sebastian Flyte takes centre-stage with his combination of neurosis, narcissism, cheekiness and camp-ness, Forbes Masson might consider himself unlucky not to have seen his career take off too, so good is he as Cumming's frustrated, self-deluding side-kick. Siobhan Redmond is also great as their battle-axe supervisor, the never-ending butt of their acerbic humour.

My wife and I watched all six episodes over a few days and laughed out loud and often. It was just a pity that somehow it wasn't picked up for further series, an irony all the more pointed given the undeserved hoop-la over Little Britain's Walliams and Lucas's new BBC sketch- show, "Come Fly With Me" set, you guessed it, at a national airport.

Seriously comedy genius. If you get the chance to see this gem watch it. You do have to be Scottish to get the lingo at times, but it's hilarious. Alan Cummings and Forbes mason have created a real classic which is still funny now.

The pairing of Cumming and Masson as the camp flight attendants is pure gold. They bounce off each other with a mix of childish puns and sexual innuendos to create the silliness which is far more lovable than cringe. Other characters such as Patrick Ryecart's pilot, and Siobhan Redmond's chief flight attendant add substantial enough depth to fill in the plot but really the main attraction are Cumming and Masson. Use of Scots is constant throughout, and though it may appeal more-so to a Scottish audience, that shouldn't put any other viewer off checking it out. Half soft slapstick/half genuinely funny writing make this 'wee gem' unique, similar (if not perhaps more Jack from Will and Grace) to the humour of Still Game. Well worth a shot.

Well, it's not Oscar Wilde, that's for sure.

Bitchy, acerbic, camped-up and profane, it is full of energy.

More than 20 years later the wife and I are still using the "Oh, dearie me" catchphrase. It does not sound particularly funny, but it works for most occasions after a private joke and no one else seems to know what we are on about.

All of the episodes are now on a well-known video uploading site so you can see what all the fuss is about. A bit strange these days to see people smoking in the workplace and other aspects have dated a bit - check out the mobile phone on the rock star episode - but other aspects of what is essentially an office comedy are timeless.

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 best part of 'The High Life' is the theme song, with elaborate song and dance sequences at the beginning and end of the show, rather Busby Berkeley style. High energy, silly fun. And Forbes Masson looks wacky and adorable. He looks like he must be a genuinely sweet person--a quality I value highly, even if I am, alas, not sweet myself.

So the theme music gets a big '10' from me. I would give the rest of the show a '6,' but instead go up to '7' because Forbes Masson and Alan Cumming are pretty memorable performers.

The pilot episode (never officially aired?) has the same plot as episode 4, and most of the same guest stars. It didn't have the heavy-duty laugh track--had no laugh track, in fact--and Alan Cumming's pomaded hair was less extreme and bizarre. The official episodes obviously benefit from a larger budget, but the whole series is still clearly 'low budget.' With the thick Scottish accents, subtitles would often be helpful. I pride myself on my ear for British accents of all sorts, but sometimes it's all too much. It's kind of like one of those cable documentary shows where you can basically understand the foreigner attempting to speak English, but you still appreciate the extra input from the subtitles.

Despite some stabs at surreal action and plots, this is a very sitcom-y sitcom, but with a not-to-miss theme. I especially adore the ending theme music segment.

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 count myself extremely fortunate to have first seen Alan Cumming on stage in 1987 or there abouts. He was playing the shepherd in "As You Like It". Hardly a major role but he completely stole the show and had my friends and I frantically flicking through our programmes to find out who the wonderful young actor playing the shepherd was. Since then I've always looked out for him and have yet to be disappointed in any role he's played.

"The High Life" is a cute, original and extremely funny comedy with wonderful performances from the three central actors and it's a huge shame that it was allowed to sink without trace due to very poor promotion by the BBC. It was broadcast on a weekday evening in what used to be the notoriously difficult 9pm slot on BBC2. I can recall nothing more than a couple of brief trailers and a little piece in the Radio Times and it was as if the powers that be just didn't care wether is succeeded or failed. These days we have the likes of the appallingly bad "My Hero" being shown early on a Friday evening on BBC1 and then repeated on a Sunday afternoon, while something as well written and acted, clever and original as "The High Life" was allowed to sink without trace.

I don't suppose Auntie Beeb would ever go to the trouble of producing a video, or better still, a DVD, but they could at least repeat this glorious one-off. That way, the few of us who loved it first time 'round could tape it and watch it over and over, and those who never got a chance to see it will finally know what the rest of us are harping on about.

I loved this series, and have been waiting patiently for it to be repeated. Imagine my surpise when searching the internet I found that it has eventually been released on DVD (including the pilot episode).

I remember watching The High Life when I was about 18 and after 6 episodes of it I felt its a shame only 6 was made however the less episodes made the bigger the legend.

Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson wrote and created 6 really funny episodes. Siobhan Redmond was hilarious as Steve and Sebastian's nemesis Shona Spurtle.

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!'

I remember this gem from when it was first aired, I was about 12 years old.... brilliantly funny & clever, and now available on DVD !!!!!

Comical, but oh so simple... the only draw back being is that they only made 6 episodes ! Fantastic !

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.

I remember watching this with my mom when I was about 11... it had us both in stiches and I was really disappointed when it ended. It was one of the funniest shows ever to grace BBC 2 and I wish they would run it again. Alan Cumming as Sebastian was the best and I loved their little catch phrase 'Oh deary me'

If anyone ever travelled by 'Caledonian' like I have you'll realise that the show was hardly exaggerating, ha ha ha.

Not a film but an excellent comedy series.

Worth watching for the completely over the top camp character played by Alan Cumming

This is one of the best shows ever made. This must be what it's like to work for an airline, never mind that docu soap This is the real deal.

Please can it be released on DVD with a commentary from all involved including Alan Cumming.

Unfortunately this is unlikely as from talking to people, it had about as many viewers as Kids In The Hall.

What can I say! This is by far my favorite comedy show, fantastically written and acted, I love Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson who wrote and starred in it. I wish more episodes were made as there were only 7!, perhaps someday we will hear that classic line 'oh deary me' again!

I used to watch this series with my mum and found it hilarious. What happened? It was probably the best thing on the BBC at the time - well written, well acted and well loved. It not only introduced me to the wonderfully funny and gorgeous Alan Cumming, but had some of the best catch-phrases ever! The sight of the crew doing their 'front exits, back exits, side exits' exercise has lived with me ever since. Like so many other great shows, a new series would spoil it, but is it asking too much for a rerun or video box set?

if not for my love of alan cumming, i would never have seen this hilarious show. it's one of those cult tv shows that's silly, campy, and over the top. but the actors never hold back in their performances-- they know they're not in award winning material and they just seem to be having a blast. alan cumming and forbes masson wrote every episode and were a perfect comedy team. it's good if you need a laugh, and especially good if you had a bad day at work...you see that your job could be worse :)

why oh why was this cancelled after one series?!??! it was utterly brilliant - and that was clear for anyone to see, ratings irrelevant. fantastic, hilarious, pure genius

its such a shame and a waste, i wish there'd been more of it but what there was should go down in history we still say "ohw deerieee meee" and "ye didn'e sha* Shona?!" i saw the redheaded guy on This Morning a while ago, and he was so funny, i was in awe i was in stitches, and it was all off the cuff, he was just there for an interview (Billy Connolly? Robin Williams? why are they world reknowned comedians and this man isnt? )