The High Life

The High Life is a sitcom from 1994-95 written by and starring Forbes Masson and Alan Cumming. A pilot and then a single series of six episodes were made, and despite coming from the same era as well-remembered sitcoms such as Knowing Me Knowing You or Father Ted and, like them, made in a style common in that period - with broad, over-the-top characters and situations the order of the day and thoughts of realism nowhere to be seen - The High Life is now comparatively obscure, with seemingly the only Unique Selling Point being the two leads at the dawn of their careers.

As a Scottish cat I have a liking for the Scottish streak that runs deeply embedded through The High Life. Naturally most of the main characters are played by Scottish actors, and there are frequent uses of Scottish colloquialisms - including all the episode titles save from the pilot.

I also love how camp it is!


Pilot

Main characters Steve (Forbes Masson) and Sebastian (Alan Cumming) seem fully formed from the first scene. Both are camp and bitchy airline stewards working for the fictional "Air Scotia" and, as is typical for British sitcom leads, they are two of life's losers.

The two other regular characters are Shona Spurtle (Siobhan Redmond) and Captain Duff (Patrick Ryecart, who played Crozier in Trial of a Time Lord and was also Romeo in the 1978 BBC version of Romeo & Juliet where he was about 10 years older than his Juliet). Shona is the series' main antagonist - she and Sebastian hate each other and exchange insults frequently, although Steve kind of fancies her because his main character trait is that he fancies all women indiscriminately.

Captain Duff, as seen in the pilot, is eccentric but not much more so than the other characters - he is yet to become the completely insane version seen in the series proper.

As the pilot episode there's a lot of quick gags based on the main characters working as cabin crew which help to establish the setting. The main plot begins when Hal (Alex Norton - one of those Scottish actors who has seemingly been in everything ever filmed in Scotland, including his spending about eight years in Taggart) arrives to direct Shona in a "Face of Air Scotia" company video, a part Sebastian is bitter for missing out on.

Hal behaves in a disturbingly misogynistic way towards Shona. Now Sebastian acts pretty sexist towards her by today's standards, so it is fortunate that here we have a much bigger creep to compare him to or else he might not work as a sympathetic character. In truth none of the characters are meant to be truly sympathetic, but we are clearly supposed to side with Steve and Sebastian's point of view throughout.

The secondary plot is that an old girlfriend of Steve's is on the plane. She is a caricature of a rabid Scottish Nationalist, a member of the "Scottish Liberation Front", and she tries to hijack the plane (in a pre-September 11th kind of way, to be clear) while Hal's camera crew is still recording.

The episode then cuts to a Scottish news bulletin reporting on the story. There is a nice touch where the reporter on the scene is introduced as a "disasters and sports correspondent" and then he proceeds to use a bunch of sporting clichés while delivering his report on the hijack. This news show within the show then shows the camera footage of what happens next - Shona hits the hijacker with a fish (this, as well as being delicious cat noms, is a Chekhov's fish, having earlier surprised Shona by falling out of an overhead locker) and then she hits the camera crew with it for good measure.

The disparate subplots are thus all tied together by this scene, making for a satisfying payoff.


1. feart

Here we see the proper title sequence for the first time, a musical number performed by the main cast plus backing dancers over the memorable and catchy theme song. Its choreography can be contrasted with the end credits sequence which has the same song accompanied by Masson and Cumming dancing enthusiastically but with much less coordination.

Captain Duff (now "barking, completely barking!" as Steve and Sebastian quite rightly point out) has been at a "Scottish Star Trek convention" and has become convinced he is Mr Spock. He makes Star Trek references throughout the episode, including calling Steve and Sebastian "Chekov and Uruha" (SIC) and the way he pronounces their destination of "Lon-don" like an alien planet is great. He doesn't have a large part in any given episode, but Ryecart does steal every scene he is in.

The main plot concerns Steve and Sebastian's applying to move from boring Prestwick-Heathrow internal flights to glamorous long-haul flights involving foreign travel. We soon get the first occurrence of their joint catchphrase "oh dearie me!" which is said when they say something amusing to the characters (as opposed to amusing to the viewers at home, though it is often both). Here it follows their response to Shona's

"Can I be blunt?"
"If I can be Philby."
"And if I can be Burgess."

