Was Famalam Any Good?

I Re-Watched a Sketch Show and Maaan Do I Have Thoughts

When I took up reading again 2 years ago, the first book I decided upon was Beaton But Unbowed, the autobiography of Desmond’s star Norman Beaton. I don’t really know what drew me to it, but I came away from it with a much bigger appreciation of the hard-fought miracle that is Black British comedy (also came away with the knowledge that Desmond did a loooooooot of f*ckin’ in his day… like a lot, he really goes into detail).

The story of comedy in Black Britain is one filled with painful rejections, unaired pilots, and promising shows that were brutally axed after one season because the mostly white TV execs just didn’t get them. But regardless of their struggles, Black comedy creatives have shone through the fog and given us some true classics, both in traditional TV and through utilizing YouTube and social media. From Beaton’s 1976 TV big break, The Fosters to 1991’s The Real McCoy to Daniel Lawrence Taylor’s 2024 gem Boarders, we’ve been blessed with truly great comedies from Black British minds; but of all the shows we’ve gotten, there isn’t one quite like Famalam.

First aired in 2017, BBC Three’s Famalam was the thought-baby of writer Akemnji Ndifornyen and directed by Tom Marshall, following a proud tradition of Black British sketch shows like The Lenny Henry Show, Little Miss Jocelyn, The Stephen K Amos Show, and The Javone Prince Show. Famalam managed to generate a good amount of buzz, earning itself a 3-season run with a main cast of talented Black actors like Samson Kayo, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Vivienne Acheampong, John MacMillan, Tom Moutchi, Roxanne Sternberg, and Danielle Vitalis.

However, despite the ridiculously talented players and its memorable sketches, Famalam isn’t always remembered all that fondly. While many recognize the achievement of even getting a Black sketch show off the ground in this media climate, the feeling among many Black viewers of the show is that it was somewhat of a missed opportunity, having one too many sketches that felt like they were laughing at us and not with us; and to some, failing to tread new ground with the subjects the show would satirize.

With this in mind, I decided that for the sake of the culture (actually because I’m procrastinating from continuing Sex and the City season 2) I would rewatch all three series of Famalam and highlight some sketches that really worked for me, as well as a few that didn’t. I figured this would be the best way for me to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the show as well as answer the vital question: Was Famalam Any Good?

Sketches That Worked

Prince Alyusi Islassis

Remember all those scams centered around a Nigerian prince who urgently needs your bank details so he can give you a bunch of money for no reason? Well, what if it wasn’t a scam? This recurring sketch got multiple laughs from me largely due to its subversiveness and simplicity, but also Samson Kayo’s performance as the prince. His catchphrase, “But h-why?!” delivered in the whiniest Nigerian accent he could muster makes the whole thing funnier than it has any right to be, and although it kinda runs out of steam for me in later episodes, it’s still a genuinely funny subversion of a well-worn stereotype and showed that Famalam was capable of finding the smart within the silly.

The Last People on Earth

In a post-apocalyptic Earth, we find that only two people have survived: a Black man (Tom Moutchi), and a Black woman (Vivienne Acheampong). However, before they can even think of beginning the repopulation of the planet, the last Black man on Earth needs to know if any white women survived first. It’s a surprisingly brutal, yet darkly funny piece of honest satire that crosses over into the “This could really happen” part of my brain. It’s funny thinking about how many of the show’s later sketches would struggle to balance comedy with social critique when this one managed it perfectly.

Fantastic Egusi…

Those of us who grew up in Nigerian households can attest that Nollywood is incredibly special. There’s something about the pure melodrama of it, the jarringly loud synths, the to-the-point dialogue (with random Americanisms dotted throughout), and the insanely imaginative and ridiculous plotlines that keep you unironically engaged right up until the last TO GOD BE THE GLORY.

The Fantastic Egusi sketches capture that magic wonderfully with a series of recurring trailers for Nollywood films, television shows, and music videos that nail the beautiful chaos of Nollywood, all while giving us some magnificent actor names like Babatunde Warrington and Stainless Unblemished Principled Fortitude Virtuous Wisdom Unlimited. These sketches feel like they were written by people who actually grew up with Nollywood and they’re all the funnier for it.

Eulogy for Nathan

Upon rewatching, one of the more underrated aspects of Famalam is the extras, and their importance is shown perfectly in this sketch. While the premise of showcasing a rapper’s nasty lyrics during their funeral is funny by itself, it’s the extras that make this sketch even more hilarious as they play it completely straight, shedding tears of mourning as the dumbest possible lyrics ring out. There’s so much that makes this sketch, from the lyrics to the mourners, to Acheampong crying at the pulpit, to John Macmillan’s character being the only one to notice just how inappropriate this all is.

