Trivia / The Goes Wrong Show

• Accent Depundent: A few jokes rely on the non-rhotic R sound in most British accents, such as the "beer/bear" mixup in "90 Degrees", and Dennis mistaking "caw" for "car" in "There is No Escape".
• Actor-Inspired Element: Henry Shields's piano skills are on display when Chris acts as narrator and pianist for "The Nativity". Shields actually took the time to learn the songs on piano only to be told that his playing on set would have to be dubbed over.
• Ascended Extra: Bryony Corrigan (Vanessa) previously appeared in the Peter Pan and Christmas Carol Goes Wrong specials as a stagehand and receptionist (respectively). Here, she's now one of the main players.
• Author Appeal: Jonathan Sayer is a fan of "50-50 gags", where something risque is said and the audience connects it to something more innocuous (i.e. "sex life" to "ex-wife"). So, episodes that he had more of a hand in writing, like "A Trial to Watch", have more examples of these jokes than usual. Greg Tannahill has also jokingly said that Sayer appears to be fond of writing scenes where Jonathan the character loses his clothes.
• The Cast Show Off: In "The Nativity", Henry Shields gets to show off his piano playing skills.
• Corpsing: A rather subtle example, but in "The Lodge," when the gun falls apart (a genuine accident, completely unscripted) and the actor begins to panic, Jonathan Sayer (Dennis) can be seen shaking with suppressed laughter in the background.
  • Henry Shields is visibly chuckling while Chris gets sprayed like a fire hose with high pressure blood in "A Trial to Watch"
  • Constantly occurring in-universe to Max, who does not care in the slightest about breaking character and will smile and giggle at anything he finds funny.
    • There's therefore a bizarre example in "The Most Lamentable..." where he's corpsing in-universe and out of it, when he obliges Chris to make a series of funny noises. Max the character is grinning directly into the camera over Chris's mortified attempt, while David Hearn the actor is turning purple and has tears in his eyes from the strain of not bursting into laughter.
  • Charlie Russell (Sandra) can be seen corpsing a couple of times, notably during "The Pilot (not the pilot)" while Max is getting himself wrapped up in the lie detector, and during "The Most Lamentable..." in the background during Dennis' attempt to improvise a merry song that ends up being very inappropriate.
• Costume Backlash: Jonathan Sayer has expressed frustration with the horse costume he wore in "Harper's Locket" because it was very delicate and a wrong move could set off one of the gags prematurely and force everyone to reset for another take.
• Descended Creator: Malcolm the Janitor, who appears in The Lodge and The Most Lamentable... is played by series director Martin Dennis.
• DVD Commentary: Mischief Theatre posted "Goes Wrong Alongs" on their YouTube channel, where the cast discuss the creative process and behind-the-scenes trivia. Jonathan Sayer, in particular, provides a great deal of detail about how each episode was produced.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Robert's tree costume in "The Most Lamentable..." was incredibly hard to put on. Henry Lewis likened it to "getting into a canoe" since it had to be set on the floor and he had to lie in it as it was zipped up; it took at least 6 people to get him up on his feet. It was also incredibly hot and on breaks someone would cool him off by opening the costume and aiming a small fan into it.
  • In the same episode, Jonathan Sayer got his eyebrow singed after the stunt where Dennis's scroll is set on fire during the dinner scene. At first, the scroll wouldn't ignite properly despite more flammable material being added with each take; eventually, the paper ignited to the point of near explosion merely inches away from Sayer's face.
• Enforced Method Acting: The sequence where Chris has to copy Max's deliberately over-the-top line deliveries in "The Most Lamentable..." was the final take recorded, with Henry Shields starting to genuinely become annoyed with the sequence, and Dave Hearn genuinely corpsing. The take was chosen for being the "most outrageous."
  • In the same episode, the king's entrance where Annie gets stuck under the portcullis caused actual panic in Nancy Zamit, who feared that she was going to get injured. Since it makes sense in-universe for the characters to yell "stop", Mischief uses the word "cabbage" as a safe-word for real emergencies, but she had forgotten in the moment.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Vanessa is terrified of the unexpected and her attempt at hosting an improvisation class during the Cornley Drama Festival falls flat. Bryony Corrigan is one of the key members of Mischief's popular improv show "Mischief Movie Night."
