TV’s search for the perfect Christmas special

Sitcoms rely on expectation and conventions. Here's the one rule that gets broken at Christmas time.

James Cary

James is a writer of sit coms for TV and radio.

Dressed in camouflage uniforms and makeshift costumes, soldiers create a nativity scene

Bluestone 42 Christmas Special, 2013.

BBC.

There are rules to sitcoms. I should know. I’ve been writing sitcom scripts for over twenty years. This includes two Christmas specials (Miranda and Bluestone 42). When you start writing a Christmas episode of a sitcom, you look back to Christmas specials you saw as a child. Soon, you are aware that there are certain expectations for a Christmas special. You also realise you can break one of the rules of sitcom.

Before I explain what that is, let me give you the basic rules of a TV sitcom. Essentially you need three things: Characters; conflict; and a confined space. Each episode has a beginning and a middle and end, but the characters must end up back where they started.

The characters in a sitcom are in conflict. They have contrasting viewpoints, seeing the world very differently. And they are confined, unable to walk away from each other because they are family (Think Del and Rodney in Only Fools and Horses), or they have to work together (Think Sir Humphrey and Hacker in Yes, Prime Minister) or they all live in the same suffocatingly small village (Think Geraldine and Alice in The Vicar of Dibley).

Each week, the characters have quests. They conflict. The story plays out in the same reliably predictable but surprising way. Del Boy has another get-rich-quick scheme; Sir Humphrey tries to stop Hacker from changing anything; and the Vicar of Dibley keeps trying to help Alice and the idiots who surround her. That can’t change, even in a Christmas special.

At Christmas, however, you can have your characters go on a journey. That’s quite a popular option. But the journey has to be arduous – like the journey to Bethlehem – and might involve a pregnant woman (think The Royle Family) – like the journey to Bethlehem. But your characters could go on a road trip in any episode. That’s not the rule you have to break.

Your Christmas special might be centred around your character’s own version of what constitutes ‘the perfect Christmas’. These expectations must be met, but the lesson is normally that it’s all about who you’re with, not what you do. In the Bluestone 42 Christmas special, the bomb disposal team in Afghanistan are away from home so trying to have a ‘normal’ Christmas with turkey and a nativity play in which yonder star turns out to be a mortar attack by the Taliban. But they’re in it together.

Family is always important in a sitcom, but doubly so in a Christmas episode. In Miranda Series 2, our comedy heroine wants to do Christmas her own way with her friends, and not spend the day with her embarrassing and eccentric parents. But she learns a common Christmas lesson that family comes first, home is best, and no-one does Christmas better than your own family. Again, this is not a deviation from the normal rules.

So, what rule does the Christmas episode break? It is cast iron law across all genres of television. It’s the Deus Ex Machina. That’s not normally allowed. Deus Ex Machina literally means ‘God from the machinery’. It’s a Latin term for what happens in Greek theatre. Actors representing gods would be suspended above the stage and at the denouement of the play, they would come down and intervene, so that everything is sorted out.

It’s not for a twenty-first century sitcom writer to say that the Greeks didn’t know anything about theatre, but wow. Modern audiences would not stand for this totally unjustified divine intervention. If a character was about to be exposed by the annual Church fete and at the last minute, a thunderstorm out of nowhere rained off the whole event, you would start throwing things at the TV. If a character declared undying love to another and it was not reciprocated, the sudden discovery of a foolproof love potion in the third act would have the producer, director, the cast and even the make-up lady asking for rewrites.

But at Christmas, God comes down from on high. So, in your seasonal sitcom special, you’re allowed a miracle. In fact, the audience are almost demanding a ‘Christmas miracle’. This is the time of year when magic happens.

This miracle normally happens overnight because that’s when miracles happen. The Wise Men followed the star to the witness the child born of a virgin. Given stars were involved, we presume it was night time (although the text doesn’t say so). Marley and three Christmas ghosts visit Ebeneezer Scrooge at night. He is miraculously transformed by the experience.

Christmas is a time when lots of people going to church who normally would not, but the vast majority of people in the UK do not go to church or worship God at Christmas. But the incarnation, that is story of God made flesh in Christ, keeps poking through and turning up whether we like it or not. If we won’t go to church to hear that story, God will send it through waves and wires and onto our screens in TV specials so that we all remember that Christmas isn’t just a time for family and traditions; it is a time of miracles. At Christmas, we allow ourselves the luxury of belief.

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Art

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8 July 2025

5 min read

From witchcraft to statecraft: inside the mind of King James

A new exhibition examines art the monarch commissioned and inspired

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

A portrait of King James VI, his eyes fix the viewer.

King James, by an unknown artist.

National Galleries of Scotland.

James IV and I devoted his twenties to trying to rid his kingdom of witchcraft. And 400 years after his death, witches continue to cast a long shadow over his reign. While James’ beliefs on evil developed and refined over his 58-year reign, his reputation as solely a torture and femicide perpetrator remains stubbornly hard to shift. For many, identification with the abused, marginalised- yet- magical trumps all other historical considerations.

In the exhibition World of James VI and I, the National Gallery of Scotland presents a more rounded picture of the cradle king, who gained the throne of Scotland at 13 months old and became the first joint monarch of Scotland and England in 1603, on the death of Elizabeth I. The beginning of James’ reign in England saw the first productions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, King Lear and The Tempest. Inigo Jones’ appointment as Surveyor of the King’s Work introduced the classical architecture of Rome to the country, designing The Queen’s House in Greenwich and the Banqueting House at Whitehall.

