The reviews are in for the latest Jane Austen-themed costume drama, and they’re raves: “Completely captivated.” “Work of genius.” “Intelligently made, beautifully acted, wonderfully scripted.” “Bloody brilliant.”
I speak, of course, of British Airways’ new airline safety video, “May We Haveth One’s Attention,” which has managed the rare feat of transforming the obligatory review of seatbelt protocol and crash-landing procedures into a YouTube hit that has notched more than 900,000 views—and more than 1,000 mostly admiring comments--in just two weeks.*
The delightfully silly five-minute film strings together scenes that initially look straight out of Bridgerton, Downton Abbey, Outlander, and pretty much any Austen adaptation—right up until the action is interrupted by a uniformed British Airways employee offering friendly yet firm advice on safety procedures.
The witty juxtapositions provide further evidence—were any required by now--for the cultural ubiquity of Austen-movie tropes: A corset-tightening session gives way to a lesson on the use of oxygen masks. A Regency marriage proposal is cut short when the heroine’s head is turned by a handsome flight attendant. And, in the pièce de résistance for Janeites, a dark-haired hottie striding across the grass in a rather familiar-looking billowy white shirt and tall boots is intercepted by an airline employee carrying a life jacket. There’s even a happy ending, as the Regency hero secures his heroine’s heart by suavely demonstrating the brace position.
The production values are impeccable: Location shooting in two stately homes, direction by Sharon Maguire (Bridget Jones’ Diary, so she knows from her Austen homages), and costuming by three-time Oscar winner Jenny Beavan. According to the charming behind-the-scenes featurette—yes, this five-minute safety video has a three-minute “Making of” accompaniment—the performers are a mix of professional actors and actual airline employees.
“May We Haveth One’s Attention” is not the first creative sally in the uphill battle to tear passengers’ eyes away from their phones long enough to impart potentially life-saving information. As the Guardian pointed out, last year’s BA safety video featured celebrity cameos, including from the newest Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa, while Air New Zealand’s 2012 Lord of the Rings version (“Welcome aboard this Air Middle Earth flight”) is a classic of this rather peculiar genre. (Let’s just say that life-jacket operating instructions--at 2:12--have never seemed more risqué.) It was such a hit that they followed up with a Hobbit-themed one two years later.
Alas, no matter how enticing the safety video, it can’t magically turn the experience of airline travel into anything but a hassle, as one YouTube commenter noted. “If BA [p]ut half of the expense and creativity into their food and flight comfort that they did into this video,” wrote @deathvalleydavid, “I’d still be flying them.”
* Many thanks to Marian Wilson Kimber for bringing the video to my attention.
I literally--3 hours ago--got off a BA flight from Heathrow where this was shown (tho' I'd already seen it before). I had no ability to tighten my corset: there was no leg room or rib room or bosom room to spare. I actually wanted to stand up in Oeconomy class and say, firmly, that Regency ladies wore STAYS not CORSETS, but felt that somehow that would ruin the fine ambiance of tiktokking, doomscrolling, and bad-movie-watching. I did not feel that my seat companions found the vid entertaining, to judge from the action of their thumbs....but i found it cute, though not as wonderful as the LOTR ones. BA's chicken tikka masala is pretty good when you are hungry.....