The secondary plot is that Shona's estranged father (played by David Lyon, who had been in the drama series Between the Lines with Siobhan Redmond earlier in the '90s) is on the plane. Shona describes him as "a big-time bigamist and bank robber" who she hasn't seen since she was a child, and who it is revealed is here handcuffed to a plain-clothes police inspector who is accompanying him to prison. The 30-second sepia-tinted flashback to the '70s showing the last time Shona saw her father is a moment full of pathos, one which might have been out of place amongst the comedy but for Redmond and Lyon who have the acting skill to make it work.

Shona arranges for the inspector to become trapped in the toilet cubicle with a dodgy lock so that her father can escape. Meanwhile Steve and Sebastian are under the impression that the police inspector is a different kind of inspector - one there to assess them for suitability for the long haul fight role. It turns out that that inspector is actually pretending to be a passenger with two broken arms, who therefore needs help from the stewards with a variety of tasks. Steve is helpful to him, and so passes the test, while Sebastian is the opposite with predictably opposite results.

The ending is that Steve turns down the job so he can remain working with his best friend Sebastian, for which Sebastian calls him a "stupid mug."


2. birl

Captain Duff has even less screen-time than usual in this one, but it does open with him playing snap against himself and we learn that his first name is "Hilary."

With two-thirds of the series plots being principally set on board an Air Scotia plane during a flight, this is the first one that breaks that formula as the regular cast have to go on a training course weekend thanks to Steve and Sebastian's (off-screen) incompetence, with their jobs on the line if they do not pass the assessment at the end of it.

Steve is on the pull on the minibus before they even get to the hotel, although it turns out his date, Heather, is even more obsessed with sex than he is ("a manny-eater" is the term, I believe).

The ball-busting trainer Gretchen Betjeman forces Steve and Sebastian to sing the Air Scotia corporate song, which turns into a musical number by the second verse and is one of the funniest and best moments of the series so far.

Shona is fiercely competitive and wants to win the £1000 prize for the steward who does best on the course, and she mocks Sebastian expecting he will wind up getting sacked. But Sebastian notices that Ms Betjeman acts differently after they all have lunch, and from this deduces her fondness for alcohol.

At the evening's ceilidh (this series, already pretty much as Scottish as possible, reaches peak Scottishness with this scene) Sebastian plies her with drink until Captain Duff appears suddenly and it turns out that Ms Betjeman and Captain Duff are old flames.

"My wife's gone. She didn't understand me. She's from Sri Lanka."

With Steve out shagging Heather all night, he returns to his hotel room in the morning to find Captain Duff and Ms Betjeman in it, and Sebastian in possession of polaroids proving what they got up to. The exam gets cancelled, saving Sebastian's neck, but to his annoyance Shona gets awarded the £1000 prize anyway. So it seems at the end that everyone is happy, except... Heather dumps Steve in the morning to go to Iceland (the country not the supermarket) to take up a role in her family's fish business. Ooh, fish, I don't blame her. Nom nom nom.


3. winch

Sebastian returns from a holiday in Florida to find Steve has bought an engagement ring and is on the verge of taking his current relationship to the next level - a relationship that hadn't started when Sebastian left for his holiday.

Shona arrives in an even worse mood than usual, and Sebastian quickly provokes her into the "ultimate sanction" - giving him a Chineese Burn (SIC). It is quickly clear to us - but not to Sebastian - that the object of Steve's affections is none other than Shona Spurtle.

"Steve, have you laid your hands on my jugs?"
"Ah, well..."
"Of water!"

Captain Duff is the first to reveal to Sebastian that there was an "Air Scotia rave" the previous night, providing him with his first clues as to what happened in his absence.

The secondary plotline kicks off when it is discovered that Sebastian forgot to arrange for the in-flight meal to be delivered to their plane before takeoff, and so Steve and Sebastian are forced to improvise using the contents of the duty free bags from his holiday. This fools Shona for a while, but when she finds the empty bags she threatens Sebastian with the sack.

This causes Steve and Sebastian to blame each other and they have a shouting match in front of the passengers, during which Steve's secret comes out. Friends again, Steve spills the beans by way of a flashback to the night before - a flashback very heavily tinted to Steve's point of view. And it was not so much a "rave" as a very, very '90s club disco.

