Season 1, Episode 1:
The Spirit of Christmas
Cornley's first performance (depending on who you ask) for Play of the Week is a Christmas Episode based around Belle, a young girl whose wishing for help at Christmas causes Santa himself to pay a visit to cheer her up. But even with his help, Belle remains unhappy, until her feuding parents make up, showing a message about the true meaning of Christmas.
During the actual performance, things go wrong from the start, when Robert (as Santa) has a bad experience with several children who have been brought in to meet Santa. The props department mix up the food with the Christmas decorations, cast member Jonathan gets stuck in the chimney and Robert gets hammered on sherry.
Tropes
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: After discovering the sherry is genuine, Robert takes "one more nip" and breaks the dispenser on the bottle, so he keeps quaffing sherry in a panic to keep it from running all over the counter until Sandra marches over and flips the bottle over. He spends the rest of the play weaving and slurring and breaking character.
- Almost Out of Oxygen: Towards the end, the enclosed Jonathan semi-cheerfully announces that he has almost ran out of air.
- Bad Santa: Unintentionally in the play within a play, but Robert's intoxication causes him to become increasingly rude to the cast and audience.
- Brick Joke: When Dennis interrupts Chris to ask what noise a reindeer makes before the start of the show, Chris snaps "clearly a matter for rehearsals, Dennis!" Guess what Dennis says when he plays Rudolph?
- Dawson Casting: In-universe, Vanessa, a woman in her late 20s, plays the pre-teen Belle. A drunken Robert lampshades this.
- The Grinch: Robert appears to have some somewhat sour opinions on Christmas, at least when he's drunk (having broken up with Denise, his wife or girlfriend, apparently hasn't helped), which he starts expressing a lot more freely the drunker he gets. Which is doubly unfortunate as he's supposed to be playing Santa.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Robert drunkenly bellows his song, after snatching the microphone from the actor who was dubbing him.
- Intoxication Ensues: Due to the dispenser being broken, Robert keeps taking shots of sherry, as the entire bottle drains out.Robert: (worriedly as his lucidness immediately begins to vanish) That really was one too many nips.
- In Vino Veritas: Robert is apparently something of a nasty drunk, and the many "nips" of sherry he has end up loosening his tongue; he becomes a lot more willing to vocally make dismissive comments about the performances of his fellow actors (especially Chris), the overall quality of the play they're performing, and his somewhat sour feelings on the Christmas season overall.
- It's All About Me: Robert shamelessly plugs his book whilst giving presents to the children.
- Large Ham: Quite the Ham already, the sherry just makes Robert worse.
- Lives in a Van: A drunken Robert reveals his wife/girlfriend left him to live in his car, though he admits it isn't so bad as said car is a Honda Civic.
- Running Gag: Following his Jacob Marley having difficulty getting into Scrooge's room in A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, Jonathan begins to have difficulty getting onstage or completing his performance, this time getting stuck up the chimney.
- Sex Sells: For a Christmas elf in a children's play, Sandra certainly ramps up the sex factor wherever possible.
- Snowlems: Chris plays the Snowy Old Snowman, but his costume gets snagged in the toy machine and he ends up stuck in his pants.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: Parodied; the song that Vanessa sings goes through three key changes, leading to her unsubtly trying to signal the backstage crew to pitch it back down while attempting to match the current key. It gets so high she ends up shrieking the last note of the song.
- Un-Duet: Of a sorts; due to Jonathan being stuck up the chimney, we can still hear his muffled half of "We're Nistle and Nostle", but Sandra has to do all the choreography by herself (including falls and catches.)
- Vocal Range Exceeded: The backing track to Vanessa's solo is accidentally pitched up several octaves, leading to her having to practically scream the last few lines (though, in reality, Bryony Corrigan's superb vocal range forced them to ramp up the joke far beyond what was originally intended to get the desired effect).
- Who Writes This Crap?!: On several occasions, Robert remarks that the original script is not "(Chris') best work" and later gives up with his dialogue as "none of this play makes any sense."
