Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-01-25 02:10 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-01-25 02:10 pm
Entry tags:
Mischief Theatre Should Really Be Paying Me By This Point.
Having slid rapidly from 'enthusing about my new favourite show' to 'outright propaganda', I've written a Goes Wrong Show primer for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tv_talk. I thought I'd crosspost it here, in case anyone wants a general overview of my latest obsession, although I suspect my posts over the last month have already conveyed a lot of this!
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.
Who are the characters?
Each play has its own cast of characters, but the main characters are the fictional actors playing them. These 'actors' are consistent characters across the plays, which adds a fun extra layer to the comedy. If you just watch one episode, you can still enjoy the humour of everything falling apart. As you watch more, though, you get to know the fictional actors and learn to anticipate the specific ways they make things worse.
(And, if you're me, you end up writing a bunch of fanfiction about them.)
For a quick overview of the characters in the theatre company, and the particular problems each one brings to the table:
- Chris, the director, gets increasingly livid as things go wrong.
- Vanessa sticks firmly to the script and panics when she has to improvise.
- Robert is always determined to be the most important person in the scene and constantly feuds with the director.
- Sandra, dreaming of fame, tends to play up to the camera.
- Max never takes anything seriously and likes to play up to the audience.
- Annie throws herself into everything with enthusiasm; she's generally competent but can be a little too dedicated to her role.
- Dennis struggles to remember his lines or follow instructions, and consequently tends to be cast as animals or inanimate objects.
- Jonathan struggles to get onto the set at all.
- Trevor, the stage manager, works very hard and very unsuccessfully in a desperate effort to keep everything running smoothly.
Together, they're an absolute disaster and I love them.
How much of The Goes Wrong Show is there?
Just twelve episodes of thirty minutes each. The Goes Wrong Show was dropped by the BBC after the second series, but the episodes are largely self-contained and satisfying in themselves, so there's no sense of an overarching story cut short.
If you watch and enjoy the show, there are two one-hour television specials you might also want to seek out: Peter Pan Goes Wrong, and A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, both of which predate the show itself.
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.
tv_talk. I thought I'd crosspost it here, in case anyone wants a general overview of my latest obsession, although I suspect my posts over the last month have already conveyed a lot of this!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.
Who are the characters?
Each play has its own cast of characters, but the main characters are the fictional actors playing them. These 'actors' are consistent characters across the plays, which adds a fun extra layer to the comedy. If you just watch one episode, you can still enjoy the humour of everything falling apart. As you watch more, though, you get to know the fictional actors and learn to anticipate the specific ways they make things worse.
(And, if you're me, you end up writing a bunch of fanfiction about them.)
For a quick overview of the characters in the theatre company, and the particular problems each one brings to the table:
- Chris, the director, gets increasingly livid as things go wrong.
- Vanessa sticks firmly to the script and panics when she has to improvise.
- Robert is always determined to be the most important person in the scene and constantly feuds with the director.
- Sandra, dreaming of fame, tends to play up to the camera.
- Max never takes anything seriously and likes to play up to the audience.
- Annie throws herself into everything with enthusiasm; she's generally competent but can be a little too dedicated to her role.
- Dennis struggles to remember his lines or follow instructions, and consequently tends to be cast as animals or inanimate objects.
- Jonathan struggles to get onto the set at all.
- Trevor, the stage manager, works very hard and very unsuccessfully in a desperate effort to keep everything running smoothly.
Together, they're an absolute disaster and I love them.
How much of The Goes Wrong Show is there?
Just twelve episodes of thirty minutes each. The Goes Wrong Show was dropped by the BBC after the second series, but the episodes are largely self-contained and satisfying in themselves, so there's no sense of an overarching story cut short.
If you watch and enjoy the show, there are two one-hour television specials you might also want to seek out: Peter Pan Goes Wrong, and A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, both of which predate the show itself.
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.
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The YouTube playlist works for me in the US.
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...
I really wish there were some way to get you into things wot Dominic Allen has done, because while he may not be large he is loud and aggressive (or he plays it in media), and I enjoy him immensely as a media presence. Unfortunately most of what he's done where he can play up that persona is Actual Plays of tabletop RPGs, Let's Plays of board games, and the like. (Though if you were willing to spend and hour taste-testing one of the most iconic things he's done, herein he forces two of his friends to play a homebrewed version of Monopoly with himself, as Stalin, presiding over affairs.)
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Thank you for the recommendation! This led me to look up pictures of Dominic Allen and discovering he looks hauntingly familiar to me, and I cannot stop puzzling over this. I don't think there's anything I'd have seen him in! Maybe he reminds me of someone else?
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(Having rewatched the Communopoly video, I realize that he's actually relatively toned-down in that one. Maybe mollified by having received the power he seeks? The internet being what it is, I'm sure someone, somewhere must have put together a supercut of Dom going full megalomaniacal, but I have not found it this day.)
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Also if you're going to do more fic, I want situations with Jonathan and being unable to get into places.
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outright propagandaheartfelt attempts at sharing your fandom love with folks :Dno subject