Today's the day we try running MJN as a profitable business rather than a charitable sanctuary for rubbish pilots.

- Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, Cabin Pressure

Cabin Pressure is an award-winning radio comedy written by John Finnemore. It features the crew of MJN Air, a company that owns a single, small charter aircraft. MJN is thus not quite an airline, more an 'air dot' - and always on the verge of bankruptcy. Most of the episodes take place while the aircraft is flying to or from a new destination.

The airline consists of one elderly 16-seat aeroplane, a (fictional) Lockheed McDonnell 312, registered Golf Echo Romeo Tango India (G-ERTI), affectionately nicknamed 'Gerti'. This was acquired by Carolyn Knapp-Shappey as part of her divorce proceedings from her husband and she decided to form a charter airline, MJN - standing for My Jet Now - employing the very cheapest pilots that she could get.

Forced to spend lengthy periods of time sat in the same seats facing the same direction for hours on end, they often try to think up games to keep them entertained, or at least keep boredom at bay for a few more minutes. The crew spends considerable time working together in a comparatively confined space inside this small jet aircraft, and so the show is as much about how they cope with each other as ferrying their passengers to various destinations. According to the Radio 4 website, for the crew of MJN Air,

No job is too small, but many jobs are too difficult.

Crew

The four employees of MJN Air are:

Carolyn Knapp-Shappey (Stephanie Cole OBE)

The owner of Gerti, founder and CEO of MJN Air and mother of Arthur Shappey. She often is on the flight acting as stewardess and cabin attendant in order to keep an eye on her son, her pilots and the customers. None of whom she trusts. Particularly her crew, who she often has to remind that MJN is a business and not a home for substandard pilots. She knows that running the airline is losing her money, but wishes to stay CEO of MJN as long as possible as she would rather be the CEO of an unsuccessful airline than a little old lady devoid of purpose.

Captain Martin Crieff (Benedict Cumberbatch CBE)

Captain Martin Crieff is the captain of the aircraft, which he captains. Yes, really. Martin is often annoyed that everyone boarding the plane always automatically assumes that co-pilot Douglas is the captain, but in fact it is Martin. He even has a large captain's hat to prove it. Anyone who meets Martin instantly discovers how much he desperately longs to pilot aeroplanes, and specifically be the captain, and won't be surprised to learn that this has been his burning ambition since he was six. Despite a complete lack of natural flying ability, his persistence and determination meant that he narrowly passed his flight certification on his seventh attempt and so is just about qualified enough to fly. He has nevertheless memorised the complete flight manual and tries to be by-the-book, only to be frequently frustrated and flustered by Douglas. He has little interest outside flying and his idea of the ideal first date is to ask a girl if she would like to go to Duxford Air Museum.

First Officer Douglas Richardson (Roger Allam)

Douglas is a highly experienced and effortlessly natural pilot who knows all the tricks in the book and delights in performing them. Talented and confident at seemingly everything, he was formerly a captain at the more prestigious airline Air England until he was caught smuggling and fired, leading to his working for MJN. Whenever MJN gets into trouble Douglas tends to come up with a way out - although he often is the cause of MJN getting into trouble in the first place.

Both Martin and Douglas are named after aircraft companies: Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas.

Arthur Shappey (John Finnemore)

Arthur is the flight attendant and Carolyn's 29-year-old son. He still lives with his mum. Arthur very much has a child's eye view of the world and is excited about everything. He is always happy and surprisingly enjoys apples. Everything in the world is brilliant - the only time he is known to describe something or someone as 'not brilliant' is when referring to his father. He constantly plays the game Yellow Car, which involves saying 'yellow car' whenever you see a yellow car¹.

Frequent Fliers

Other recurring characters who appear in more than one episode:

Hercules 'Herc' Shipwright (Anthony Head)

Herc is a senior captain at Air Caledonia. He used to be one of Douglas' colleagues when they both worked at Air England. His hobbies include a love of the opera and arguing with Carolyn, which he does at any opportunity. He does not like the countryside.

