Shilpa Ganatra examines why BBC Three’s Famalam, a huge hit on social media, is making big waves with its third series
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hen Famalam came to our screens in 2018, British television was ready and waiting for a high-profile comedic exploration of the contemporary black British experience. It tapped the same vein as Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum and the 1990s ensemble show The Real McCoy – and another hit sketch show was long overdue. It was squarely on target on both counts. In the two years since then, the show has earned RTS and Bafta recognition for its driving force, Akemnji Ndifornyen (known as AK), and actor/ writers Samson Kayo and Gbemisola Ikumelo. The show’s clips are among the BBC’s most-viewed social content. “A large part of [it] was to appeal to black folk, and for us to have agency over our stories,” says AK of its crossover success. “Because it has served us first and has now gone broader, we’re thrilled.” With the cast completed by Vivienne Acheampong, John Macmillan, Tom Moutchi and Danielle Vitalis, the troupe continues the winning formula in the third series. AK believes it to be “the strongest yet”. Certainly, it’s found its stride: alongside familiar characters, such as the imposing gaggle of aunties and the Nigerian philanthropist Prince Alyusi, its 22-minute episodes are crammed with absurd situations pushed to their extreme and smart observations about life today. The opening gambit is a Narcos-style skit in which two avocado cartels meet to do a dangerous deal; “You know we are going to have to test it,” says one, chopping up a line of avocado to smear on toast and taking a rush-inducing bite. The new series sees a change of the core cast, with Roxy Sternberg stepping out and Vitalis stepping in. “All the cast are becoming harder to nail down, but Roxy had a massive job offer in the US and we couldn’t make it work,” explains Ben Caudell, an
A sketch show defying gravity executive producer of all three series. “So we’ve brought in Danielle, and she’s brilliant. The change has widened up our comic angles and it’s brought a freshness to it. It excites the writers and keeps us on our toes.” While the dominating type of comedy is irreverence, the smarts are in the density of ideas, the multilayered observations and unexpected left turns. “Life provided a wealth of inspiration to lampoon and satire,” says AK. It helps that, with a largely black British cast and crew, otherwise- sensitive topics that have bubbled to the foreground this past year are handled from a place of experience, rather than judgement. A case in point is a musical number,
Interracial Couples Selling Stuff, performed by AK as if channelling Errol Brown from Hot Chocolate. The everyday lyrics against the sexiness of the song is funny in itself, but poking fun at ad companies’ formulaic output notches up the comedy – even when the point is the same as that made by social media trolls. For AK, it’s a case of “classic message and messenger”, he says. “Two people can say the same thing, but, because one person has the licence to say it, it means different things.” That is a large part of its unique position in 2020’s TV landscape, explains Shane Allen, controller of BBC comedy commissioning: “People in mainstream white culture walk on eggshells in
