Unwrap these festive crackers

Tears, laughter and wide-eyed wonder. You can always rely on television and cinema to match every mood at Christmas, writes Julia Molony

AH, Christmas. Family time is a bun fight. Turkey is bland. Today’s mulled winehigh is tomorrow’s red-faced shame. Even the business of opening presents around the tree, the very definition of pleasure anticipated, usually manages to be anti-climactic. Even, or perhaps most, when you unwrap the thing you really, really wanted.

The only Christmas joy that is pure and uncomplicated is the entertainment. The most reliable source for a shot of the childlike wonder, that all the spending, boozing, and eating is an oddly unsatisfying attempt to regain, is to be found on telly or at your local cinema.

There are few existential aches that an evening spent curled up by the tree with It’s A Wonderful Life can’t soothe, or squabbles that a diverting cinema trip to see a knock-itout-of-the-park family favourite can’t mend. And this year, we are in luck. There is a veritable smorgasbord of stellar casts, lavish sets, high-production values and perfectly-pitched seasonal nostalgia to tuck into, both at the cinema and in the comfort of your home. It’s time to bust open the Quality Street, because all I want for Christmas this year is a cracking good show.

With the internet streaming the best of global film-making directly into our homes, we are spoilt for choice. But this time of year, some- times the greatest pleasures are those found closer to home.

RTE boasts a number of Irishmade gems this year. Like the piece of pure, unadulterated nostalgia that is the Fairytale Of New York documentary, which will air on December 21 (9.30pm) to celebrate the 30th birthday of the song. Shane MacGowan, who stars, calls it “the nastiest Christmas single ever”. The producers bagged an impressive line-up of interviewees to bolster MacGowan’s turn in this film which celebrates “an iconic song and a unique songwriter”, including Christy Moore, Bob Geldof and Paul Simon.

And then there’s guaranteed cosy entertainment from Baz and his mammy on offer in Baz and Nancy’s Holy Show (December 20, 9.35pm) In the lead up to Christmas, why not escape from your own family dramas into Baz and Nancy’s instead? The show follows telly’s favourite Emmy-award winning mother-son duo all the way to the Vatican. For Nancy’s 75th birthday, Baz is trying to make her dreams come true by setting up an audience with the Pope.

Christmas Day itself is full of Irish treats this year too. By the time the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas special Mammy’s Mummy comes on at 9.00pm, a bit of comic relief will be just the tonic to help settle the indigestion of body and soul that settles in after a long day indoors with family, food and wine. Join Agnes, Grandpa, Buster Brady and all the

crew as Dermot hunts for an elf for his Santa’s grotto, and Rory treats himself to a nip and tuck.

Or for an altogether more sophisticated brand of Irish-made entertainment, head to RTE1 for its prime-time Christmas Day movie Brooklyn; it’s a stylish 1950s Oscar-nominated adventure courtesy of Colm Toibin and Saoirse Ronan.

The highlight of TV3’s schedule, meanwhile, is the world TV premiere of Irish film Cardboard Gangsters (December 18, 9pm). The gritty crime drama from director Mark O’Connor became the highest grossing Irish film of 2017 when it was released in cinemas in June. The action focuses on DJ and small-time drug dealer Jay Connolly as he makes a break for the big leagues and embarks on a nail-biting adventure into the Dublin’s criminal underbelly.

To Netflix then, where a host of high-profile, water-cooler television “events” are to be found. You’ll need to make time to schedule in a binge on the second season of The Crown (which was released last Friday) to assuage any concerns of FOMO (fear of missing out) when talk turns to telly, as it inevitably does when conversation wears thin during all those Christmas lunches. As you will know by now, the lavish first series, penned by Peter Morgan and starring Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth was made at staggering expense (£100m) and received glowing reviews. Claire Foy and Matt Smith are back for one last hoorah before being replaced in the third season. The action apparently picks up where Season One left off and takes the political and historical intrigue up to the mid 1960s.

Also new to Netflix this month is the all-time Christmas classic Love Actually. (Released this Thursday) Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without a bit of Richard Curtis’s cosy London-centric world-view and Love Actually, though panned by the critics, delivers all the necessaries — kooky children, fumblingly awkward romance, a bravura turn by Emma Thompson, and Hugh Grant starring as an alarmingly hapless but tender-hearted Prime Minister.

For a decidedly more dystopian perspective, you could do worse than tune into Black Mirror. Charlie Brooker’s pleasingly jaundiced dramatic examination of life in the digital age in which each episode is a stand-alone vignette is out on Netflix on December 29.

This series promises, according to one early review, to be not only the best so far but also “darker than ever”.

Netflix is also, happily, packed to the rafters with seasonal, family fare to distract the kids for a few moments from bickering over custody of the fidget spinners. Old reliables already on offer include Miracle on 34th Street, Santa Claws, Deck the Halls, and Look Who’s Talking Now.

For those intrepid enough to actually haul themselves off the sofa and out into the cold, in search of a bigscreen the one cinema event not to be missed this year is, hands-down, Paddington 2. The heartwarming adventures of the bumbling bear is like a concentrated dose of Hygge, shot directly into your freezing veins. Other cinema events not to be missed include the Lighthouse Cinema screening of the definitive Royal Ballet production of The Nutcracker on Saturday, December 23, and It’s A Wonderful Life, showing at the IFI in Dublin from this Wednesday.

Clockwise from top left: Saoirse Ronan and Domhnall Gleeson in RTE’s Christmas Day blockbuster ‘Brooklyn’, Brendan O’Carroll in Mrs Brown’s Christmas special, Baz and Nancy in Holy Show and John Connors in Cardboard Gangsters