  • Similarly, her role as Belle in "The Spirit of Christmas" had her singing out of her range. Bryony is a very talented singer, so that took extra work.
• Looping Lines: A number of lines had to be redone after shooting.
  • Jonathan Sayer had to redub his only line in "The Spirit of Christmas" because it was hard to understand what he said on set.
  • In "The Lodge", Dave Hearn had to loop "kitchen" because the director felt the way he pronounced it on the night was too weird.
  • In "A Trial to Watch", Henry Lewis originally said "This is bollocks!" while struggling to get out of the courtroom set. However, the BBC said that they couldn't use that language in a pre-watershed timeslot, so Lewis looped "This is cobblers!" over the scene.
• Non-Singing Voice: Used for laughs in-universe, Santa's song is (obviously) dubbed by an offstage singer, until a drunken Robert stops lip-synching, seizes the mic and begins to bellow the last few lines.
• No Stunt Double: Dave Hearn did Max's stunts, including some very big falls, himself.
• Orphaned Reference: "The Most Lamentable..." originally included a second scene where Annie's King costume is accidentally pulled off, this time by the castle drawbridge. While it was cut for time, Annie still appears without the costume in the scene where the King is poisoned.
• Out of Order: While it was the second episode to be filmed, and actually written with the intention of being the Season One climax (there are several Easter Eggs from the other episodes, such as recycled props and Robert's book on acting, and Robert goes on a drunken rant first about his divorce, which is also mentioned in "90 Degrees", and then about the numerous complaint letters the show's apparently been getting) "The Spirit Of Christmas" was the first episode to air in Season One, since the series premiered on 23rd December.
  • With the exception of BBC iPlayer, the streaming services the show appears on (such as Amazon, BroadwayHD, and Tubi TV) use the intended order, with "The Spirit of Christmas" as the finale.
• Prop Recycling: Henry Lewis confirmed in the Goes Wrong Along for "The Pilot (not the pilot)" that the boots Robert wore while playing Hitler were the same ones he wore while playing Santa in "The Spirit of Christmas".
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • In "The Spirit of Christmas", the ridiculous key changes of "Dear Santa" were necessary because Bryony Corrigan is a talented singer and had no problems hitting the high notes as they were originally written.
    • The writers generally have an idea for what the "Goes Right" version of each play is when writing episodes, but realized later on that in this case the plot made no sense since the sleigh is in the garden rather than on the roof. The solution was to just have a drunken Robert lampshade how awful it is.
  • The measurements gag in "A Trial To Watch" was inspired by an actual incident that happened when "The Play That Goes Wrong" went to Broadway. The Props & Sets Department misinterpreted the measurements in centimetres, rather than inches. The department still made the props with the misinterpreted measurements, thinking that this was a deliberate part of the joke, which resulted in the cast getting a smaller vase.
  • Henry Lewis wears glasses in "90 Degrees" not because he was playing a lawyer, but because the scene called for water and sugar to be poured on his face and he needed eye protection.
    • That may also be why Dennis had to be knocked out and repositioned facing down and away from the study table; beer cans and a bowl of gazpacho were going to fall towards him and his head/face needed to be out of the way.
  • "The Lodge"
    • The running gag of additional adjectives to pad out the run time of "The Lodge" was added in on the day, since the episode did genuinely run short in rehearsals. However, then, said additional adjectives caused the show to over run!
    • The "Spice Girls Reunion Tour" newspaper clipping is because the female cast members had tickets to see it, so asked it to be added.
• Scully Box: A rather unusual case, as Nancy Zamit needed to stand on one for "A Trial to Watch" due to being short enough that she was actually able to stand up straight in the tiny courtroom set, which would have killed the joke.
• Throw It In!:
  • In "The Spirit Of Christmas", Robert's comments about the sleigh already being in the Garden, despite Santa and the Elves coming down the chimney earlier, were added in on the spot, as the cast realized that the "Goes Right" version of the story didn't make sense and there was no time to correct it.
  • In "A Trial To Watch", after the first account of the evening, Chris can be seen running up the stairs and having to leap across the gap between the steps, as the set comes apart. This was actually unscripted, as the set had been moved too early.
  • "The Lodge".
    • According to Henry Lewis on Twitter, the gun breaking in "The Lodge" was a genuine error and wasn't actually part of the script, but it fit the tone so perfectly that they kept it in the final recording.
