Cabin Pressure recording: Xinzhou and Yverdon-les-Bains

WARNING: Spoilers ahead!

Now that I can safely assume that everybody who wanted to has heard all of series 4 of Cabin Pressure, I can tell a few more things about the recording (also now that I've listened to Xinzhou and Yverdon-les-Bains I remembered some things that occurred at the recording).

The X episode wasn't that spectacular in terms of bloopers because it only featured the regular cast and they are visibly at ease with each other. Nonetheless, Finnemore was the first to get a line wrong. At that he said that he never wants to be the first, to which Allam replied in his best Douglas voice "and yet you're always the first to go". When Stephanie Cole fluffed a line she swore a bit, and her swear word of choice was "fiddly-arses", about which Allam and Cumberbatch teased her for the rest of the afternoon. There was also one time – I think it was in Xinzhou rather than Yverdon-les-Bains – when Cumberbatch had to turn away from the mic laughing and almost missed his line because of that. Apart from the aforementioned snowman shoving, they also did many other things visibly, eg the snowball fight (all that was missing were some real snowballs) or the opening and closing of doors or even when they helped each other out of their imaginary jackets. I think Allam also stabbed an imaginary button for talking to ATC. Afterwards they rerecorded Martin's heart to heart with Maxi in Vaduz and one other scene with Maxi – the laughs are a bit stifled there because, as David Tyler said, if you understand what's going on in this scenes just from these few scentences, you've got to be on drugs. Speaking of Vaduz, Finnemore had to recap it because Theresa is mentioned in Xinzhou and when he said that "Martin has finally found someone to go to Duxford Air Museum with", the audience "oooooooh"-ed. Also, Cumberbatch did a fist pump in the background and looked visibly pleased with Martin's private life. Finnemore also mentioned that Arthur came third in a crazy golf tournament (which isn't mentioned in any episode), which got him a round of applause, at which Finnemore looked really proud. One thing that did surprise me upon hearing the episode was how loud we were when Martin explained the rules of fizz-buzz. I didn't realise how much we've laughed at that. I'd have thought we were louder in the scene where Gerti plays as well, but apparently not. That scene was magic, though.

Y had more memorable scenes, what with the greater cast and thus more possibilities to fluff lines. In an interview, Finnemore described the dragon fruit scene as one of his two favourite scenes to record, and he really stood there almost breathing fire and flapping his wings arms and generally giving his best impression of a dragon. I think they needed to gos for that. It was glorious. Another instance of lovely visible acting was when Cole gave Finnemore an imaginary jab into the arm. The other scene where I'm amazed that the audience doesn't drone out the actors was with Douglas and Herc. We were in stitches when Allam arrived at the "whilst in flight". Martin's interview was a bit tricky. I don't think they rerecorded parts of it, but they had to restart many lines. Due to technical difficulties (probably too many laughs or something like that, though one time they had to rerecord a few lines of dialogue because Cumberbatch was speaking too loud) they repeated a scene in the flight deck when Carolyn says hello to Herc and Douglas answers with "nevermind Herc". For that, Anthony Head made his way slowly to the mic and upon Allam's line turned around and went back to his seat with hanging shoulders. In another rerecorded scene with Herc they did a bit of shuffling around until they found their previous positions at the mic, which was very funny to watch. They also rerecorded some scenes for Wokingham. One was the argument between Caitlin and Martin about their jobs, which they did in a normal version and a more angry version – the difference was striking. They used the less aggressive version in the end, probably because the actor who played Elise did the stand-in for Caitlin, so they couldn't use the whole scene but only Cumberbatch's lines and the tone had to fit the presumably less aggressive original version. That was one thing that made the recording very interesting from a technical point of view. There's another scene where you can easily spot that it's rerecorded in the X and Y session because the laughter is much louder than in the rest of Wokingham. In that scene, Carolyn proposes to take Arthur to Mrs Crieff. In the background, Finnemore's Arthur grin grew wider and wider – it was so comical that we laughed at his grin as much as we laughed at the dialogue.

Generally, it was really interesting to see how the actors got visibly into character when they went up to the mic. They not only sound different, they even look different and you can always tell the moment they get in character. Roger Allam sounds pretty much the same except that normally his voice isn't dripping with sarcasm, which makes a huge difference. Cumberbatch is hugely variable in his voice and Martin has a slightly higher voice than Cumberbatch's normal voice, so that difference is pretty pronounced. Anthony Head is always cast in roles where he has to polish his accent, so he normally speaks in a different accent, while the other actors use their own accents (I have read that Head brought sunglasses for the beach scenes in Vaduz, so he also seems to love recording Cabin Pressure). Finnemore sounds surprisingly unlike Arthur, unless he's excited. Then he sounds like a somewhat excited (ie normal) Arthur. Stephanie Cole sounds completely different in her normal voice. Try to find an interview with her, it's really lovely to hear her normal speaking voice. Sadly, she had to go soon after the recording, but I've got autographs on my posters from all the other actors.

In the last scene they cut our reaction – because there definitely was a huge gasp and a few murmurs of protest at that cliffhanger. And let's face it, on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is one of those classic Who cliffhangers where they realised afterwards that they didn't have a proper ending for this week's episode and 10 is Reichenbach, this has got to be at least a 20. And now that it's aired it has such a sense of finality about it. Even though I'm really sad about it, my money is on Z being Zürich as the last episode ever. It's really obvious that the actors love Cabin Pressure and they give up free days or fit the recordings between other jobs even on the same day, but coordinating their schedules seems to be a huge problem. So while Finnemore has written this series so that he can adapt the next series to changes in the cast (or the cast staying the same), it really looks as if Cabin Pressure as we know it will be ending soon.

Under a link there are photos of my posters with autographs (the first poster is by andyprue, the second one by sweettasteofbitter).