Shona heard all of Steve's bean-spilling (because she was in the toilet cubicle right behind the gossiping pair) and this prompts the telling of her side of the story - cue an alternative flashback.

"The only thing you got on last night, Steve, was my tits. Metaphorically speaking!"

Sebastian blackmails Shona into forgetting about the catering mishap in return for his not gossiping about Shona and Steve. Since this is the worst possible moment for it (not that there would have been a good moment), Steve proposes to Shona and is, of course, brutally rejected.

Captain Duff comes in just as Sebastian is passing the ring back to Steve.

"Oh, I see congratulations are in order. I hope you'll both be very happy. Have we landed yet? Oh bugger!"

4. choob

This is to all intents and purposes a remake of the pilot, although there are some noteworthy differences. Captain Duff's role has been expanded to be more in line with his level of madness seen in the rest of the series proper, including mistaiking the crew room for a restaurant and then, later, forgetting his own name.

Some extra gags have been squeezed in, such as Shona's fish phobia brought on by Sam and Ella (say it out loud) - her fishmonger boyfriend who ran off with her sister.

Steve's Nationalist ex is even more exaggerated than before, eating haggis and demanding Steve read her Rabbie Burns's poetry.

Shona fights back far more against Hal the sexist director here (recast from Alex Norton to Ronnie Letham, who wasn't in Taggart nearly as much) and he appears increasingly bruised as the episode goes on. Sebastian's sexist remarks against Shona remain from the pilot and feel somewhat out of character for him when in the context of the main series - yes, he and Shona have an antagonistic relationship, but I don't recall him slapping her arse in any of the other eps.

I can't be absolutely sure, but I think the part with the news report is just straight-up reused footage from the pilot, as it looks exactly the same save for cutting Hal out of the scene, which would have been required to disguise the recasting.


5. dug

For unexplained reasons, Scotland is entering the Eurovision Singing Competition on its own, and so Sebastian has put himself forward for the "Song For Europe" contest. He gets Steve on board by saying "there'll be loads of girls there" but then has to confess that he hasn't written a song yet - only the title "Pif Paf Pof."

Captain Duff enters dressed as a clown, but for a change this is not due to him being mad. The plane has been chartered by Scottish rock star "Guy Wersch" (Peter Blake) to host a party for his 9 year old daughter and her friends. Shona is starstruck but Steve and Sebastian can only think of the nightmare of looking after 30 kids for the duration of the flight.

To make matters even worse, one of them is going to have to wear a "Shuggy McGurk" (the Air Scotia mascot) dog costume. We get a classic instant reversal (of the variety known to the TV Tropes wiki as a Gilligan Cut) when Sebastian says

"What sad old loser wid be thick enough to don thon getup?"

Shona faints as soon as Guy arrives. The daughter "Auroraborealis" is incredibly obnoxious and precocious, and is obsessed with financial matters as if she were an adult accountant - for instance getting Steve to read to her from the Financial Times.

Steve and Sebastian desperately try to come up with lyrics for their Eurovision song while avoiding the pandemonium of the children's party. Even Guy wants to avoid it, and spends time with Shona, who is trying to seduce him in increasingly blatant ways.

Surprisingly, this seems to succeed and Guy asks Shona to come and live with him... but he actually means as a nanny for Auroraborealis. The crushing of her dream causes Shona to flip out and she kicks Guy in the balls so hard that he plants his face into the birthday cake.

This is the end of the main plot, but the best bit is still to come - the performance of Pif Paf Pof by Steve and Sebastian, with Shona and Captain Duff as backing vocalists. Captain Duff gets a bit confused.

"Pof Pif... Oh bugger!"

It then cuts back to the steward's room at the airport where Sebastian is getting drunk after their receiving "nil points" (unlike in the Father Ted Eurovision episode, this happens off-screen). Steve sums it up:

"They hated us, we were crap."

