TV TALK

If anyone's in the mood for something silly and fun, I'd like to recommend The Goes Wrong Show, which I discovered recently and absolutely fell in love with.




What is The Goes Wrong Show?

If you've heard of The Play That Goes Wrong, this comedy series is from the same theatre company, Mischief Theatre. Every thirty-minute episode is a new short play, performed by the determined but deeply unfortunate Cornley Drama Society. Every play goes as wrong as humanly possible.

In addition to being very funny, the plays are startlingly impressive technical achievements. These are genuine stage plays being filmed in front of a live audience, and making things 'go wrong' convincingly requires incredible pinpoint timing. So much hard work goes into messing everything up; it must be so much trickier than performing a play that goes right!

If you like Taskmaster, you might also enjoy this; they have a similar sense of people desperately struggling on with their mission while everything falls apart around them.


( Character overview below the cut. )


Where can I watch The Goes Wrong Show?

There's a good chance you'll be able to watch it at no cost! If you're in the UK, it's on BBC iPlayer (or DVD, if you don't have a television licence).

If you're outside the UK, I believe The Goes Wrong Show is officially available for free on the Lionsgate YouTube channel. As the videos are blocked for me, it's hard for me to check (let me know if it doesn't seem like the right link!), but I think this YouTube playlist should have all twelve episodes. I've heard from a couple of people based in the US that it's also on Amazon Prime there.

If I only ever watch one episode of this show, which would you recommend?

I love the whole show, and I think the first-listed episode ('The Spirit of Christmas') is a solid starting point. If you only ever watch one, though, the episode '90 Degrees' is a genuinely insane, extraordinary feat of performance. If you're wondering, they're not using CGI; they actually did that.