Film choice

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

ITV, 2.40PM ★★★★

 This magical tale embodies the Christmas season with all the warm nostalgia you’d expect, but (at the height of the Eighties) it adds a telling metaphor about commercialisation too. David Huddleston is the perfect Santa, but his top elf, Patch (Dudley Moore), makes a bad batch of toys and flees to New York to work for a Machiavellian manufacturing boss (a cigar-sucking John Lithgow).

My Fair Lady (1964)

CHANNEL 5, 3.00PM ★★★★

 This musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, with numbers such as Get Me to the Church on Time, has become a true classic. Audrey Hepburn is exceptional as the flower girl who’s turned into a lady by Rex Harrison’s professor to win a bet with a friend. The overt snobbish sexism may be a little hard to take these days, but there’s enough wit, slyness and artistry to keep it fresh.

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

BBC ONE, 5.30PM ★★★★★

 Emma Watson dazzles in Disney’s show-stopping, live-action, chocolatebox remake of the 1997 animated classic. The film’s songs – including three new ones – by Alan Menken are the pulse, the purpose and the headline draw, but Ewan Mcgregor is delightful as Lumière, Luke Evans swish as Gaston, and Dan Stevens dons digital fur as the Prince. (For more frosty magic, Frozen airs at 3pm.)