Lucas And Walliams' COME FLY WITH ME Slips Into Overt Racism.

One of the BBC's flagship new series has started off very badly on the wrong foot, a major sequence of Come Fly With Me playing out in a fashion that is at best wildly racially insensitive or - where I personally believe it falls - overtly racist at worst.

Series creators David Walliams and Matt Lucas are no strangers to playing race based characters in their shows and have played in black and brown face on many occasions. But, for the most part, they've gotten away with it because the characters are parodies of 'types' and the comedy not necessarily based in their particular race. And also because they've typically been quite funny.

They haven't always stayed on the safe side of things - Matt Lucas' Little Britain mail order bride character Ting Ting was in horribly bad taste - but, for the most part, you could at least see what their intentions were and attribute mis-steps to a gag simply gone wrong. Not this time.

Of the five major Come Fly With Me characters played as other races only Walliams' Moses - a first class passenger liaison - is clearly benign. Of the others Lucas' Precious - a black coffee shop employee - and Taaj - a South Asian laborer - skirt boundaries of good taste but get off because the 'jokes' would work as well regardless of race. They're not particularly race based. But then the duo come out together as Nanako and Asuka, a pair of Japanese school girls obsessed with Martin Clunes.

Everything about the Nanako and Asuka bit is wrong. Everything. From the ridiculous, parody costumes to the simply grotesque make up effects used to alter their eyes - Lucas' were particularly bad - the whole thing is a horrible play on stereotype. And when you think it can't get worse they sing a song they've written for Clunes with Walliams chirping 'ting a ling a ling' while Lucas grunts unintelligibly in a way I presume is meant to sound Japanese.

Everything about this bit, absolutely everything, is based on the race of the characters and, golly, don't they look and sound stupid because they're Japanese. There's absolutely nothing else to it. Nothing at all. It's in hideously bad taste and should never have made it to air. And, taken in context of Asuka and Nanako, Ting Ting no longer feels like such a one-off mistake.

Given that the show as a whole simply isn't funny - I'd scarcely cracked a smile at all when these two popped up about two thirds of the way through - and it's like the duo have simply run out of ideas. Little Britain was funny when it was based on clever skewering of class and social strata and now it's like they can't be bothered with being clever any more and are content to simply point at whoever happens to be near them and say "Look at that guy, he's an idiot!" Little Britain was already just a pale shadow of itself when the US version was put together and Come Fly With Me is a big, big step down from that already low point. It's time to stop, boys. There's nothing left in the tank.