Corden and co show how TV fun should be
WELL done the BBC for at least trying to make festive TV special. ITV just threw in the towel, serving up all their usual old tat with tinsel.and yes, some of the Corporation’s offerings misfired but Gavin & Stacey (BBC1, Christmas Day) was just the kind of show Xmas TV used to be about.
It was warm, family friendly, slightly daft and crucially it was funny; in parts anyway. Lush, as they say in Barry.
It’s been 10 years since the last episode of this good-natured situation comedy about Essex boy Gavin and hiswelsh wife Stacey, who are outshone by his pal
Smithy and his fearsome friend Nessa.
The plot revolved around relationships. After three kids (two cheekily called Harri and Megan) the spark had gone from Gavin and Stacey’s marriage.
Meanwhile, Smithy had a mysterious new love interest, Sonia, to introduce to the families and to “Neil, the baby” – his son with Nessa.
Corden’s Smithy is a force of nature, brimming with lust for life and with a song never far from his lips. But around snobby Sonia he changed into an anxious buffoon. The gathered clans could see that the woman, a fat-shaming horror, was kryptonite to Smithy’s Superman.
The episode ended with a genuine surprise as deadpan Nessa got down on one knee and proposed to him. “I loves you,” she said.we melted; and it left the door open for another Christmas special at the very least.
Belly-laughs may have been few but terrific characters abounded, like Gavin’s mum Pam. “I’m not using Gwen’s towels,” she said. “No way, Jose” (pronounced Joe-zay). “It’s like drying yourself on Ryvita.”
Uncle Bryn, still as excitable as a puppy, tried and failed to apply military precision to Christmas dinner; and the episode was full of small joys: Bryn and Nessa’s karaoke, her terrible tattooing skills, Bryn very nearly revealing what happened on that fishing trip with Stacey’s brother Jason all those years ago...
Could that become the modern equivalent of Eric and Ernie’s unfinished joke about two old men sitting in deckchairs, referred to but never explained?
TV comedy was once as much a part of Christmas as carols and crackers.
Hilarious specials – Morecambe &Wise, Stanley Baxter, The Two Ronnies, and sitcom favourites from the Steptoes to the Trotters – were the highlight of the viewing year until trend-crazed television executives decided to kill off mainstream entertainment in favour of undergraduate humour.
Things change, of course.we no longer have goose or figgy pudding at Christmas and, sadly, laughter is no longer the centrepiece of the Yuletide schedules. It would be in Auntie’s best interest, however, to admit they were wrong about popular comedy and try to resurrect it.
Far less enjoyable was the misguided three-part reboot of A Christmas Carol (BBC1, Sunday-tuesday) which was slow to the point of tedium. Guy Pearce is too young and handsome to play miserly Scrooge and Stephen Knight’s decision to “improve” Dickens with a paedophile headmaster was as questionable as his f-word littered script. The scene where the good Mrs Cratchit was pushed to the point of prostitution was also unnecessary.
The CGI ghost effects were splendid and the cast strong but it wasn’t a patch on The Muppet Christmas Carol (Sky Cinema).
There was more relentless misery on Eastenders (BBC1), where Martin Fowler has gone from a good-natured fruit and veg market trader to a robber, a thug and now, apparently, a murderer. Merry Christmas!
I’m so glad I no longer force myself to watch this grotesque libel on Londoners. It’s lazy, predictable and utterly addicted to grief. If life were like Eastenders there would be a Dignitas clinic on every high street.
No one ever changes for the better in the soaps. There’s no redemption or aspiration; no loyalty and certainly no logic. Unfortunately ITV’S soaps mirror Albert Square’s negativity too, squandering their traditional charms.
I’m old enough to remember when Coronation Street was a bastion of down-to-earth warmth with the occasional twist of infidelity and Emmerdale was about farmers.
Mackenzie Crook’s remake of
Worzel Gummidge (BBC1, Boxing Day) was a more relaxed affair.young city siblings Susan and John are stranded in rural Scatterbrook – no wi-fi you see – and stumble upon a magical world of talking scarecrows.worzel (Crook) mistakes them for fellow scarecrows as they wear “a jumble of ill-fitting, oddball clothes so unsuited to the countryside”.
He doesn’t crave “a cup o’ tea and a slice o’ cake” like Jon Pertwee’sworzel, Aunt Sally isn’t his love interest and there’s sadly no sign of Saucy Nancy. But Crook’s turnip-headed hero, with a nest of baby robins where his heart should be, is easy to love. Advance reports claiming thatworzel had “gone green” were misleading. The ethos of the show is less Greta Thunberg, more Keep Britain Tidy. It has a very English quality, with lovingly lingering shots of the rural landscape, the haunting folk music of The Unthanks and Michael Palin as folklore’s Green Man. The humour is gentle. Episode two, with its biker scarecrows, was more fun.a series should follow.
Call The Midwife (BBC1, Christmas Day), despatched the nuns and nurses to the Outer Hebrides where a local Presbyterian condemned their Christmas tree as “a pagan monstrosity”. It wasn’t their finest hour but Sister Monica Joan did enjoy a spiritual encounter with a “white stag” moments before I did.the difference being mine was a lager. Cheers.