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Christmas TV

Harry Hill wearing a paper hat
  • Posted at 2:45pm
  • 20 December 2007
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 2 comments

You know that Christmas has really arrived when the annual chorus of naysayers test their larynges for the colossal, universal whinge: "There's nothing worth watching on telly over Christmas." In some ways, this group moan is a bit like hearing the first cuckoo of spring, except the moaners - those disappointed, thwarted souls - just go on and on and on and on and they don't sound anywhere near as pretty.

Even MPs leap on the bandwagon for a few inches of cheap publicity, confident in the knowledge that no-one's actually going to stand up and tell them to put a sock in it. Possibly a Christmas sock, all covered in tinsel and filled with satsumas. "There are too many repeats…bring back Morecambe and Wise…" Blah, blah, blah. Yawn, yawn, yawn.

But Christmas telly is brilliant. Yes, all right, I would rather stare into a chasm of my own hollow despair than watch An Audience with Celine Dion (Saturday 22 December, 9:15pm, ITV1) or Star Traders: the Christmas Challenge (Saturday 22 December, 8:15pm, ITV1). And I would rather sear my eyes with hot chestnuts than go within nine miles of the After You've Gone (Sunday 23 December, 6:15pm, BBC1) and My Family (Boxing Day, 7:00pm, BBC1) Christmas "specials".

But so what, when there's so much other great stuff to watch? Doctor Who (Christmas Day, 6:50pm, BBC1), for instance. It starts off a bit slowly, it's about ten minutes too long and little Kylie Minogue is just a teeny bit irritatingly winsome, but it's a ripping yarn with some great moments. Harry Hill's Christmas TV Burp (Christmas Day, 8:00pm, ITV1) will be brilliant, because Harry Hill is always brilliant and TV Burp should be on every week of the year.

Ballet Shoes (Boxing Day, 8:30pm, BBC1) is a delight, as is The Shadow in the North (Sunday 30 December, 8:55pm, BBC1) with Billie Piper, rescued from the dire The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, being a proper actress again as she reprises her role as Sally Lockhart, Philip Pullman's plucky heroine.

Christmas at the Riviera (Christmas Eve, 9:00pm, ITV1) is a broad farce that could have been made in 1974, but it will pass the time as you hunt for the sellotape and scissors because you need to wrap one last present and you really wish people WOULDN'T MOVE THINGS.

Dickens makes an appearance (I wonder why no-one ever bothers with a TV version of A Christmas Carol) with The Old Curiosity Shop (Boxing Day, 9:00pm, ITV1). Poor Little Nell. When she gets a bad case of Costume Drama Cough you know you've got to fetch that box of tissues. And on New Year's Day, even if you have to watch through the gauze of a hangover, I urge you to wallow in Sense and Sensibility (9:10pm, BBC1). Just because it's lovely.

**

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times.

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  • Posted on 18 November 2008
  • at 9:23am
  • by daniel

christmas tv is not the same as it was in 1980s late 1970s we had the snowman father christmas on channel4 in the 1980s and ITV used to have london's burning on christmas day 1987 itv christmas is not the same as it use to be early days in 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 86 87 88 98 1975 1976 77 78 79

  • Posted on 02 January 2008
  • at 5:52pm
  • by Dr Featherweight

Hi Alison. Could I also offer the fantastic 'O Thou Transcendent' on New Year's Day on Channel Five, which actually was the best thing on (though I loved the Philip Pullman as well!)?

This amazing Tony Palmer documentary, which frankly would have been classic BBC viewing only a few years ago, actually reduced me to tears. Superb music, fascinating and riveting viewing.

I only watched it by accident and have since discovered that there has been a row about it. Watching programmes like the Russell Elgar and Delius documentaries changed attitudes to classical music in the same way that David Attenborough programmes changed attitudes to our responsibilities to the envoronment.

Hardly anyone but the converted and watchers of CBeebies who had got lost could possibly have seen this - I'm really distressed about the ghettoisation of television that this implies. Is the assumption that young people could not possibly be interested in anything remotely challenging, that the majority of viewers are too thick to see this kind of programme? That only middle aged, middle class old bores could possibly be interested in this? If there is a battle to be fought it must be for this.

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