A Horrible Christmas Rant

Horrible, Horrible Christmas, In Every Single Sense of the Word

Horrible Christmas - A Quick Rant by Nathan Brooks

The Good

When you expect one thing, and get something else, you can get very angry. You can get so angry that you refuse to acknowledge the positives of what you have got, and just focus on what you haven't got. For example, Agents of SHIELD. I think Agents of SHIELD is great, but unfortunately I don't appear to share that opinion with a lot of other people. Why? Because they're too busy whining about the lack of all the superhero-y stuff they expected and fair enough, considering you are watching a Marvel TV show. However, I've managed to let that initial disappointment go, and I've found I really enjoy this show.

The Bad

Horrible Christmas, a Horrible Histories stage production, is the complete opposite of this. As the theme of this post suggests, I expected something great. Horrible Histories is the only children's educational series with any effort put into, at least as far as I can tell and clearly other people feel the same, as both the books and the TV series have won numerous awards, including two British Comedy Awards for best sketch show, in 2010 and 2011. It was also nominated again in 2012 and has won multiple children's choice BAFTAs. Horrible Christmas isn't going to win any awards, apart from biggest disappointment. I would've reviewed this, but realised that that'd be too obvious. So, instead I wrote this.

The Ugly

To be honest, I have no idea where I'm going with this rant. I guess I should explain why I was so disappointed. If you've watched the TV series or read the books (and if you haven't, what the heck's wrong with you?!) then you'll know how hilarious the majority of the jokes are. But I won't treat you with those award-winning gags, no instead I'm going to give you one of the jokes in this play. Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer calls Oliver Twist 'Oliver Twerk-it' and then proceeds to 'twerk', whilst repeating the words, 'twerk-it'. The five year olds in front of me probably thought it was the funniest joke in the history of the world. They've obviously never watched the show or read the books.

This rant has already gone on long enough, as it was supposed to just be a quick rant. Lets just say this play was an embarrassment to the Horrible Histories series and doesn't deserve to use that name. I expected Horrible Histories, I got Postman Pat's Time Machine featuring 50 fart jokes per second (FJPS). Were my expectations too high? No, Horrible Histories is excellent and those expectations are entirely reasonable, and if you've ever seen the show or read the books, you'd completely agree with me. Yet, even without those high expectations it would SUCK. Agents of SHIELD doesn't suck, it just isn't what most people expected. This just sucks, with disappointment or without. Don't watch it. Ever.

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