Mr Birling (Geoffrey Whitehead)

An obscenely wealthy and unpleasant rugby fan, he annually hires MJN to fly him to where the Six Nations final is being held. Arthur calls this 'Birling Day', which he enjoys despite the abuse as Mr Birling is a very generous tipper. Mr Birling flies MJN as Carolyn stocks his favourite - and expensive - drink, 25-year-old Talisker single-malt whisky, which Douglas delights in trying to sneakily steal in front of everyone.

Gordon Shappey (Timothy West)

Gordon is Carolyn's Australian ex-husband and Arthur's father. As Gerti's former owner, he is surprisingly desperate to get his old aeroplane back, presumably simply to spite Carolyn. He makes no effort to show affection for Arthur, who he often either ignores or lies to.

Princess Theresa of Lichtenstein (Matilda Ziegler)

Princess Theresa's younger brother, the king of Lichtenstein, attends school in England. Keenly interested in aeroplanes, she would have loved to become a pilot but instead is expected to work in the family business of being a member of Lichtenstein's royal family.

Karl (Series 1: Ewen MacIntosh, Series 4: Dan Tetsell)

Fritton Airfield's air traffic controller.

Destinations

Each episode is named after a destination of where the crew are travelling to or from, though the crew doesn't necessarily arrive there. Some episodes are set in Britain, in which case the crew doesn't always travel in Gerti.

Take Off: The Making of Cabin Pressure

Cabin Pressure was a radio series conceived by John Finnemore in the opening years of the 21st Century. An experienced writer for radio comedy, including for example That Mitchell and Webb Sound (2003-9), he came up with the idea of a sitcom based on a flight deck where the characters would be trapped together for extended periods. This was in part inspired by his father, who was a pilot. The plan had been to have two lead roles, the pilots, and two supporting characters, but after Stephanie Cole was cast as Caralyn he started expanding her role so that she was regularly onboard and not just based at Fritton. Finnemore has said on the characters of Martin and Douglas,

I started off with a louche, naturally authoritative captain and a try-hard first officer, but quickly reversed the roles. I don't remember taking it from Dad's Army⁴ but that's the obvious example.

After writing the pilot script, which had the working title 'Jet Lag', Finnemore used his comedy contacts to send it to producer David Tyler and Caroline Raphael, Radio 4's commissioning editor, both loved it, but Controller of Radio 4 Mark Damazer didn't find it funny. After much (cabin) pressure Damazer reluctantly approved making the show. Soon the perfect cast was formed, with multiple Olivier-award winning Roger Allam and up-and-coming actor Benedict Cumberbatch cast as Martin. This was before he was world famous, however he had already starred in films such Hawking (2004).

Despite some very positive reviews the first series had little initial impact on first broadcast. The second series won the Best Radio Comedy Award, which led to increased interest and publicity. Between the second and third series, though, Benedict Cumberbatch was cast and starred as Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock (2010-17), an Emmy-award winning performance broadcast in 180 territories worldwide that overnight garnered a vast number of fans interested in anything he was doing.

Finnemore has since described this change with the words,

We recorded live and there was a pretty good take-up for tickets. But the third series was post-Sherlock. Suddenly the audience was 90% female, mostly under 25 and they were queuing round the block. It was like Beatlemania. I was worried they just wanted to be in the same room as Benedict and that this would throw things off, but I was completely wrong. They listened and laughed at the other characters as much as they did at Martin. I suppose the sort of teenager who decides Sherlock Holmes is their idol is the sort of teenager who's going to enjoy 'Cabin Pressure'.

When the final episode was recorded, the BBC received 22,000 audience ticket requests, a record for a BBC radio comedy.

Landing Applause

Cabin Pressure won the 2011, 2013 and 2014 Best British Radio Sitcom award and in 2014 won the Comedy of the Year Award, becoming the very first radio programme to win, rather than a television show. John Finnemore also won a Writer's Guild Award for his work on Cabin Pressure. In 2020 the Radio Times listed their list of greatest Radio comedies ever, with Cabin Pressure eighth, just ahead of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, which was tenth⁵. This made John Finnemore the only writer to have two shows in the top ten, with other series he had written for also in the top twenty.