Holiday Fest 2024

As readers of these pages know, I dearly love The Goes Wrong Show.  It's a BBC-TV series made by the same people who created The Play That Goes Wrong, which I've written about on this site a few times.  It was a hit in London and Broadway and toured to Los Angeles where I saw it -- a play ostensibly put on by a mediocre theatre company, the Cornley Drama Society, in the middle of England where pretty much everything...well, goes wrong.  The show was such a success that they've done several follow-up plays.  And also this series.

The TV series is done by the same people, once again playing members of this same mediocre Cornley Drama Society from the middle of England.  And supposedly they put on a new half-hour play each week (a different genre each time) that is broadcast throughout England.  The shows are a joy and often remarkable.  A couple of them are tour-de-force: one is a courtroom drama called "A Trial to Watch, and the other (a Tennessee Williams-style play set in the hot, steamy Deep South titled "90 Degrees") is almost Shakespearean in its physical comedy, taking slapstick ito an "oh-my-god" level.  

If you don't like physical humor, The Goes Wrong Show is not for you.  Just know, though, that this is physical comedy done as an art form by brilliant craftsmen at the peak of their skills.

The first season should be available on YouTube, and most of season two can be found on a site called DailyMotion.com.  You can also get it on Amazon Prime, though it's not included and has a separate fee.

This is their Christmas special from Season One, "The Spirit of Christmas" (with my favorite part, the 'Nistle and Nostle Song.')  Where pretty much everything...well, goes wrong.

[UPDATE:  Weirdly, when you click on this video below, it said it can't play in this browser.  However, I've found a different link which hopefully will work.  But if not, clicking on this link here will take you directly to the video on YouTube.]