Review

Christmas culture

Culture

Film & TV

24 December 2024

6 min read

The twelve days of Christmas TV

What to watch across the festive season.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

At a Christmas party, friend smile, laugh, and collapse in a heap on a sofa.

This is occurin'.

Christmas approaches! We are soon to begin the twelve-day marathon of celebrating the birth of Christ through food, drink, and…collapsing in front of the telly! It is a season of great joy and gladness, but also one of physical and mental exhaustion. To make it all a little easier I have finely combed through the Christmas edition of the Radio Times to present to you the one can’t miss televisual offering for each of the twelve days. Consider this my gift to all the readers of Seen & Unseen; hopefully a little more practical than a partridge in a pear tree.

On the first day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Gavin & Stacey: The Finale

Christmas Day, BBC 1, 9pm

The first G&S Christmas Special is an annual tradition in my household. My wife and I are guaranteed to watch it at least once in the run-up to Christmas. It is an example of a truly perfect piece of television: masterfully combining the necessarily contrived and mawkish sentimentality of Christmas telly, and the absurdist/realist/deadpan comedy that endeared the series to so many. The comeback Christmas Special in 2019 was a let-down on the night (I had such high expectations) but has grown on me over the years: nowhere near as good as the original, too self-referential and mannered for its own good, but still darn-funny, and acting as a rather sweet meditation on aging and parenthood. Christmas Day is all about family – be it our own family, or the Holy Family of Bethlehem – so why not see the day out in the warm glow of the Shipman-West family.

On the second day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Zulu

Boxing Day, Channel 4, 3.50pm

This one is personal for me. This is one of the first films I remember watching with my father, around the Christmas season. Glorious cinematography, a pacey plot, an electrifying final set-piece (which, 60 years later, is still more engaging than most of the bigger budget CGI shlock you can see today), a smattering of Welsh patriotism, and Michael Caine doing a posh accent. This is a classic for a reason: the remarkable story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift combined with a searing and sympathetic exploration of the British class system, ending with a meditation on both the unifying and horrifying nature of war. If you’re suffering from over-indulgence on Boxing Day I can’t think of a better tonic.

On the third day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Pitch Perfect

27 December, ITV 2, 9pm

The sequels very much delivered diminishing returns, but the original is such a wholesome piece of film-making. A celebration of music, growing-up, sisterhood and girl-power…it is feel-good fare from beginning to end. Anna Kendrick shines with raw singing-star-power, while Rebel Wilson provides just the right amount of comic relief. After the high of Christmas Day, and the slow come-down of Boxing Day, this film is like a warm bath of feel-good aca-enjoyment.

On the fourth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Maggie Smith at the BBC

28 December, BBC 2, 7pm

A celebration of the career of Maggie Smith on what would have been her 90th birthday. If that precis doesn’t hook you, then we can’t be friends.

On the fifth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

The Fugitive

29 December, Channel 5, 4.35pm

I can’t think of many thrillers better than this. From the very first scene this film has you on the edge of your seat asking the most terrifying of existential questions…

WHY DOES HARRISON FORD HAVE A BEARD!?!?!?

The tension only ratchets up from there! Harrison Ford plays the character he was born to play: a slightly gruff man, down on his luck, full of ingenuity, trying to prove that he didn’t murder his wife. Tommy Lee-Jones is similarly expertly cast as the long-suffering law-man who doesn’t follow procedure…no, he feels the case in his bones! The film rips along as such a rollicking pace that you’ll feel like it’s just started by the time it has finished.

On the sixth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Rocketman

30 December, Channel 4, 9pm

The music of Elton John is indestructible.

On the seventh day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Jools’ Annual Hootenanny

New Year’s Eve, BBC 2, 11.30pm

By now this is has become a cross between a National Treasure and a National Institution, and I cannot comprehend people who see the New Year in with anything else on their telly.

On the eighth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Airplane!

