A Quick Review of Christmas TV Part One: Christmas Day

Up there with family, presents and food is television on Christmas Day, a day when the television networks bring out their big guns with one-offs, festive specials and big budget versions of their hit shows. But how did this year’s Xmas shows stand up?

Obviously between unwrapping presents – 12:30, eating dinner – 3pm, and falling asleep – 11pm, it’s impossible to watch everything but, hey, I managed to catch most of what I wanted to see, starting with the Top of the Pops Christmas Show, the now annual look back at the preceding year’s music after the mainly weekly show was axed by the BBC several years ago. Though to be hypocritical and say that I rarely watched the show, I think it was a massive shame for live music that the show was dropped but I can understand their reasons as more acts are now American or are DJ based and require a bit of, er, assistance in the live department.

It was always well known that TOTP used to have the artists lip-synching but didn’t in its noughties shows but it was difficult to tell what was or wasn’t live in this show. I’m not convinced it was all live but it could have gone either way. ‘Rizzle Kicks’, performing ‘Down with the Trumpets’, certainly were as they changed some lyrics to Christmas ones, and did it well, also excelling on their appearance out of two presents on Olly Murs ‘Heart Skips A Beat’ which was equally live, Murs recreating the DJ effects of skipping well live.

Appearances by Example, Pixie Lott, Noah and the Whale and Jessie J, an earlier recorded acoustic version of ‘Price Tag’ sung beautifully, were all welcome, a tedious performance of the tedious ‘The A Team’ by Ed Sheeran, not a patch on the great ‘Lego House’, less so. ‘Little Mix’, this year’s X Factor winners, also dropped in to perform ‘Cannonball’, thankfully not the festive number one, and it was as average as you expect. And then, much to Radio 1’s annoyance I imagine, TOTP got to reveal this year’s Christmas chart topper with the promo video for ‘Wherever You Are’.

Overall a welcome return for the TOTP and aside from a few dodgy acts and some countdowns of the big tunes of the year which including songs that were so big I’ve never heard of them, it was well worth watching. They even managed to throw in a fitting tribute to Jimmy Saville. Now then, now then.

After a lovely Christmas dinner – thanks mum! – and with the power of Sky Plus we watched The Queen, helpfully revealed at the end to be a Sky News production, possibly their first of the year that doesn’t include ticker tape banners or phone hacking. Ooh.

Her speech was as great and rousing as usual and for an 85-year-old woman she can still hold the screen and stand for a considerable length of time. Obviously this year it was backed with the knowledge that her husband was in hospital having undergone a heart operation whilst she continued on with life as usual, so the message of family being important might not have been as strong as it would have been. At least she had Mike Tindall there for all her dwarf-tossing needs.

As I said to my parents, not everyone is lucky enough to have a Phil with them at Christmas dinner this year.

After the Queen’s speech it was a break until the next programme, a break I filled with Milton Jones on one of my Christmas DVDs and a scout around the music channels, one of which was showing ‘Queen at 3’ against her majesty with him Mercury. But, at 4:50 it was time for Ratatouille.

Being the penultimate Pixar film I had to see to complete the set – just Cars 2 to see now – I was eager to watch it. ‘Up’, one of their most recent efforts, is one of the best films of all time and I hoped that ‘Ratatouille’ from a similar era would be up to it. Sadly, it’s not one of their best films. The premise and animation are as clever and well implemented as ever, and the last half-an-hour of the film was an exciting mixture of chases, emotion, drama and a fitting conclusion to the story. It’s just a shame that the first hour wasn’t as exciting as it could have been and was just missing some sparkle that I can’t put my finger on. We’ve been spoilt recently with some cracking CGI films – ‘Arthur Christmas’ being the most recent example – and this seemed to be missing something. The premise seemed to take a while to set up and it took a while to care about the characters.

Still, it was an animated film well worth watching but not up there with ‘Up’ or ‘Toy Story 2’ from the Pixar stable.

With telephone calls to family members filling up the next half an hour, it was next onto Doctor Who and the Christmas special ‘The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe’, a loose – very loose – take on the Narnia story.

It’s well documented on my blog that I much prefer the Steven Moffat / Matt Smith era of ‘Doctor Who’ over the RTD / David Tennant one. However, I didn’t much enjoy last year’s Christmas special even if it had one of the most sad, touching ends to the story ever. I think the combination of a flying shark, Michael Gambon’s shockingly tedious acting (ala his work in Harry Potter) and a so-so story did it for me. Though I do admit to sobbing a little at the fate of Katherine Jenkins’ character.

This year’s special was still very much tugging at the heartstrings. Starting with the Doctor blowing up a spaceship and landing on earth in an ill-fitting space-suit to be rescued by Claire Skinners’ war-time mother and taken to the TARDIS was a funny opening including getting the wrong Police Box, but seemed a waste of CGI with blowing up a spaceship that was only in for less than a minute. Following the Doctor’s departure we learn that her husband, played by Alexander Armstrong, has died three years later whilst in a bomber over the English Channel, but she hasn’t yet told their two children.

So, at Christmas, off they go to their uncle’s house which is deserted, apart from the Doctor as the Caretaker, who has turned the house into a magical playground with moving furniture, a kids bedroom stuffed with toys, tricks and, of course, two hammocks, and a Christmas tree with a mysterious blue parcel under it.

