I don't think it's a spoiler, given the title of the show, to say that this a celebration of things going wrong. It's also a celebration of the cast's attempts to soldier on through it and try to make the best of it. The Christmas story itself is largely inconsequential as it's just a vehicle to cram in as much mayhem as possible. It occasionally feels like anti-Christmas (or an anti-Disneyfied version of Christmas) and is all the funnier because of it.
What's most impressive is the number of different ways that have been conceived for a production to go wrong. It feels like it's been distilled from Acorn Antiques, It'll Be Alright On The Night, the Alan Partridge Christmas Special, but with a flavour of its own too. It's so quickfire that you really need to watch it more than once to catch everything, and it's just as grimly funny the second and even third time around. An increasingly belligerent and cynical Santa ties the whole thing together beautifully, although it wouldn't be the same without a visibly frustrated elf, an invisibly frustrated elf, and a snowman that meets a bad end (how did that do that?)
Very much looking forward to the rest of this series.