Now this may simply be a cosmic coincidence but it does seem to me that, many years later, The High Life inspired a real-world Eurovision song. The theme and choreography of the UK's 2007 entry, Flying the Flag by Scooch, bears more than a little resemblance to the title sequence, although perhaps not quite as good as that. Still, they did get 19 points (12 of which were from Malta) and that is not only 19 more than Steve and Sebastian achieved but also 14 more than Ireland got that year.


6. dunk

While dug is easily the best-remembered of the series thanks to the Pif Paf Pof song, the best episode is actually this last one.

The first scene is a fairly typical one of another bumpy plane landing courtesy of Captain Duff, but then it cuts to "Stoat's Biscuits" where Professor Agnes Wormit (Molly "Hazel the McWitch" Weir) is being held hostage by English biscuit manufacturer Vincent Stoat (played by Peter "Ballard from Rumpole of the Bailey" Blythe) and interrogated for her "secret formula." Blythe's performance throughout the ep as a biscuit-obsessed megalomaniac is so OTT it is beyond panto, and yet it works perfectly!

Then we are introduced to 1960s Batman-style scene transitions (with a plane instead of the Bat-signal). This isn't just breaking the normal series format, it's shattering it into a thousand pieces.

Back on the plane, Stoat's henchmanny Gordon Ferret reports to his boss (using a primitive '90s mobile telephone) that he has stolen a floppy disc containing the formula from the professor's London laboratory. However it then transpires that he misplaced it during the bumpy landing.

While cleaning the plane, Shona finds the floppy disc and gives it to Steve to hand in to the lost property department (obviously none of our regular characters are aware of its significance yet). Steve thinks the disc might have a computer game on it and intends to keep it. He puts it into their computer and brings up the secret formula, while at the same time Sebastian conveniently gets the required exposition of the kidnap and theft from the newspaper.

A series of events then arranges it so that Shona ends up with both the disc and Ferret's calling card with "lost blank floppy disc" written on it, so she sets out to return the disc to (so she thinks) its rightful owner.

Meanwhile Ferret returns and, convinced they have the disc, he kidnaps Steve and Sebastian and takes them to Stoat's Biscuits. Sebastian immediately recognises Stoat as "the Machiavellian kingpin behind this kidnap caboodle" but he is unsuccessful in talking their way out of danger because he is really just panicking and saying the first things that come into his head.

Shona arrives so Stoat gets Ferret to put Steve and Sebastian with the professor - on the roof of the building. There is a running gag where Steve and Sebastian keep escaping from Ferret's handcuffs really easily - it all adds to the increasing silliness.

Instead of escaping using the ventilation (as is traditional) they, and Professor Wormit, fall into it and wind up back in Stoat's main room where he now has Shona prisoner and the disc in his hands. Just when you think it can't get any sillier, Stoat explains his plan to them, Bond villain stylee, except he does so by giving them a presentation with musical backing and a selection of biscuits on a conveyor belt.

He wants the perfect recipe for making Tablet. This baffles the regular characters (and is not a million miles away from the twist at the end of One of our Dinosaurs is Missing, but who cares because it works), so Professor Wormit gives her own presentation (with slideshow and bagpipe music accompaniment) about why making "flawless Tablet" is so difficult.

Stoat then says they know too much and must die, before leaving Ferret to guard them while he goes for something to eat.

"Never murder on an empty stomach."

Shona talks to Ferret and learns that he only works for Stoat because Stoat controls his supply of Bourbon biscuits, and "nobody takes biscuit addiction seriously in this country."

Stoat returns just as Ferret is on the verge of being turned against him. He has the first batch of the Tablet with him, and a case full of Bourbons to ensure Ferret's loyalty. He orders Ferret to shoot the others but then a man in black crashes through the skylight into the room and duels with Stoat using giant whisks. And why not? Batman-style SFX captions are superimposed over the ensuing brawl.

The fight ends when the police come in and arrest Stoat and Ferret, and the man in black is revealed to be Captain Duff. This is the absolute apex of his character, as in answer to their shocked calling out of his name he says

"Well yes I'm Captain now, but before I joined Air Scotia I was merely Duff, 2629564 of the SAS. And frankly when you've done it once it's like falling off a dog... log... bicycle!"

He gives the disc with the formula back to Professor Wormit, along with a box of Milk Tray.



See you all at the weekend for the best Caturday Night of the year!