New Year’s Day, ITV 4, 9pm

This is the funniest film ever made. That is an indisputable fact, whether your metric is quantity or quality. The jokes come at a machine-gun rattle, and every single one hits their target! Absurdism, slapstick, wordplay, and the straight-face of Leslie Nielsen…THE FUNNIEST FILM EVER MADE!

On the ninth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World

2 January, BBC 2, 10pm

Russel Crowe deserved to have this film be the start of a worldwide phenomenal franchise; especially as Patrick O'Brian left us with twenty novels to work from. Crowe embodies Captain Jack Aubrey perfectly – oaken and noble and solid. Teaming him up with Paul Bettany for the second time is a masterstroke, as they bicker and play-off each other like old friends. There is action, emotion, intrigue, drama, and naval tactics. What isn’t to like?

On the tenth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

The Silence of the Lambs

3 January, ITV 1, 10.45pm

Anthony Hopkins serves us up plenty of leftover Christmas ham with his performance. His Hannibal Lecter is intelligent, sophisticated…and essentially and pantomime villain. His Hannibal is hammy with a capital H! Please don’t misunderstand me, I enjoy the performance and the film, but it isn’t a patch on Brian Cox’s bone-chillingly subtle, understated performance in Manhunter. Anyway, this is a terrifying film in the best way possible. Putting Hopkins aside, the performances are all spot on: Jodie Foster gives us an ingénue who’s vulnerability is both a weakness and her greatest strength, and Ted Levine is indescribably creepy as serial-killer Buffalo Bill. After ten days of Christmas lulling you into a soporific stupor, this flick is the icy wake-up you need!

On the eleventh day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

The Graduate/Rain Man

4 January, BBC 4, 9pm/11.20pm

Early-career Dustin Hoffman or mid-career Dustin Hoffman: take your pick. The is no wrong answer.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Aliens

5 January, ITV 4, 9pm

The rarest of creatures: a sequel which surpasses the original. Sigourney Weaver is iconic, and is the prototype for all future female action heroes. James Cameron takes Ridley Scott’s original claustrophobic horror masterpiece, and morphs it into a war-movie to rival ‘Saving Private Ryan’. It is a superb adrenaline-rush of a film. At the end of twelve days we can all echo Bill Paxton’s immortal words: Game over, man! Game over!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

BONUS GIFT…

Carols from King’s

Christmas Eve, BBC 2, 6pm

One of the finest examples of Anglican liturgy, perfectly combining atmosphere, music, and scripture. I’ve written a little article explaining why the service of Nine Lessons and Carols is a treasure we must not lose.

Read now

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Article

Culture

Film & TV

12 June 2025

5 min read

The death of Hollywood

Out of the ashes, new stories will rise

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles.

Seth Rogan's The Studio, a Hollywood satire.

Apple TV.

There is no more obvious sign of the ailing of the Hollywood behemoth (if not to say, its actual death) than the utter failure of Disney’s latest live-action re-release of Snow White.

According to Forbes, Disney’s total investment in the movie, including production and marketing, likely exceeded $350mn. To break even, it would have needed to take around $500mn gross at the box office, after distribution and movie theatre cuts. To date it has made just under $200million.

If nothing else, that is a tremendous waste of money. But the essential problem seems to have been that the movie’s creators were trying to bend themselves (and the story) into pretzel-shaped contortions to satisfy the various demanding (and contradictory) ideological axioms of LalaLand. The result? Not only do they fail on their own terms: a movie about a young princess finding her inner girl power and leading an oppressed people to overthrow a tyrannical autocrat ends by setting up a new regime under one unchallengeable and all powerful ruler: a system of “Snow-White Supremacy”. It also fails on the archetypal axioms of story. There’s a reason why parents still read to their children the traditional version of Snow White, which scholars believe to be so long-living and so “true” that its roots seem traceable as far back as Ancient Greece. Modern storytellers mess with that long lineage of audience appeal at their peril; as no doubt several Disney executives have now found to their cost.

