Al raises a glass to variety shows
AL MURRAY’S MAKE CHRISTMAS GREAT AGAIN UTV, TONIGHT, 9PM
IT’S one of those quirks of scheduling that even though Christmas has traditionally been a great time for viewers, the weekend before the big day is often a bust.
The terrestrial channels usually tend to hold off on many of the big movies, but even that has changed in recent years, with subscription channels buying rights to popular films.
That’s the reason, for example, why you won’t be able to see Elf this year, unless you happen to have Amazon Prime.
So it’s no surprise that the weekend features a selection of repeats, season-finales and more cheap filler than you’d find in a bargain basement Christmas stocking.
There are a few shiny baubles in amongst the usual cast-offs and chief among is them undoubtedly Al Murray’s Make Christmas Great Again on UTV at 9pm. Murray’s Pub Landlord is an institution at this stage, but tonight sees the garrulous host venture into new territory with his own unique take on the traditional variety show.
Featuring Richard E Grant as a rather eccentric Santa, and such dim bulbs in the showbiz firmament as Joey Essex and McFly (prompting Murray to introduce them as “a veritable who’s that of light entertainment”), this is part homage and part piss-take of the traditional TV variety shows which, interestingly enough, have made quite a comeback on our screens in recent years.
But there will be a ghost at the proceedings.
Aled Jones was due to appear but has since been axed by producers following an allegation of ‘inappropriate contact’ with a colleague a decade ago.
So forget about all the other weirdness we’ve witnessed this year, pause for a moment to consider the fact that that the kid we all remember from The Snowman has been bumped from a show because of naughty allegations.
In fairness, nobody saw that one coming.
Channel 4 is still planning to run The Snowman on Christmas Eve, so enjoy it while you can – with the current thirst to utterly erase the existence of any accused of wrongdoing, it might be the last Christmas this gets aired...
Some anthropologists contend that the human condition is driven by sex and death – the evolutionary desire to get one and avoid the other.
Well, we’ve had plenty of both in 2017, and while we may all have succumbed to a form of confirmation bias and convinced ourselves that celebrities are dropping at an unprecedented rate, this was a bad year to be famous.
Tomorrow night sees a SkyArts special, Music Legends We Lost (11pm), which will be both depressing and unmissable.