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

Community

Culture

Film & TV

Identity

22 September 2025

5 min read

What makes us human?

We've more in common with our ancient ancestors than we might like to think

Claire Williams

Claire Williams is a theologian investigating women’s spirituality and practice. She lecturers at Regents Theological College.

A re-enactment of an ancient 'caveman' family sitting around a camp fire.

A dramatic reconstruction of a Neanderthal family.

BBC Studios.

I recently caught up on iPlayer with the excellent BBC series Human. In it, the paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi explores 300,000 years of human evolution over five beautifully shot, evocatively presented episodes. I was transfixed by the story of these ancient human societies - of Homo habilis; Homo erectus; the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis - and of the ways that paleoanthropologists and archaeologists study the multiple human species. They walk barefoot in deep pits with what look like tiny paint brushes to dust off their finds. They are endlessly patient, and delighted at tiny scraps that I would overlook as rubbish. They see in these fragments stories of ancient lives that lived, ate, loved and died so long ago.

Take a set of footsteps fossilised into the ground in White Sands, New Mexico, discernible through their impact and weight distribution. They are thought to be those of a woman walking at speed, probably, scholars think, carrying a child. Now and again these footsteps appear to stop and stand, and in-between the right and the left foot are a small set of footprints. The mother appears to have put down the child for a moment before picking him or her back up and starting again.

This was so familiar to me, a mother of four. It reminded me of all the times I’d carried toddlers around on my hip before giving up, plonking them on the floor and then switching sides. This very human urge to care for our children, and to get tired by them, echoed through time. Although luckily for me I did not have a giant sloth chasing me, as this ancient mother seems to have done.

But the flip side of the ability to love is the ability to also reject. And the series highlighted that this less pleasant human habit – the exclusion of others – appears to be an equally core part of our existence.

Al-Shamahi asks,

‘what must it have been like to have been a hybrid child... Did these children feel like they belonged or were they teased and ostracised?’

Behind her question is a sense of deep concern about the hybrid children’s welfare all those millenia ago.

Fast forward thousands of years. Most of us went to school and know what it feels like to either be different or see someone else who is different. Imagine if a modern-day Homo sapien/neanderthalensis hybrid turned up the local primary school, would it be okay? Unlikely. We don’t look after difference particularly well. The question Al-Shamahi posed seems pertinent today as well as in palaeoanthropology terms, what would it be like to grow up a hybrid? For us today the question is similar, how do we judge what is human? Is our human status founded in the horror and aversion to difference?

The drive to surround ourselves with similarity and force others to fit is sometimes called ‘the cult of normalcy’. This behaviour only tolerates people who look, act, and represent what is familiar to you. I experience this as a neurodivergent person struggling at times to feel ‘normal’. That is why the story of hybrid children is affectively impactful. Their struggle is easy to imagine, how do they fit in?. What makes them and us human?

The little story of a mother and a child being carried (minus the sloth part) is enchanting. Is it this love for children that makes the ancient people count as human? Is it the presence of a relationship and the assumed communication between individuals that makes them human?

The risk here is to say that all people who are in families, who are parents, are the prime example of humanity and that does not fit with many lives that we would want to count as human. Love may be essential, but it cannot be a prescriptive type or circumstance. Nevertheless, the allure of love and community is strong in Human and my response to it. That familiarity with the feeling of exclusion of the hybrid child and the story of the mother and child are common. They are experiences that we can relate to concerning community and care. The series shows these human species in relationship groups, with evidence of successful community and unsuccessful community (again a familiar trait). So far, that ability to love is also the same ability to reject, to cast out the hybrid or the different human. That is unsatisfactory as the trait of what is core to humans despite the likelihood of it being at the heart of the human story.

What, then of religion? These ancient peoples who lived before language and writing yet still worshipped – their practices evident from paintings found on the walls of caves. Is this what it means to be finally human? Was it, I thought, when they demonstrated language? Was it the early signs of religion and worship? Was it to do with thinking and rationalising, deciding upon a set of gods and the rules about them? However, this cannot be. For there are people today who do not speak through choice or disability. There are those who cannot demonstrate their ability to worship, for the same reasons. Rationalising cannot be the way in which we determine humanity, for then are children, or the intellectually disabled not human? If awareness of the sacred is what makes us human, then that limits those whose cognitive abilities are different.

Christians believe that what makes us human is the image of God in us. But what is that image? It is given to humans when God made them right at the beginning of things. It is the divine something that sets us apart from trees and plants, even animals. It is a quality that God gives to humans in the creative act of making them. It is not something that humans do for themselves but something they receive from God. Could it be applied to Neanderthals or early human species? I think so. Although these early species were very different in some respects to us, they had the features of humanity that count. They had relationships, the capacity to experience awe and wonder and they loved one another (like the mother and child). The image of God could be many things but one thing is certain, it a gift from God because of his love for humans. The need for love, community and worship that is in all of us points back to this. We love one another because we are first loved by God and that is what makes us human.

Human Trailer - The Untold Story of our Human Origins - BBC

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