Last month the veteran Hollywood screenwriter and novelist Andrew Klavan concluded, after watching the last annual offering of glamour-slick virtue signalling that is the Oscars, that Hollywood is indeed a dying beast. He argued that the collective movie-making culture has become so captive to a certain ideological mindset that it has prioritised that over the more basic and primary objective of telling stories. When ideology overrides the essence of storytelling - delivering stories reflective of life as it actually is and as we find it - then the art suffers and audiences instinctively turn away.

Why? Because we all come to stories to find truth (even if it is dressed up in the “lie” of fiction). The problem with the ideological mindset approach to storytelling is not that it does not start with good intentions (let’s say a value like “compassion”); but that it drives towards and ends with outcomes very far from life as we know it to be. So, for example, compassion for allowing female-identifying men into women’s sport ends up with Olympic crowds applauding a man punching various women in the face to earn himself a gold medal. Or well-intentioned young people marching throughout the cities of Europe in support of terror groups who behead babies. There is a cognitive dissonance between the makers of movies imbibing and propagating this sort of mindset and their audience of millions.

No wonder those audiences are tuning out. Because the central thing that people want from art are good stories. Good stories make us nod and say: yep, life is like that - however far-fetched the premise or the setting may be. Bad stories make us feel like someone has tried to sell us a lie. They are “phoney” - and at a gut level, we know it.

So, if Hollywood’s time in the limelight (and the pay dirt) may be running out, where should we look for a new resurgence (dare we say, resurrection?) in the art of storytelling?

“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil.” Collaboration seems to produce the goods.

It would be foolhardy to come down too hard on an answer to that question, since ultimately stories can and have come from anywhere. But if I had to lay down money on the kind of environment out of which any resurgence in the storytelling industry (whether of the moving image or the written word) will come, I would be betting on some sort of life-affirming, collaborative, creative network or community based around the foundational values of truth, goodness and beauty, and motivated by a shared desire to see the renewal and revitalisation of Western culture everywhere.

Such networks have been springing up with the ubiquity and rapidity of mushroom colonies all over the West, particularly in the US and across Europe.

Angel Studios has emerged as one of the more front-footed of these. This is a US-based media company that produces and distributes films and TV series with inspirational and faith-based themes: projects like The Chosen - the globe-conquering pay-it-forward re-telling of the Four Gospels - and Sound of Freedom, the latter grossing over $250million worldwide. (Disney take note.)

While Angel’s content may have arisen out of niche audience demand (it was founded as a successor to the VidAngel app that sourced child- and faith-friendly content), other collaborative networks exist with a broader mission for cultural renewal. The Everything Network is one such example. A UK-based Christian network of leaders across multiple fields of society, it operates from the principle that, for centuries, society has benefitted from the way Christianity has contributed to the whole of life: from the art we create, to the laws we make, and the way we care for those in need. If God cares about everything, then the invitation persists for us to work towards the renewal of all things.

This includes the stories we tell. Hence, under one aegis, authors, poets, or screenwriters are connected with financial backers, producers, directors, animators, marketeers and so on. Implicit within the network’s mission is a recognition that stories have the power not just to entertain, but to change the world. For good and for bad.

Just look at the Bible.

At a more modest level, creative networks are coming together all over the West: in churches, across the broader arts and entertainment landscape and so on, in part as support communities for people working in those industries, but also as incubators for collaborative output. Some are more ambitious than others. And many are proving the truth of the proverb: “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil.” Collaboration seems to produce the goods.

So, if truth, beauty and goodness are the weapons on the battlefield of imagination, and the soul of the world is the prize, perhaps these emerging creative networks are the divisions, the battalions, the platoons deployed along the front line. Time will tell which are most effective.

What is certain is that, long after Hollywood’s spell over us all is broken, humans are still going to want to hear good stories. Stories that tell us something meaningful and true about life as it appears before us.

I’ll have my bucket of popcorn ready just in case.

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