A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong

After the wonderful Peter Pan Goes Wrong, I was excited to see their take on a Christmas Carol. It isn't terrible, but it's not especially good either.

The premise appears to be that after being banned from the BBC, an acting troupe takes over a BBC production of A Christmas Carol.

I say this appears to be the premise because I only know that from reading it elsewhere. While watching I just saw them burst in and take over and I didn't see or hear any actual explanation of what was happening.

The humor retains much of the silliness of Peter Pan Goes Wrong and honestly, some very similar gags. But it is considerably less inspired. The only laugh out loud bits involve an actor who cannot read his lines and so has them written all over the set (including individual words on a bunch of grapes). It's very funny and clever, but 90% of the funniness and cleverness seems to have been expended on that 10-15 minutes worth of material.

While there are some good gags, nothing builds on anything else, so you get a moment of amusement and then it dies off, instead of each gag building on the next. I mean, there are a few callbacks, some pretty good, but overall the show just ... fails to launch.

Watchable but easy to ignore.

After last year's pratfalls with Peter Pan, the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society have been banished from the BBC, who have decided to use professional actors for their recreation of A Christmas Carol starring Derek Jacobi.

However the inept amateur dramatic society ambushed the BBC production and staged their own version with Dame Diana Rigg providing the narration. She is the aunt of one of the members of the drama society.

Again the production was a shambolic travesty with actors having trouble remembering the lines, props not working, stage hands walking into shot and an actor trying to sabotage the production so he can play the lead role of Scrooge.

The trouble is this was dreadful (unintentionally.) I did not laugh once. It is clear that the joke has worn thin after last year's production.

All very good but Peter Pan Goes Wrong is marginally better I really don't know why I was on the flour I laughed so much this really will brighten your day

People REALLY need to understand that they are making mistakes , and they are professional enough NOT to laugh making it, there was great humour to it, in life, we must not always think they are meant to be doing a SERIOUS production, things are MEANT to go wrong, certainly gets you away from ALL the fake in normal tv production, where scenes are continually cut until an overpaid actor gets their words right .. WELL done, i am still trying to find out HOW to get this on DVD

My partner and I watch this one every year. We're both theatre people, so we love seeing everything going wrong through the production while knowing that everyone is actually safe. The amount of rehearsal and technical know-how needed to safely execute any "goes wrong" production is incredibly impressive, and my hat goes off to everyone involved.

The only reason I knock points off is that, in agreement with some of the other reviews here, some of the gags are drawn out longer than they need no be. It's surprising, as every other "gone wrong" production has their comedic timing down to a T. Still though, this is worth a watch.