A special Christmas treat for the kids, Cyril, the young boy, opens it early and finds it takes him to a planet where decoration-covered Christmas trees grow naturally and there is a mysterious tower in the centre with strange wooden men in it. It’s not long before the Doctor with the daughter in tow find out where he’s gone and, instead of the safe forest he’d planned, there’s something remiss and they find the tower with none of them suitable to carry the spirits of the forest, who are to be killed by an extreme form of deforestation about to occur with acid rain, a plot stand found out by the mother who stumbles across the group of deforesters (is that even a word?) led by Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir who bring some great comic relief to the piece and are sadly underused in the story. I could have watched Bill Bailey all day in this story.

With the family all reunited in the tower the mother is found to be the perfect carrier for the souls and seemingly a lot of hair to hide the gold ring which quickly disappears from her head in possibly a prop malfunction and they head off through the time vortex to save the forest and get back home and, in a piece of lucky serendipity, become a guiding light for her husband in the fighter who survives the journey home to be reunited with the family. All that is left is for the Doctor to realise the importance of family and head over to the Pond household to join them for Christmas dinner, a tear coming to his eye.

Now, I’m going to be the first time to say that the storyline of this year’s Doctor Who wasn’t the best. Moffat once more refuses to kill off a character again and brings him back in a rather contrived way; it’s very sickly sweet in how they save the trees; and there’s a lot of tears. That said, however, I found the story very touching and a tear did come to my eye just like the Doctor’s. God, I must be getting more sentimental as I get older, but the combination of storyline, music and acting got to me.

Sure, it wasn’t the most original storyline ever and Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir deserved more screen time, but the locations and eye to detail were beautiful. Matt Smith was as spot-on with the Doctor as ever during the spacesuit sequence and the house-tour sketch, and managed to cover a whole range of emotions throughout the piece, cementing him as my favourite Doctor so far. Steven Moffat is proving to be a good writer of the series and though the storyline did once more hit the big reset button that plagued RTD’s era as well as his, there was a fair bit of emotion in it.

Now from one end of drama to the other and we come to Coronation Street. Now I’ve not watched this soap regularly for eight years now so I only really watch it when I’m seeing my parents or for big occasions like last year’s impressive fiftieth anniversary train crash plotline. This year’s big storylines involved a Nativity-birth parallel (tres original!) and the evil Tracy Barlow once more cooking up some lies, this time that Becky pushed her downstairs causing her to miscarry. This plotline also led to Becky almost killing herself in a drink-fuelled fire and her swearing revenge on Tracy, whilst Tracy’s mother knows that the truth that she lost the kids before meeting Becky.

It was quite a good episode of Corrie but there are several things to note. Firstly it started with the musical accompaniment of Shakin’ Steven’s ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ over a montage of happy and sad scenes. Since when did it become ‘Home and Away’? Secondly, is Steve an idiot? Tracy has already murdered her boyfriend, served time for it, tried to take Steve’s daughter off him and done all sorts of other unhinged things. Why would he get back with her? And thirdly, are all the men in soaps stupid? Why is Peter Barlow having an affair with Carla? Does he not learn after the whole bigamy things years ago?

Surely me criticising the reality of soap operas is an insane thing to do but the characters seem to change so wildly in their actions and motivations?

Coronation Street’s Christmas Day show wasn’t a patch on last year’s human drama, but it was never going to be. However, it is slowly turning into Eastenders with far less of the humour it once enjoyed and far more miscarriages, fires, hospital-isation, affairs and all that malarkey. Ho ho ho indeed.

After a trip to Manchester, which was covered in snow according to Corrie when nowhere in this part of England has had anything more than a light covering, it was back to the PVR to watch Strictly Come Dancing, a one-off light-hearted version of the show featuring Simon from Blue, Charlie from Eastenders, Barry the boxer, Debra the impressionist (not sure who she was dancing as), and my favourite Su Pollard. Now I didn’t see all the show as I was doing other things but what I did see was some pleasant Christmas Day night fun, with Craig dressed very well as the Grinch, some cheesy jokes from Bruce and a poor, but funny, dance routine by Su “You Rang M’Lord?” Pollard. It’s not a show I regularly watch but it was amusing to dip-in and –out of.

Earlier in the night we’d also taped The Gruffalo’s Child, a sequel to last year’s CGI adaptation of the first kiddies book. Worried that this was going to be a shameful cash-in of taking the original story and shoe-horning a sequel out of it, I realised at the end it was based on a second book. Having never read the Gruffalo as a kid – it’s 1999 release meant it was well out of my childhood – there was no emotional connection to watch either the first or the second film – and also being about twenty years too old for its target market, it would be a strange thing to watch but, like the first, the slow, pedestrian delivery of the story mixed in with some gentle humour and beautiful animation make it a joy to watch.

It’s often the little things that make these short animations and in this case it was bits like the hedgehog’s two cute appearances, and the detail of the footprints in the snow. The voice acting, style and detail were as impressive as last year and though, yes, it’s not the most dynamic of short films, well stretching out how long it should last for, it was a fun piece of story for kids and “big kids” too.

Last but not least was the festive edition of Have I Got A Bit More News For You and, thankfully, not a hastily cobbled together compilation of best bits as I thought it would be. With all fresh material, Christmas decorations and a great lead from one of the best guest presenters Martin Clunes, it was forty-minutes of great topical laughs, showing how great the programme is as it enters its twentieth year on air.

Overall, Christmas Day 2011 was a good day for television programmes with a good cross section of shows, and I didn’t even get a chance to re-watch Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ or McIntyre’s Christmas Comedy Roadshow but hopefully will soon!