Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, Henry Shields, Charlie Russell, Dave Hearn, Bryony Corrigan, Nancy Zamit, Greg Tannahill, Chris Leask.

In extraordinary times we are shown the way forward, or at least the way to continue what we do best with alterations to the way we produce it.

One of the television comedy hits of 2020 has surely to be the team behind The Goes Wrong Show, a team honed by theatre, and offered to a larger audience in the same time-led fashion that saw some of the greatest stars of vaudeville become legends of early cinema, and to whom the slapstick mayhem is as every bit as demanding and superbly presented as anything you would want to watch today.

All the greats start in theatre, and whilst the team still produce plays for that medium, 2020 has been a time of dealing with the hand that is dealt, how you seize the moment and continue to be the success that you were meant to be.

For The Goes Wrong Show team, no subject has been deigned to important in which to bring down with beautifully inspired anarchy writing, with timing so spot on you could believe that it wasn’t intentional but the product of universal mishap smiling down gracefully upon the cast. In this year’s Christmas special, the timing is more important than ever, for all the restrictions placed upon us, comedy is the route we must take to keep on going, to keep the spirits up, and in The Nativity, the much vaunted chuckle bone insisted by the legend himself Ken Dodd that must be kept in working order, is done so with huge comic appeal and polish.

Comic appeal goes a long way in unifying people, an audience will watch a comedy, but they understand that so much of it is staged, it takes genius to make a crowd believe they are watching anarchy prevail and mishaps take place without purpose; and in that, as the Archangel Gabriel develops a fetish for fireworks, that those inside the little donkey can fall out and see King Herod lose his dignity as his clothes are whipped off by the speed of a revolving stage, anarchy is given freedom to represent us collectively at our best.

Whereas the first series of the show highlighted individual talent more, this particular seasonal offering is one of collective brilliance, and it should be noted that the whole team, and despite the national constraints placed upon them, have pulled a comedy out of the bag which is beyond brilliant.

The miracle of immaculate comedy is not to be sneered at, instead it should be rejoiced at; for in a smile, in a laugh, we forget for a while what is outside the door.

Ian D. Hall nt 6;