Mother’s Appeal

This might be one of the biggest laughs I had during my rewatch. Honestly, I’d recommend you go watch this (S2 ep1) before I spoil it for you. In a desperate TV appeal, a tearful mother asks the public to tell her what happened to her son, only to reveal that her son is right next to her and she wants to know how her sweet little boy became a fed. It’s one of those moments that just makes perfect sense as soon as the punchline hits you, and you find yourself laughing both at the shock of it and also because you agree (no shade to Black policeman but also shade). Roxanne Sternberg sells the plot twist perfectly while Moutchi squirms next to her, and her delivery of “BABYLON FI DEAD” is the cherry on top for a great sketch.

This Slave One.

A lot of sketch shows pride themselves on their ability to walk that tightrope between funny and offensive (often unsuccessfully), leaving you with those “I shouldn’t be laughing” feelings. While Famalam would come to fall foul of that line, in this sketch at least they nailed it.

The sketch depicts a scene we’ve seen over and over in films and TV shows, slaves humming in perfect harmony as a symbol of their strength, soul, and fortitude through the worst Black trauma, the twist here however, is that Acheampong’s character is a *terrible* singer. I think I remember this being a slightly controversial one when it came out, but the initial shock of Acheampong’s terrible singing as well as the reactions of her cast mates and extras make it impossible not to laugh at this ingenious subversion.

Every Single Aunty Sketch

Of all the recurring sketches Famalam has in its locker, this has to be one of the few that never once gets old. West African aunties are majestic women, full of weird, funny, and sometimes frustrating contradictions and always at passive-aggressive war with each other over things that seem small to us but mean the world in their circles.

Famalam captures so many nuanced but familiar quirks, from the way they constantly try to outbrag each other, to the way they compete to take food home from functions to the way that some of them have become progressive enough to accept their LGBTQ+ family members but are still baffled by the concept of things like veganism. Famalam never misses with these ones and they’re made all the more hilarious by the performances of Ikumelo, Acheampong, and Sternberg (who has this really funny way of contorting her face when playing her aunty) as well as an army of older African women equally committed to the bit.

Stratford Soldiers vs E-19 Posse

The second of the recurring sketches that never loses its effectiveness for me. While not necessarily the most original subversion, Moutchi and Macmillan shine as two rival crew leaders sending back-and-forth videos at each other, each time finding that they have a shared love of the arts, baking, mental health, the environment, etc. It’s a reliable format that you could easily see on YouTube back in the Mandem on the Wall/Smokey’s Barbers days and it never fails to make me laugh when Macmillan’s character says something innocuous that send Moutchi into a violent rage. Also, shout out to the extras who play the background crew members, they’re hilarious.

Drill-O-Gram

How could I not include this one? Drill-O-Gram is the perfect sketch. A genius concept, funny execution, random enough to go viral completely out of context, and most importantly, the song’s kind of a banger. The highest praise you can give is that it genuinely makes you wish that a Drill-O-Gram was a real thing, and in an industry where a viral clip from a show can make or break its survival and legacy (see the Backstreet Boys scene in Brooklyn 99), there’s a very good reason that this one is still being shared years later.

Honourable Mentions

Traditional Girls

To Catch A Wasteman

Auditions

Salvation Sunday

I’m Idris Elba

Patrick Okongwe Okongwe

So now that you’ve gotten a general idea of the sketches that displayed the strengths of Famalam, we, unfortunately, must look at the ones that showed its glaring weaknesses.

What Didn’t Work

Midsomer Motherfuckin’ Murders

Let’s start with a light one. I kinda get why Midsomer Motherfuckin’ Murders would be fun to write. A mixture of the rural British murder procedurals with 80s African-American blaxploitation sounds pretty good on paper but the execution just never lands for me. I have no inherent beef with a Black British sketch show satirizing African-American pop culture but the way it’s done here just feels surface-level and unnecessarily crass (is having a fetish for old white women a trope in Blaxploitation movies?). Samson Kayo’s performance gets some small kekes while Phil Wang is always funny, but the actors can’t save a sketch that just feels lazy. There are a few moments when Famalam attempts to poke fun at cultures that might be outside of the writers’ wheelhouse and it can reeeeally show.

Hair Shop

Famalam wasn’t always great at social commentary. While there are moments of funny satire, some of the sketches that actively set out to make specific social critiques about Black British behaviour feel ham-fisted, painfully basic, or just a bit ill-judged.

In this sketch we have a Black hair shop owner pretending to be an Indian man (this show is kinda weird about Asians at times) to sell hair products to Black women. When he’s called out on it, he outright monologues about how Black people don’t buy from Black businesses and that’s why he pretends to be Indian. The sketch ends with the customer (a Black woman) saying that cultural appropriation is wrong, before enthusiastically buying a wig made of Chinese hair as if this is a major contradiction that invalidates her point. It’s an attempt at satire that isn’t really funny and makes a slightly misguided point in an unsubtle way.

