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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Review

Addiction

Culture

Theatre

24 June 2024

5 min read

The ancient drama of rehab

People Places & Things is a modern play with old stories.

Simon Walsh

Simon Walsh is a communications consultant, journalist and non-stipendiary priest in the Diocese of London.

on a stage a woman kneels on a bed amid frantic action around her.

Denise Gough as Emma.

‘There is no higher power,’ says a character defiantly in People Places & Things, the revival of Duncan Macmillan’s 2015 play about addicts and addiction. It’s an echo from Greek tragedy when anyone denies the gods, and now has a modern ring in all the self-help, self-belief talk of recovery and resolve.

Denise Gough reprises her lead performance as Emma for which, last time around, she swept the board in awards and nominations. It’s easy to see why. She’s on stage almost the entire time, compelling and fluent throughout. The opening scene has her in the white-box modern set wearing a Victorian costume, for her character is an actress in Chekhov’s The Seagull – almost meta, and the first hint and how this a show where realities and identities blur with layers upon layers.

Soon after, Emma (if that is her real name) checks into a rehab unit. She doesn’t feel she has a problem but is there for a break. ‘Drugs and alcohol have never let me down,’ she says at one point. A brisk female doctor in a white coat admits her, played by Sinéad Cusack. A couple of scenes later, Cusack reappears as the clinic’s group therapist. This time she’s full of empathy – barefoot and with a scarf over one shoulder – all herbal tea and sympathy.

But the therapist’s work with her charges is vital. Some even get to ‘graduate’ and host a non-alcoholic party the night before they leave, having successfully stayed the course. Probably not Emma though. She’s too feisty, individually unable to admit her problems, and inevitably she crashes. There’s a naturalistic feel to the production and narrative, even when it jolts into dream-like sequences or bright lights with thumping techno music.

Anyone with experience of an addict or addiction will find it all too familiar. The later scene where Emma returns to the parental home is a crucible of pain, and embodies the play’s title. It concerns ‘the people who can make us relapse, the places which trigger associations, and the things which are the props of the old habits’. And it’s made more complex by the family in grief over the recent, sudden death of Emma’s beloved brother in a freak accident. ‘It should have been you instead’ is the parental curse on this remaining child.

There’s a slow and silent feel to the way it develops. The word inexorable comes to mind, something that cannot be changed or stopped. Like Greek tragedy, the tension is in how this will resolve, and if it will turn out as badly as feared. It does and it doesn’t, which is at least true to the addiction journey.

Jeremy Herrin expertly directs an intensely fine cast: Russell Anthony, Holly Atkins, Ryan Hutton, Malachi Kirby, Danny Kirrane, Paksie Vernon, Kevin McMonagle, Ayò Owóyemi-Peters, Lousie Templeton, Dillon Scott-Lewis. These are nuanced, crafted performances which inhabit Bunny Christie’s versatile, stylish set with presence.

What the healings have in common is the aftermath – a sense of vision restored, stability refound, new clarity...

Faith plays at the edges of this work. There are passing references to religion: a ‘bibling grief’, communion wine, the power of prayer. More tears, said St Teresa of Avila, are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones, and this outward expression of a cry for help connotes the spiritual struggle of addicts along with their pity. As the first disciples themselves asked, ‘Teach us, Lord, how to pray.’

Addiction was not something Jesus had much to say about. Healings take place throughout each of the four gospels. The sufferers present with various ailments and of differing origins. For some it is hereditary, others through sin (such as when Matthew records Jesus healing a paralyzed man with the words ‘your sins are forgiven’). At other times there is a clear need for recognition such as when Jesus visits his hometown. He ‘laid hands on a few sick people and cured them’ but otherwise ‘could do no deed of power there… and was amazed at their unbelief’.

These healings, however, do not obviously deal with addiction. The closest connection is probably the examples which deal with demons. The encounter with a man possessed in the land of the Gerasenes, a little earlier, is instructive. Here is someone who ‘lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him anymore, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained but the chains he wrenched apart; and no one had the strength to subdue him’. But Jesus confronts the demon, the ’unclean spirit’, and sends it into a herd of swine ‘numbering about two thousand, which then rushes to the sea and is drowned.

What the healings have in common is the aftermath – a sense of vision restored, stability refound, new clarity. The healed demoniac is found with Jesus, ‘sitting there, clothed and in his right mind’, though the swineherds do not believe it and remain scared. They beg Jesus to leave and the ex-demoniac wants to go with him, but Jesus tells him to stay: ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’ He is to give his testimony.

Drama at its heart has to be about telling a story and finding a universal truth.

It’s a running debate that lived experience and life identity are now more important than acting ability when it comes to race, sexuality, gender and so on. Denise Gough has given testimony ahead of this run – how as a teenager she fled her native Wexford for London where she fell into homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, and was the victim of grooming. She has told her story, with purpose, much as those people who experienced healing and deliverance gave their own account to the Early Church.

Drama at its heart has to be about telling a story and finding a universal truth. The gospels are full of this, with redemption and rehabilitation. Lives changed, sins forgiven, and a new future made possible. There is power in believing, and knowing that when someone might stumble and fall, it is not the end. In fact, it might just be the beginning.

People, Places & Things is on at the Trafalgar Theatre, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2DY, until 10 August 2024.