Christmas eclipses the harvest moon
Happy Halloween! Christmas is here! The mingling of the two highly anticipated and commercialized holidays makes particular sense this year. COVID has crashed the party, so many people don’t know if they should go trick-or-treating or if they will be celebrating the holidays outside of a very tight quarantined circle. What fun!
HBO does the best job of blending the two days with “Black Christmas” (8 p.m., Saturday). This 2019 Blumhouse production revived a 1974 Canadian low-budget slasher shocker set in a sorority house. Imogen Poots, of “28 Weeks Later,” stars in a remake that received mostly “meh” reviews, but more than recouped its low budget.
Genuinely original and similarly low-budget, the 2018 shocker “A Quiet Place” (8 p.m. Saturday, FX, TV-14) stars married actors Emily Blunt and John Krasinski as parents of a deaf child whose ability to soundlessly communicate by sign language helps the family escape blind monsters from outer space who “hear” their victims before killing them.
Like Jim Jarmusch’s 2019 zombie spoof “The Dead Don’t Die,” this film was shot on location in some decidedly ungentrified factory towns in upstate New York. Jarmusch’s 2013 stylish vampire movie “Only Lovers Left Alive” is not only the best horror-themed movie of the no-longer-young century, but among its best films. It can be streamed on the Starz app.
For those who just can’t wait, there’s “Candy Cane Christmas” (8 p.m. Saturday, Lifetime, TV-PG), about a young woman who steps up to heal wounds after one neighbor declines to participate in a decorating tradition.
Hallmark blends two of its favorite distracting delusions with the 2020 fable “One Royal Holiday” (8 p.m. Saturday, TV-G), about a woman who offers her holiday home to strangers stranded by a snowstorm, only to discover that her guests are royal refugees in need of Christmas cheer. “Christmas Under the Stars” (10 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G) and “Forever Christmas” (10 p.m., Lifetime, TV-PG) follow.
› Few actors can convey both whimsy and menace
like Hugh Laurie. He was recently seen in the caustic satire “Veep” and as a vile arms merchant in “The Night Manager.” Over the years, most people came to know him as the prickly and damaged doctor on Fox’s “House,” but he got his start in U.K. comedies, including “BlackAdder” and as the hapless Bertie Wooster in “Jeeves and Wooster,” co-starring his comedy partner Christopher Fry of “Fry & Laurie” fame.
He returns in the “Masterpiece” (9 p.m. Sunday, PBS, TV-14, check local listings) presentation “Roadkill.” He’s Peter Laurence, a member of cabinet beloved by many for his modest business background, the fact that he’s not from the same old Eton crowd and populist touches like his appearances on talk radio.
He’s first seen just barely avoiding scandal by going to court to challenge charges that he was out to privatize the U.K.’s beloved National Health Service and sell it to American
billionaires. As he resumes his place in cabinet, he has no idea that scandal is about to engulf him once again, this time linked to a wayward daughter and a possible relation he’s never met.
While Laurie played the lovable buffoon in Bertie Wooster, he’s come to inhabit memorable characters who don’t suffer fools. Peter Laurence displays impatience with underlings that just may prove to be his undoing.
His condescension also does not sit well with crafty Prime Minister Dawn Ellison (Helen McCrory, “Peaky Blinders”), who offers a master class in passive-aggressive management.
› Stars of “The Real Housewives” franchise and other “Bravo-lebrities” discuss the importance of Black voices being heard at the ballot box in 2020 on “Race in America: Our Vote Counts” (10 p.m., Bravo and E!).