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

Care

Community

Culture

Film & TV

25 March 2025

5 min read

Amandaland's portrayal of falling social standing is spot on

What happens when motherhood is no longer rich, powerful, and terrifying.

Beatrice Scudeler

Beatrice writes on literature, religion, the arts, and the family. Her published work can be found here.

On the sidelines of a pitch a well-dressed mum hands a coat to a sceptical looking mum beside her.

Nobody likes mums. Not really. We talk about our kids all the time, we’re bossy, we’re interfering, we’re no fun. The stereotypes abound. Not even mums like other mums. We should help each other, but we often end up mercilessly judging each other instead. If you work, you’re a cruel, neglectful mother; if you’re a stay-at-home mum, you’re lazy, weak, and probably boring.

Even worse than being disliked, though, is not being taken seriously. I thought motherhood would bestow a certain level of respect, a kind of admission, from society at large, that if you can keep a human being alive – let alone several – you must be somewhat competent at least. I can now see that’s only the case in older motherhood, once your children are grown up and you can prove to the world that you did, in fact, do a good job of raising them. Before then, while your kids are still loud toddlers or moody teenagers, being a mother is a decidedly low-status affair.

That’s exactly what Amandaland, the new Motherland spin-off, gets right. In Motherland, the original show, the character of Amanda is a confident, terrifying alpha mum, a modern anti-heroine and a foil to the frazzled, overwhelmed protagonist Julia. As a stay-at-home mum, Amanda holds on to her high social status by a combination of displaying her husband’s wealth and a careful strategy of putting other mothers down at every possible occasion.

By the end of Motherland, however, Amanda is lost: she opens and very quickly closes a lifestyle shop, she’s about to lose her house in the divorce, and her ex-husband is about to remarry. She’s not quite so terrifying anymore; she’s more human, more fragile. Her insecurities begin to show.

It’s only in Amandaland, however, that her alpha-mum persona fully breaks down. She’s had to downsize and – gasp – move from Acton to a less affluent part of London; her ex-husband is refusing to pay for their kids’ private school or for her car; she has no career and no prospects. While materially still more privileged than many, in the eyes of society she’s lost any claim to admiration.

As she meets a host of mums and dads from her kids’ new school after her move, it’s obvious that Amanda is trying to conceal this drastic change. She refers to all the furniture which she’s hording from her old, much bigger house – in her mother’s garage – as ‘curated items from my style archive’. When her mother nudges her to get rid of said ‘curated items’ in the school’s car boot sale, she deflects by declaring, in a suitably dramatic way, ‘I’m so ready to streamline all these investment pieces’. In the next episode she starts showing off, at her kids’ football practice, that ‘this big-shot interiors firm just begged me for a meet at their flagship store’. What she means is that she’s got a job interview at a kitchen and bathroom showroom. Which job she does get, by the way, and proceeds to refer to it for the rest of the show as her ‘collab’.

I said that nobody likes mums. I should have said, more accurately, that most people don’t find caregivers interesting.

There’s a reason Amanda speaks in cringeworthy euphemisms half of the time, and it’s not because she delights in being irritating. It’s because she’s feeling the full force of her fall in social status. We can judge her for being shallow enough to care about wealth and appearance so much. But it’s impossible for me not to feel an enormous amount of sympathy for her. I know what it’s like to see someone’s gaze at a social event drift away as you mention that you’re a stay-at-home mum. I know the agonizingly overnice look that often meets you when you say you’ve been trying to get back to work after having kids.

And to be clear, I’ve been referring to ‘mothers’ throughout, but consciously being perceived as low status is an experience common to all primary caregivers. In Motherland, Kevin, the stay-at-home dad of the group, was often mocked and dismissed as insignificant for looking after his two daughters full time. I said that nobody likes mums. I should have said, more accurately, that most people don’t find caregivers interesting.

There are two ways to respond to the plain fact that caregiving is seen as low status and low value, and Amanda learns both over the course of the show. The first is to realise we have an innate value that cannot be determined by social approval. We must become comfortable with being sneered at; there’s no way around it. Without spoiling what happens in later episodes, Amanda does grow in virtue by valuing status less and less, eventually rejecting the opportunity to return to wealth and high status for the sake of her family and her own integrity.

The second way is to find fellowship. The friendships which Amanda forms, especially with the wonderful Anne, also an original Motherland character, are what save her from herself in the end. Anne and the other parents show her that they, at least, don’t care that she’s no longer rich, powerful, and terrifying. They chip away at her armour until she realises that she doesn’t need to be adored in order to be loved.

We cannot control how people perceive us, but we can control how we respond. At the beginning of the show, Amanda’s response to the challenges of motherhood was to sink into self-absorption. In the end, she’s redeemed by the kindness of her friends. Motherhood will, perhaps, always be a thankless, low status job. But it’s also, and will always be, an irreplaceable one.

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