    • The Bottle under the Blanket position was actually an accident during rehearsals, but was kept in for the actual show.
  • In "Harper's Locket", the cat was intended to walk off the stage during one scene, but did not do so, so the lady who had provided the cat tried to creep on to the stage to take the cat off herself, but was caught doing so by the director. The company then realized the joke potential from it and did it intentionally in the next take, but with Trevor taking the cat off, rather than its human.
  • In "Ninety Degrees", Ruffles the Remote Control Dog is constantly falling over, with everyone trying to pick them up. This was not scripted, the Dog did genuinely keep falling over by accident. While Chris and Robert did have scripted dialogue for the scene, additional dialogue had to be improvised on the night in order to fill in the time it takes to pick up the dog.
  • “The Most Lamentable…” has a brief scene where Annie-as-King Walter and Max-as-Louis do a fist bump. This was entirely improvised by their actors, who try to work a fist bump into as many episodes as possible (during the scenery shift in "A Trial To Watch" is another noticeable example)
  • The play also has a moment where in-character Max trolls Chris by deliberately speaking in an exaggerated manner and making lots of ridiculous noises, forcing Chris to copy him. Meanwhile, out of character Dave Hearn went far beyond what the script requested, precisely because he knew Henry Shields wouldn't want to do it; when Max looks into the camera and grins while Chris furiously repeats him, those are Hearn's tears as he fights not to laugh.
• What Could Have Been:
  • "The Spirit Of Christmas"
    • Originally, Max was going to play the snowman, with Chris as the father, but this was changed as the role worked too well for Max, as well as the fact Max does not mind being shown in his pants (as shown in "Peter Pan Goes Wrong").
  • "The Pilot (Not The Pilot)"
    • There was a two minute sequence of nothing but fish puns, which was later cut from the episode.
    • Originally, Max was set to play Adolf Hitler, before the role was given to Robert.
    • During the "Trousers Down" Scene, some one from another show being filmed would have come in dressed as Joseph Stalin, trying to get their trousers done too, but this was cut for time.
    • There is a take of Jonathan being able to pull off his Winston Churchill prosthetic, but it was deemed too disturbing.
    • The cast did attempt to get the director, Martin Dennis, to play Chris' Father, but he was a bit shy to do so, since it was the first episode to be filmed. He did, however, later play the Janitor in "The Lodge".
  • "A Trial To Watch".
    • During the autopsy of Max's character, Sandra was supposed to pull a lung out, but it would get stuck and when she pulls it free, it smacks her in her face. This joke was filmed, but cut for time. Evidence of this joke can still be seen, with Sandra's face looking slightly greasy, from having the lung fly into it.
    • Some of Max's scenes were cut, because a lot of his jokes were based around messing with people in the audience, which did not read well on camera.
    • When Robert as the judge gets stuck in the door of the courtroom, he initially yelled; "This is bollocks!", but the company was told that would not be able to be shown on pre-watershed television, so the line was re-dubbed to "This is cobblers!".
    • The news footage outside the "Old Bailey Court House" was intended to be filmed on location, but the budget was running low, so the scene was filmed in the carpark of the rehearsal building. The people in the background were genuinely moving pieces in and out of the rehearsal room!
    • Originally, in the epilogue, Dennis' character was supposed to be smoking, but began coughing so could not kiss Vanessa. This joke fell flat, so they came up with Dennis saying "They Kiss, Roll Credits!" just before filming.
  • In "The Lodge", rather than reading "EXPECT MORE BOIDES", the blood writing on the wall was originally going to say "EXPECT MORE BOOBIES", but was changed for being considered too immature.
  • In "Harper's Locket", when asked what a horse would spend money on, there was an exchange that was cut.
    Chris: What would (a horse) spend (money) on!?
    Dennis: Hoovers.
    Chris: Horses don't have hoovers!
    Dennis: Yes, they do! They have them on their feet!
  • In "The Most Lamentable...", Annie/King Walter had a second Wardrobe Malfunction scene involving the uncooperative castle drawbridge, which was fully filmed but ultimately cut for time, explaining why Annie is in her underwear again during the poisoning scene.
  • In "The Cornley Drama Festival Part 1," Max was originally supposed to play the Stag in the ballet number, but Dave Hearn injured his foot during rehearsals, so the role was changed to Jonathan.