The painted ceiling of the Banqueting House by Peter Paul Rubens provides insight into James’ preoccupations. Commissioned by James in 1621, the tennis court sized series was installed in 1636 becoming a memorial to the late King. In The Apotheosis of James I, the King is depicted ascending into heaven on a giant eagle belonging to Jupiter, ruler of the Roman gods. The winged figure of Victory, together with a figure representing Great Britain hold a laurel wreath above the King’s head, in exchange for his earthly crown. Parallels between the King and divine power are explicit, underlined by the figure of Religion holding the freshly translated Bible showing the first words of St John’s gospel ‘In the beginning’ (was the Word). In a side panel to The Union of the Crowns, where the King is presented in a Biblical setting, Minerva, goddess of wisdom is stamping on Ignorance, represented by an old woman, naked and floored.

Rubens’ identification of an old woman as low status and powerless did not come out of thin air. In the social hierarchy of seventeenth century northern Europe, most ordinary people had few rights and women had next to none, entitled only to the legal protection of their husband’s rank. But lack of rights did not prevent women from influencing their communities’ moral tone. The victims of the infamous East Berwick witch trials in 1590-92 and Pendle witch trials in 1612, first came to the attention of authority through accusations and feuds within their own communities.

Daemonologie, published in Edinburgh in 1597, was written following James perceived experiences of witchcraft when storms imperilled his voyage from Denmark to Scotland, returning with his new 15-year-old bride Anne. It is believed the King was involved in interrogations of witchcraft suspects in East Berwick, authorising their torture and execution. One suspect’s ability to recount a conversation from the royal bridal chamber, convinced James the accused were the tools of diabolical powers intent on killing the royal couple. Beliefs around women’s inherent weakness, positioned them as easier prey for malevolent forces:

‘sexe is frailer than man is, so is easier to be intrapped in these grosse snares of the Devill’

In later life James became more sceptical about claims of witchcraft and demonic possession, and searched for evidence to discount what was only the work of fantasy and attention-seeking.

But the King’s family history and tumultuous times he lived through, made the road to discernment a long and winding one. James last saw his mother, Mary Queen of Scots as an 11-month-old infant. His father Lord Darnley was killed in a mysterious explosion, possibly arranged by his own wife. Mary was imprisoned in England by Elizabeth I and executed in 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire. In the lead up to his marriage James lamented that as a child he was ‘alone, without father, mother, brother or sister.’

The normalcy of removing troublesome relatives is illustrated by a 1605 portrait of Lady Arabella Stuart, attributed to Robert Peake the Elder. The King’s cousin died in the Tower in 1615, where James had her imprisoned, in case her marriage to William Seymour gave her too strong a claim on the throne.

Today’s witches on Etsy may feel they are reclaiming a lineage of folk wisdom and reparation for past wrongs. But willingly stepping into the scapegoat role... has no historical precedent.

Death also stalked James and Anne’s family, with only two out of their seven children surviving into adulthood. Their eldest son and heir Prince Henry Frederick died aged 18, and was mourned throughout Europe in the decades that followed the death in 1612, as he was seen as the great hope of the continent’s future.

The World of King James VI and I is full of visual meditations on death. On entering visitors are greeted with Livinius de Vogalaare’s The Memorial of Lord Darnley, 1567, a substantial canvas, with a crowned, grey-robed infant James, kneeling before his father’s coffin. Darnley’s effigy with hands in prayer lies on top the casket, unicorns either side of his head. An engraving of Prince Henry Frederick’s Hearse, 1640 copy from 1612 original, shows the richly decorated hearse, complete with a wax effigy dressed in the prince’s clothes, which was accompanied by 2000 mourners as it made its way to Westminster Abbey. Eighteenth century artist James Mynde’s engraving The Mausoleum of James VI and I, illustrates the Jacobean era’s fondness for lavishly dressed effigies of the deceased, surrounded by figures of classical deities.

Charm stones, believed to cure sickness in people and animals, formed part of James’ cosmology, together with the new translation of the Bible he commissioned, intended to sound beautiful for this age of oracy. James advocated for Protestantism and the reformation, while being in regular communication with the Papacy. He also brought a more English style of worship to the independent-minded Scottish kirk, insisting they used chalices and altar cloths. The monarch was devout, yet flexible, in his Christian beliefs.

A simple reading of the Jacobean court is not possible. It was a place of ritualised gift-giving, with ciphered and initialled jewels indicating who was in or out of favour, whose power was rising, and whose power was waning. James believed he was sent by God to rule and protect his people, and felt justified in extinguishing anyone or anything threatening his divine project. Self -proclaimed, or community-nominated witches provided useful scapegoats for discontent around James’ rule, underlined in 1605 by the Gunpowder Plot.

Today’s witches on Etsy may feel they are reclaiming a lineage of folk wisdom and reparation for past wrongs. But willingly stepping into the scapegoat role and presenting a blank screen for the dark projections of the powerful, has no historical precedent for bringing liberty or social transformation. Cos-playing the historically marginalised will not make things better for today’s excluded and underserved, but focusing on down to earth, earthly political and economic power will.

The World of James I and VI, National Galleries of Scotland, until 14 September.

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