British comedy is too often defined by its relationship to the United States: either as pure irony and sarcasm, which we are told Americans don’t understand, or as a factory of gleeful ideas for works like The Office that Americans can bless by remaking on a larger scale.
But peel back the curtain on American cultural hegemony and you might discover the true, pulsating core of British comedy that lurks beneath: understatement. No American network is in a bidding war to import Vic and Bob or remake Bottom, and Carry On and Benny Hill are considered anachronisms in our time, but Thank Goodness You’re Here! enters the conversation with a nudge and a wink. It’s a cheeky 2-3 hour adventure through a petite Northern town, and its goal is to make the whole world aware of our nation’s obsession with sausages and bare bottoms.
You play as an unnamed businessman sent to meet with the mayor of a town called Barnsworth that “needs what we sell.” Upon arrival, nearly every townsperson greets you with the same refrain: thank God you’re here! You quickly become embroiled in the locals’ problems: a man with his hand in the drain, a local pastry chef who’s out of meat, a colony of rats living above a supermarket, and more.
Helping out means wandering the colorfully drawn squares, markets, alleys, and shops of Barnsworth, punching everyone and everything. And there are jokes everywhere, told by every character and scribbled on every inch of scenery. Even when they didn’t make me laugh out deafening, it was still a comedic universe I enjoyed spending time in.
Nothing ruins a joke like explaining it, but as a reviewer I feel obligated to give you a preliminary lollipop, so here are two. One of the shops in the first area you visit is called Nick’s Brick’s and it’s closed, with a steel shutter down to protect the window. Nick opens the shutters to reveal that the shop is simply a brick wall.
There’s a poster in the supermarket that says “Porky Nobbers: That Wet Crunch!” If you’re not the type of person who just likes the mind-blowing sensation the phrase “Porky Nobbers” evokes, then this game might not be for you. (“Porky Nobbers: Extra Large” reads another nearby package.)
Your random tapping will eventually find its way to the next scene or set piece, and the story will progress. Sometimes this will lead to scenes where you have to operate the only other verb available, jump, to climb an area, but calling TGYH a platformer would be an exaggeration. “Puzzle game” is also a stretch. It’s almost pure storytelling, the pleasures of which can be found in its writing and animation.
The final ingredient is surrealism, which is partly due to the seemingly pliant size of your character. Under normal circumstances, your noiseless protagonist is about knee-high, but that doesn’t stop him from pouring beer from a tap or visiting the microscopic world of meat. Animals can also talk, and several characters have supernatural physical properties. None of this is ever explained, thank God.
All this got me thinking a lot about Sarah And Duck, the CBeebies animated series with a similarly northern cast of vegetable obsessives and dreamlogic storytelling. TGYH isn’t suitable for kids – maybe, probably – but the beauty of the allusions is that much of what’s naughty about it would simply pass them by. More importantly for us adults, the childlike surrealism takes it away from the cynicism that often comes with the butt- and crotch-obsession package, a la Viz. Spiritually, Thank Goodness You’re Here! is more in line with Local Hero, but with winks.
At times I felt a kind of anxiety, an urgent need to punch me in the face to get to the next joke or up-to-date area. Not knowing how to access that next moment of novelty feels like dying in a game like reading a book and finding the remaining pages glued together. But that only happened once in TGYH!, and only briefly. Overall, even as someone who doesn’t usually like visual novels and the like, the story here was adequate. Its miniature vignettes build, characters return time and time again, leading up to the large climax.
As it drew to a close, I was convinced that Thank Goodness You’re Here! deserved a place in the canon of British comedy, especially one that celebrates the rednecks of our better selves, from Wodehouse to Wallace and Gromit and the Cornetto trilogy. Hell, I didn’t even mention that Matt Berry lent his voice to it. Send this to the American in your life to show them that there’s more to our list of cultural exports than irony and failed politicians.
This review is based on a test version of the game provided by the game developer.
