Mischief tV Show Goes wrong

Just watched last nights. Thought it was quite funny. Some really stand out bits.
The ending storyline was pretty random.

Was watching it with my brother. At the end during the jump scare, I didn’t actually jump. However, 10 seconds after, my brother absolutely screamed and shouted. Such a late response and scared the living daylights out of me. Holy moly.

If there is one thing the writing trio are guilty of is a tendency to allow their individual "moments" to go on a bit too long - Dennis' PPGW speech about his line readers breaking up being one example.

I was in the audience for the horror episode, definitely think it has been the weakest of them all so far - however still a solid piece of entertainment. Laughter segment definitely did outstay welcome.

I've been enjoying the series and if they make another one I would watch but part of me hopes they don't as I think the jokes will wear thin after a while.
I think what is lacking and needed to tie the episodes together is a "backstage/rehearsal" section as they are credited as X playing Y playing Z but we don't get to see them just being Max, Chris, Sandra etc. I think it helps to have seen the previous stage shows to understand the characters relationships.

I totally agree with this. I was really hoping that a series would give them more time to explore the Cornley characters than the previous single shows but unfortunately thus far it seems to be the opposite. Basically the only bits of Cornley characterisation there has been is that Robert & Chris bicker and Chris gets annoyed with Dennis. I hope Max & Sandra are still together but there's been nothing to indicate if they are or not. We've learned absolutely nothing about Vanessa; in fact I'm not sure if her name has even been mentioned on screen apart from in the credits. I'd like to know why she's decided to join Cornley when their reputation as a walking disaster zone must be well-known by now!

Funniest episode since the courtroom tonight. Henry Lewis is beginning to steal every episode! Props to Bryony and Charlie for such brilliant pratfalls. And I'm not sure I've laughed as hard at anything as much as I did at the table scene!

If you don't know the characters' back stories then you wouldn't get some of the jokes. The fan and the bare backside were laugh out loud moments. Henry Lewis with his stage presence and sheer size does have the ability to dominate and when I saw the initial play the sight of a man of his size doing some of the slapstick made it even funnier. In future years I can see him doing some of the great Shakespeare comedy roles on stage, he'd be a natural Falstaff with his build.

Bryony, Charlie and Nancy are always funny and willing to take their fair share of falls, looking stupid and ending up in undignified situations across the series.

With 4 plays, a couple of TV specials and now the series there will be a limit of how far they can take this especially the TV series before the jokes get too contrived or rehashed as there are only a certain amount of slapstick stunts that can be done although they can be dressed up and slightly amended. Otherwise unless you go into full Michael Crawford-Frank Spencer territory and some of the stunts just get bigger and bigger then you'd risk repeating lots of things.

But there are certainly lots of genres they could explore - just from typing this Shakespeare and Sci-Fi came to mind.

I'd really love if any future TV series showed a bit more 'behind the scenes', so we saw more of Chris Bean and the other characters as themselves, and the relationships between them. They used moving between the actual play and the behind the scenes goings-on so brilliantly onstage, thinking of things like accidentally playing the voice recording footage in PPGW, and surely TV could do this far more effectively? It's a bit flat without it. People unfamiliar with Mischief's stage shows possibly don't even realise it's supposed to be the same group of characters putting on different 'shows' every week. The episodes still work, but it feels a bit "this is a straight up spoof of a courtroom drama" or "spoof of a period drama" and the play-within-a-play element that lets you connect emotionally to the characters.

I enjoy this series a lot, but it is starting to feel a bit samey. It's a good few years since I saw TPTGW (when the original cast were in it) but I saw PPGW the other day and so noticed a couple of the jokes that were reworked for this episode (most obviously the stunts that end with an unconscious Trevor with his bum out.) I'd like to see it get a second series but I'm not sure how much more mileage they can get out of it after that.

Yes!! And surely character development is key to an ongoing series? It’s strange to me that TPTGW and especially PPGW had so much character development and character-led plot development (when both those plays would have been strong as pure farces without those elements), but for for ongoing TV series where such development is essential, they decided to strip it out.


The only way a second series could work is if they make it a comedy about the ongoing adventures of the members of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society.

I've just caught up on Friday's episode. The croquet mallet near the start and the cat / piano joke were definite laugh out loud moments, but found myself chuckling throughout. As others have said, it really helps knowing the actors and the characters they are trying to portray, as well as understanding the whole premise of continuing with the script no matter what happens. But after that fairly poor Christmas episode, I have been very pleasantly surprised by the rest of the series.

The angled setpieces were wonderful but the bits in between were pretty much just filler (the beer gag particularly went on far, far too long)