Thank God You're Here!

For a show in its first season channel Ten’s ‘Thank God you’re here’ has done very well for itself, attracting 1.7 million viewers a week in its first months. The show is an improvisational comedy series in which a celebrity performer is dressed up in costume before passing through a door into a room where they are welcomed with the phrase "Thank God you're here." They must instantly play out a scene but there is no script, no rehearsal, no prior clues (bar their costume) and they are totally unaware of the skit's premise. The ‘theatre sports’ meets ‘comedy’ mix is very funny.

It would be an interesting experiment to throw people under the same conditions as the show into the Christmas nativity play. Increasingly Australian’s are unacquainted with the story surrounding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. For example, the authors of ‘Imagining Australia: Ideas for our Future’ who with PhD qualifications said: ‘The modern fair go demands that we should do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves’ were unaware that it is Jesus who makes this 2000 year old demand. What would these men do in a ‘Thank God you’re here’ nativity scene?