The Plastic Surgery Ones

Just not great. The basic concept is an incredibly vain woman who gets way too much plastic surgery, she starts each recurring sketch primping and preening while the camera focuses in on her comically large proportions, the sketch usually ends with someone noticing that her enhanced features are acting strangely before they explode. There’s not much to say about this one, it’s just gross-out humour while not being original, inventive, or clever.

Pretty Much Most of Series 3

The very nature of a show comprised entirely of short sketches means that there will inevitably be some hits and some misses. For me, my enjoyment of the show depends on both the ratio of hits to misses and how good the hits and how bad the misses are. With that being said, series 3 of Famalam has a loooooooooooot of misses. I’m not sure what happened behind the scenes, but there is a marked drop in quality in the third season. A lot of the sketches just aren’t as creative, incisive, or subversive as the ones that came before, it feels like they’re trying to speak more to the audience, but I’m not exactly sure who they think their audience is. It’s not necessarily that most of the sketches are bad, it’s more that not enough of them are good while the majority are as bland as the White People Chicken sketch.

*Sigh* Jamaican Countdown

This is somehow worse than I remember it being.

I won’t go too much in-depth about just how bad Jamaican Countdown is because there was so much discourse on it, and the reason it’s so fuckin’ dreadful is tied to my final evaluation of the series as a whole.

This sketch kinda feels like Famalam gave up. There’s no subversion here, no wit or inventiveness, just every lazy, crass stereotype about Jamaicans rolled out one by one. It’s no surprise that the Jamaican foreign minister and the Global Jamaica Diaspora Counsel complained about it, the sketch is just so overtly insulting it feels like a 14-year-old white kid wrote it.

Also, Famalam is kinda weird about Jamaicans in general, not to the degree of Jamaican Countdown, but a lot of the love and nuance that goes into the sketches about British African life isn’t really found in the Caribbean sketches. They have one or two funny moments but the show often feels like it’s laughing at Jamaicans rather than with them. Idk maybe there are Jamaicans that disagree with me and thought Jamaican Countdown was dope, let me know.

So now that we have an idea of what makes a good Famalam sketch and what makes a Jamaican Countdown, I can finally answer the central question:

Was Famalam actually any good?

My answer is…

Yeah, it was really good actually.

Until it wasn’t.

When you consider the hit-or-miss nature of a sketch show, the first two seasons of Famalam are remarkably consistent. There’s a wealth of clever, funny, and subversive sketches that are specific to the experiences of the millennial Black British diaspora, and the show put together a phenomenally talented cast of actors. The best sketches are the ones that feel like they’re for us, by us; the sketches that feel like they’re written from the unique perspective of a Black Brit and therefore are able to depict or satirize the mini-quirks, and sub-cultures within our shared experience. It’s these sketches that feel like they actually have a direction and a purpose that justifies them being made.

The sketches that work significantly less well are the ones that make me wonder who exactly is meant to be laughing. Jamaican Countdown is a shit sketch because I can’t imagine 99.9% of British Jamaicans finding humour in it, quite frankly if you told me a David Baddiel/Martin Forde type of white comedian wrote it, I would absolutely believe you (maybe not David, not enough blackface to entice him). The Aunty sketches are great because a lot of British Africans can see their aunties reflected in those sketches in a way that feels non-judgemental as if we’re all in on the joke together. The problem with series 3 is that it feels perspective-less, it feels judgemental, so many of the sketches feel like the broadest possible stereotypes of Black people written for the broadest possible audience. I found this to be a bit confusing until I read this quote in a Guardian piece featuring series creator Akemnji Ndifornyen and director Tom Marshall.

Ultimately, the pair say they wanted to make something that would appeal to both Ndifornyen’s friends in east London and Marshall’s in his hometown of Middlesbrough. Something that would happily fit in alongside their comic heroes, rather than being siloed off into a racialised sub-genre of comedy.

Yeah, this one reeeeeally crystalized things for me.

I’ll round this piece off with this:

Famalam is a great sketch show, that more than deserves to be thought of among the trailblazers that came before it. However, at its worst, the show feels conflicted, almost as if it worries about coming across as too insular, too Black, and its response is to play to the wider “Middlesbrough” audience, to broaden itself, and to avoid being “racialized”. This is understandable, a sketch show that’s “too Black” risks alienating a majority white audience and majority white TV execs, and… to be honest… some of the quotes in that article feel like that choice might not be about self-preservation. Maybe it’s unfair, maybe it’s unfortunate, but to me, Famalam is undoubtedly a Black comedy sketch show, and while its creator may wish it could just be *a sketch show* like Bo Selecta or Little Britain, I think the show was at its best when it embraced its unique identity.