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

Trauma

Work

23 September 2025

5 min read

What would Pascal make of Emmy-winner Severance?

Locking ourselves away in a room still doesn’t work

Rick Hansen

Rick writes and speaks on leadership, transformation, and culture.

Pascal ponders a steampunk TV showing Severance.

Nick Jones/Copilot.

Severance, the hit Apple TV series, garnered the most Emmy nominations at the star-studded 77th Emmy Awards. Colors and fame popped on the vibrant red carpet as Hollywood’s elite strolled along the walkway, exuding famous smiles, elegant evening wear, and their signature flair.

It was strikingly ironic, however, to see the Severance actors in such formal attire, ripe with ready-made smiles. Their presence was, well, very Hollywood. This contrasted sharply with their on-screen characters, who are typically set against a dark, desolate backdrop of despair, compelled to force smiles as if it were an immense burden on their very souls.

The stark contrast between the opulent Hollywood red carpet and the sterile, bland workspace Severance is set in underscores a core theme in the show: the tension between faith and doubt, belief and despair, light and darkness.

In the show, the main character Mark S. grapples with the challenge of navigating his own tension in his own calibrated nightmare of hope and despair. He has to cope with the sudden loss of his wife, and it's suffocating him.

His company, Lumon, helps him deal with this loss through a surgical procedure called Severance. This procedure implants a chip in his brain that creates two separate identities: an "Innie" for work and an "Outie" for home. These two co-existing selves are emotionally, physically, and psychologically unaware of each other, essentially severing the person's whole self into two pieces. Whatever they are trying to bury or escape, becoming “severed” keeps the person’s “Innie” from dealing with this delicate paradox of the “Outie”. In short, they don’t have to choose the light or the dark.

For Mark S., severance offers a thin thread of disguised hope, a potential breach in his unbearable pain.

In his Pensées, French philosopher Blaise Pascal explores this intrinsic human tension between faith and doubt, belief and despair - a fundamental aspect of the human experience. He says, "In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t."

He posits that the evidence between the light and the shadow is just enough to sway us in one direction or the other. It’s calibrated on either side allowing us to lean into our personal autonomy. We are free to choose the hope of the light or succumb to the despair of the darkness; the outcome depends entirely on what we choose.

Leaning into Pascal, the act of severance relieves Mark S. of this beautiful yet complicated tension.

A review on Reddit said it simply, “Severing allows Mark to just literally shut his brain off, get the work done, then go home and distract himself with TV and alcohol... he doesn’t want to let it go.”

It’s real pain and he doesn’t know how to manage it. The shadows are pervasive. However, by choosing severance, Mark avoids the light and the shadows. The more he relies on severance for hope or healing by attempting to bury the shadows, the more the shadows intensify - the shadows Pascal says will blind us in our disbelief.

The battle that Mark S. faces embodies the very tension that Pascal is surfacing. This tension of choosing the light or the shadows is something we all must face.

We all carry shadows wrapped in our own circumstances. I think many of us would likely prefer to avoid confronting them. They are painful. They are dark. They are heavy. In truth, if we had the choice I think many of us would likely choose an escape instead of dealing with the darkness, with the secrets and the pain that hide in our souls.

For example, many of us show up to work or to life like Mark S. in some version of our “Innie” - a professional face of compliance, rule following, corporate persona, goal oriented, etc. and leave the version of our “Outie” at home alone and isolated to wrestle with our demons, with our painful, confusing questions. We curate our internal messiness and disguise ourselves with our own “Innie”.

For some, our day job is an actual version of a self-imposed severance.

I wish this tension between the light and shadows Pascal speaks of was less “tense” to say it plainly, and yet it is an inherent, essential part of the human experience.

This faith that both we and Mark S. wrestle with, by its very nature, lacks complete clarity; this tension is, in fact, a testament to this profound mystery of life itself. It's the wonder of life. There’s just enough data for us to lean into the light and also just as much for us to lean into the shadows. What we see depends on what we choose to believe in.

This tension is similarly addressed in the Biblical book of Hebrews. It highlights Pascal's subtle paradox and defines faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

The freedom to choose “the substance of things hoped for”, this inherent tension of Pascal, is the true marvel and mystery of life. It’s both messy and wonderful.

Our capacity for choice, to engage with the light and shadows and to lean into one over the other as we wish is a profound gift.

While some find this very tension a reason for disbelief, Pascal tugs on this and says it's actually fundamental to belief, it's a wonderful component of the human condition - a true gift. It hints at the very essence of hope. It’s the same process we must engage when choosing to believe in or not to believe in something beyond our selves, and ultimately beyond this world.

This struggle, the shadows of pain and suffering and the light of hope and belief is precisely what makes us alive; it’s what makes us human. It points us to the heavens where hope and faith were authored.

The question isn’t whether we have an “Innie” or an “Outie”, a tension of light and darkness, of faith and doubt. We all do. We all wrestle with this essence. The question is do we have the courage to wrestle with these internal conflicts, enabling us to bring our whole selves - our flaws and pains, our joys and hopes - into every interaction.

This tension Pascal speaks of is ultimately a mirror that shows us, us. We are all tempted to numb our pain, divide ourselves, to compartmentalize the shadows. But Pascal reminds us there is always enough light to see, if we choose it.

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