Christmas Road Trip: Three Unwise Men
The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 
All Gordon, Gino and Fred want for Christmas is to host Top Gear. It is not much to ask — pretty much every other male celebrity over 40 has done it.
Their laboured Road Trip series has been an extended audition, showing off what great mates they are and what childish, spontaneous larks they enjoy.
Christmas Road Trip: Three Unwise Men (ITV) cast them in the traditional Top Gear roles.
Gordon, Gino and Fred are pictured above in Morocco. Their laboured Road Trip series has been an extended audition, showing off what great mates they are and what childish, spontaneous larks they enjoy
Gino D’Acampo is the irrepressibly cheerful one, Fred Sirieix is the nerdy sensible one and Gordon Ramsay is the overbearing bully playing the part of an overbearing bully.
They careered around Morocco, eating sheep’s eyes, meeting snake charmers, breaking down on Saharan roads and begging rides on donkey carts.
Everything was so scripted I kept expecting Gordon to blurt Jeremy Clarkson’s catchphrases, ‘What could possibly go wrong? And on that bombshell . . .’
It all falls flatter than last week’s Christmas party Prosecco but, as Matt LeBlanc, Chris Evans and a cast of thousands have discovered since the departure of Clarkson & Co to Amazon, the camaraderie of the original show is impossible to fake.
Far from being natural friends, it is hard to imagine that Fred would tolerate Gino and Gordon for five minutes out of choice.
All Gordon, Gino and Fred want for Christmas is to host Top Gear. It is not much to ask — pretty much every other male celebrity over 40 has done it. They are pictured above on camels in the desert
He sits in the back of their camper van, grinding his teeth as one jabbers and the other swears.
In fact, it is difficult to work out what Fred wants from his TV career. He started out as the maitre d’ at the First Dates restaurant, but this year he has judged fast food start-ups and toured Europe in search of hideaway restaurants.
Earlier this month he quit his day job, as manager of the 28th floor panoramic restaurant at the Park Lane Hilton in London’s Mayfair, so he must have big plans for life on the box.
Maybe he is going to be the next Stig. Over on BBC2, Auntie was presenting an adoring retrospective of Hugh Grant, in A Life On Screen.
It would be churlish and cynical to wonder whether the Corporation would extend the same honour if Hugh had spent the past six weeks campaigning ostentatiously for Boris and Brexit, rather than the Lib Dems and Labour.
Anyone can succumb to churlishness and cynicism at this time of year, what with Eighties Christmas pop jangling on the soundtrack of every other programme.
Gino D’Acampo is the irrepressibly cheerful one, Fred Sirieix is the nerdy sensible one and Gordon Ramsay is the overbearing bully playing the part of an overbearing bully. They are pictured setting up a tent in the Agafay desert
Thank goodness for the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society and The Goes Wrong Show (BBC1) for their genuinely original take on festive comedy.
In 2016, they staged their catastrophic pantomime Peter Pan, in which several of the cast were maimed and others were not so lucky.
Let’s face it, unless you have got an ocean liner and an iceberg handy, there is a limit to how spectacular disasters can be
The following year they upped the stakes, roping in venerable luvvies Derek Jacobi and Diana Rigg for a Christmas Carol that ended in arson, shootings and carnage.
Now they return for a series of six half-hours, and wisely avoid the temptation to stage even bigger calamities.
Let’s face it, unless you have got an ocean liner and an iceberg handy, there is a limit to how spectacular disasters can be.
Instead, they increased the pace of the comedy, hurling jokes by the sackful at the live audience. Some delivered explosive laughs, other went with a more modest ‘pop’, but there was fun for any age.
From the moment the first Christmas stocking fell into a fireplace and a stagehand rushed on with an extinguisher, the pace did not let up.
My favourite was the drunken Santa, railing against Amazon for stealing his business: ‘They have drones now . . . tiny dystopian sleighs.’ Ho ho ho indeed.
Twisted fable of the night: Mining disasters, prostitution and child sexual abuse were the themes in Stephen Knight’s foul-mouthed version of A Christmas Carol (BBC1).
Dickens did the telling without resorting to such cheap and vicious nastiness.