Martin Dennis (1)

An amateur drama society performs a new play each week. Unfortunately, due to set disasters, actor personalities, script problems and other issues, the plays always go horribly wrong. The actors do their best to continue on, despite everything.

The first season has six episodes, each focusing on a different play. The order in which you watch the episodes doesn't really seem to matter, and in fact Amazon's order doesn't seem to match the original broadcast order at all.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this show - the description on my TV wasn't clear as to whether this would feature an actual drama society trying to perform plays or whether it was a fictional comedy. I was a little disappointed that it was the latter - it could have been a lot of fun watching actors try to perform plays with only a week's worth of planning time - but the show it actually turned out to be was a lot of fun too.

Granted, the humor could be a bit much at times - the most horrifying part, for me, was when the cat (clearly a stuffed animal by that point but real in an earlier shot) was thrown into a malfunctioning instrument. It wasn't immediately apparent that it hadn't been mangled to death.

For the most part, though, this was an enjoyable series and each episode had at least one part that had me laughing so hard I had to pause and take a break. The absolute best episode was "A Trial to Watch," in which the courtroom set was accidentally built much smaller than it needed to be. "90 Degrees" was also good for similar reasons, requiring a lot of creativity and planning to get around the serious set design issues.

Although viewers only ever saw the characters during their doomed plays, it was still possible to get a sense of their personalities. Max, for example, was absolutely delighted whenever the studio audience responded to something he'd done, and would do it over and over again to milk audience reaction. Robert, meanwhile, was a much more serious actor who probably viewed these plays as being beneath his skills.

I wish it had more episodes (here's hoping that Season 2 gets added to one of the streaming services I'm subscribed to), but it was lots of fun while it lasted, and I'll probably end up rewatching it at some point.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (meer)