The Top of the Pops Christmas Special (BBC1, 2pm) was as fun as usual and once more cements that it should be on a weekly basis to showcase the music now we have some more interesting artists than the tedious in-studio acts of the late noughties. Granted the artists on show weren’t the most interesting – Robbie William’s ‘Candy’ was up first and the highlight of the show with diminishing returns – but did at least cover a good range of the year’s big hitters. Carly Rae Jepsen, in front of a set seemingly stolen from ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ sounded disappointingly off and Coldplay, who got a pretty good trailer for their live DVD, couldn’t be bothered coming into the studio. The X-Factor finalist proved he could sing live but wailed on at the end and the Christmas number one was a VT as pulling together all of the artists would have been tricky. Gangnam style made a brief appearance as did many covers, including the beautiful ‘The Power of Love’ by Gabrielle Aplin and the average ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ from Paloma Faith, chosen over her other, far better, original singles. Girls Aloud proved to be morphing into each other with two camps seemingly set away from Cheryl. Overall not a bad hour of mostly live music but the lack of the usual annual karaoke option, a few odd song choices and the lack of any cheeky Savile jokes from the hosts knocked it back a bit.
The Queen followed (BBC1, 3pm) with her first annual broadcast filmed in 3D. We don’t have a 3D television but it was hard to see what impact the third dimension would have had on the broadcast. I wanted the Queen to at least punch the screen or throw Prince Harry a Bacardi Breezer to off camera but there was no trickery like that. I’m not sure if the VTs of the damp flotilla were also in 3D to see the rain, gloom and impending bladder infection from Prince Philip, but it was a nice enough speech covering the Olympics, Paraolympics and Jubilee, but was lacking the Queen riffing on how Cheryl Cole couldn’t sing at the concert, Boris Johnson couldn’t dance in the Olympics and any visual 3D diagrams of extreme morning sickness.
Later we had Room on the Broom (BBC1, 4:35pm) a delightful CGI animation from the people behind the last two year’s Gruffallo shows, and the writer behind the books. It told the story of a witch and her cat who stumble across a series of animals as she loses various possessions like a careless extra from Harry Potter. The show reaches its dénouement as an evil, and rather podgy, dragon attacks the team but is stopped by team work. The story is very similar in theme to the Gruffallo – child-friendly repetitive rhymes, meeting animals, tricking a monster – so has a sense of over familiarity about it – and they even re-use the model of the squirrel and snake – but it was an enjoyable, extremely well animated tale with some great voice actors and set-up. Plus, it employed many excellent visual jokes that you’d blink and miss and was great not just for kids, but bigger kids. The ending was sudden but was another great slice of animation this Christmas after ‘The Snowman and the Snowdog’ with a few similarities: familiar, recreating an older idea but with some fresher elements.
It was then time for the next episode of Doctor Who (BBC1, 5:15pm), this year entitled ‘The Snowmen’ and introducing the next companion played by Jemma Louise-Coleman. The festive specials are usually the weaker episodes in the run and this year was not that different, but compared to the other entries in this series which weren’t as big and fun as the excellent series five and great series six, it was nearly up to par. Outside of the plot we got new opening credits which were much more like the classic Who titles. They looked great, the music was as fun as ever in their tweaked state but didn’t feel as long or as dramatic. The TARDIS interior got a paintjob as well and looked good, but with no explanation as to why.
The plot itself was fun. A child discovers he can project his thoughts into intelligent snow and starts building up an army of killer, scary snowman, waiting for the frozen body of a children’s nanny that fell into a frozen pond to come to life so they can replicate human DNA and create an army of snow clones. This is set aside by an investigation from a reluctant Doctor, still hurting from the deaths of the Ponds, in conjunction with a Sontaran and a lesbian double-act of a Silurian and human detective team, who it’s revealed through a conversation with successful baddie Richard E Grant, that they’re the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes character, a moniker that the Doctor later adopts briefly complete with Deerstalker. I think writer Stephen Moffat must have been drunk over the summer and got his franchises confused.
If that brief summary sounds confusing you’d be right. The plot in the special speeded ahead at such a pace that it was difficult to keep up with at times. The Sontaran guard was the best character in the special with some great funny lines but his appearance once more showed Moffat’s lack of care for realistic explanations – even in Sci-Fi – with only a brief mention as to why he’s no longer dead after being killed earlier on in the run. Matt Smith was great once more as the Doctor, and Jenna Louise-Coleman promising in her second appearance as the assistant, and her death at the end and realisation that her character is scattered through time is an interesting twist, as the Doctor recognises her voice and traits from the ‘Asylum of the Daleks’ episode. She seemed to know more than she let on and at the beginning it seemed the Doctor recognised her – even though he never saw her in the first episode, something he does mention in the episode – so it all seemed rather confusing.
The CGI was impressive in the piece as were most of the cast, and the spiral-staircase up to the TARDIS on the cloud appeared magical and fitted in with the Christmas Special. It was a confusing episode to follow and the destruction of the big bad at the end twee and overly sentimental but the twist at the end somewhat made up for it. It was difficult to keep up with the episode with some lines hard to follow, necessitating a quick rewind of the action, and there seemed an overall lack of surprise when people were approached by a lizard woman. That said, though the one-word conversation seemed forced between Coleman and said Silurian, the ‘Pond’ word was a neat bit of writing.
Not the worst Christmas special but not the most exciting ever, but the filmography and imagery was great and the Sontaran general well written, but it’s the final plot twist that will keep the series going.
Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1, 6:15pm) came straight after and saw six dancers taking part in a variety of, well, dances. I don’t watch SCD that often but it was an interesting way to wile away sixty minutes in the company of cheesy jokes from Bruce Forsyth and a funny montage at the start of Bobby Ball’s dance. The bloke from JLS won it, no one else embarrassed themselves. Anne Widdecombe and Russell Grant made the briefest of brief appearances so didn’t have time to add some comedy factor. An OK festive special with a nice performance from Rod “Screeching Scotsman” Stewart.
Our final watch of the night, outside of watching the repeat of ‘The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff’, an amazing short-film, was The Royle Family (BBC1, 9:45pm). I never really consistently watched the show when it was on properly but have watched all the Christmas specials over the past few years. This one seemed the most surreal of the lot with an opening fifteen minutes that saw plenty of crude jokes in the direction of erectile dysfunction that seemed to be dealt in a weird way by the cast suggesting it was a misunderstanding, but it wasn’t. The best plot strand was neighbour Joe going on a series of first dates in the Royle household with a series of great characterisations and some blink-and-you’ll-miss-them visual jokes as their names are crossed off a list (Chinese lady lives on ‘Great Wall St’, a suspiciously butch woman on ‘Tranny Ave’ etc). The individual threads of ‘Dragon’s Den’, Joe’s dipsy Irish date, Dave’s problems downstairs, the borrowed drill and a sneaky win by Jim on a scratchcard all came together nicely in the final meal at the end, a neat tying up of several disparate plotlines. It was perhaps the crudest episode I’ve seen and it felt, at times, a little desperate for humour with the Christmas Pudding / Breasts montage near the end a little cringey, but it had some great laugh-out-loud moments and plenty of innuendo and was worth a watch, plus included a brief mention to actor Geoffrey Hughes who we sadly lost this year.
So, not a bad day of television overall. But, as you can see, dominated by BBC1. What happened to the other channels on this most festive of days?
