Thank Goodness You’re Here opens with an advert for Peans (“Not quite peas not quite beans, but something delicious in betweens”) and finishes with a song. But developer Coal Supper’s absurdist comedy adventure is so relentlessly, gleefully unpredictable throughout – so improbably overstuffed with impeccable gags and surreal detours – it’s hard to know where to begin.
So let’s play it safe and start at the beginning. You are the hero of the piece – a nameless man of indeterminate age and wilfully inconsistent height – who, as the adventure opens, is sent on a work trip to the fictitious Northern England town of Barnsworth for reasons never entirely clear. At which point, Thank Goodness You’re Here immediately lets you know what kind of game it is by insisting you exit the boss’ office by jumping out the ten-storey window instead of the door. Cue a note-perfect montage of mid-20th-century archival footage – all coal mines, red brick houses, and dour-faced ladies scouring busy market stalls, as bawdy ditty The Marrow Song plinks out – and away we go.
Without wanting to get ahead of myself, Thank Goodness Your Here is, I think, brilliant – a bold bit of masterfully orchestrated comedy that confounds expectations at every conceivable turn. Its very specific brand of surreal, anything-for-a-gag whimsy won’t be to everyone’s taste, but the way it merrily manipulates form to heighten its impeccable comedic rhythms is a true delight to behold – even if it takes a bit of time to show the method in its mayhem.
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