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Famalam is a new one-off pilot sketch show which – with a cast made up solely from black comedians – instantly picks on a lame trope of ‘reverse racism’, where a black cast of space marines moan about they’re about to enter a spaceship only to all be eaten because they’re black, as if they’re on the set of Alien… whose first casualty was white.
Cue a stack of terrible and unfunny sketches involving spoofs on pop videos, a Hawaii Five-O-type drama and a cop drama, all of which failed to raise any smiles.
However, there was half an idea with a Nigerian prince actually wanting to give away millions of pounds in gold – turning that concept on its head, and later, an office scene where regular office-type gripes reared their ugly heads in an intense situation, but they were the only sketches that actually gave me a chuckle in all of the 30 minutes through which I sat.
Out of all the BBC’s latest one-off comedies, this one clearly ticked the diversity box, but it didn’t tickle many funny bones.
Famalam isn’t available to pre-order on DVD and is unlikely to be at this point, given that it’s a one-off. If you missed it, you can watch it on BBC iPlayer for 30 days after transmission.
Score: 1/10
Director: Tom Marshall
Producer: Akemnji Ndifornyen
Cast:
Vivienne Acheampong
Gbemisola Ikumelo
Roxanne Sternberg
Samson Kayo
John Macmillan
Tom Moutchi
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.