How the Christmas television dramas compared
But for ITV’s off-colour take on Peter Pan, the major channels’ big Christmas dramas went down extremely well for Ben Lawrence
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How do you make sense of watching TV at Christmas? It sometimes seems as if the major broadcasters have spent the whole year plotting to dazzle you with their gleaming baubles, but when it comes to it, you’re in such a stupor, in such a fug of fine food and booze, that their efforts have been wasted. This year, however, several programmes managed to rouse DANIEL me from a post-prandial daze. Two kids’ animations from two masters of PRODUCTIONS/LIAM the genre, Nick Park ( The Farmer’s
Llamas ) and Axel Scheffler ( Stick Man ), struck gold with a charming blend of bite and whimsy, while the sight of Bruce Forsyth dandling a newborn granddaughter on his knee in the PLANET
Strictly Come Dancing special was an arresting, surprisingly touching sight. BBC/RED
Touching was the word for the last-ever Downton Abbey ( ★★★★ ), which had been gift-wrapped by its PICTURES; creator Julian Fellowes with military efficiency. The sense of an ending weighed heavily, and ITV/HEADLINE Fellowes knew he had to line up all his soldiers in a row. Characters were paired off (or it was hinted they would pair off) as if they were ITV; in a high Shakespearean comedy. BBC; Kitchen maid Daisy and footman Andy (was Andy a common diminutive in the Twenties? Better than calling him Liam, I suppose), Mrs Patmore and Mr Mason, Baxter and Molesley, Cousin Isobel and Lord Merton, Branson and schoolteacher Sarah Bunting. The poor Earl of Grantham must have been quite exhausted at the thought of erecting yet another marquee in the grounds. And how would he pay for all that rum punch with a general strike on the horizon?
No matter. The Earl was as pleased as punch because Lady Edith was finally getting married to Bertie Pelham, a deuced decent chap but also a marquess and owner of a rather bleaklooking stately pile in Northumberland. Many viewers will expected some calamity to befall the luckless Lady Edith. Yet, a tragedy involving her dangerously long wedding gown was avoided, and all ended happily with the Abbey inexplicably covered in a wintry blizzard that made it resemble a National Trust snowglobe. “It’s a job well done,” purred Lady Cora. It’s hard to disagree.
Not quite as satisfying but far more intriguing was the start of Dickensian ( ★★★★ ), a brave invention from former
EastEnders scriptwriter Tony Jordan in which different characters from the works of Dickens converge in one grimy corner of London (a Victorian Albert Square?) and act out an entirely new plot; a mutual Christmas curiosity shop.
I spent the first episode in a state of literal-minded anxiety. I thought Satis House was in Kent. How can Little Nell only be a decade younger than Honoria Dedlock (née Barbary)? Should I know Silas Wegg? Which book is he from?* Yet by the end of the first double bill, and with Jacob Marley now truly as dead as a doornail, I started to relax and even enjoy it. Jordan’s script may lack the psychological amplitude of the man who inspired him, but the plot races along at such a lick that you can forgive Jordan’s audacity.
While some characters (Bob Cratchit, Sarah Gamp) seemed to jump straight out of the Dickens encyclopaedia, others were open to more thoughtful interpretations. That fine character actor Anton Lesser was a watchful Fagin, free of stereotypical Jewish neurosis. Inspector Bucket (a minor character in Bleak House but here driving the plot) was played by Stephen Rea with existential darkness, like a modern tortured TV detective. I can’t wait for Mr Pickwick to take them all skating. Another equally loose literary adaptation was Peter and
Wendy ( ★★ ), which claimed to be based on JM Barrie’s children’s classic. I don’t want to be uncharitable, because Adrian Hodges’ script was so wellintentioned – but, dear me, it was hard work, not to mention a bolt out of the blue for viewers expecting two hours of fairy-wing flapping tweeness.
Teenager Lucy was being treated for a rare heart condition at Great Ormond Street by a brilliant but arrogant surgeon (is there any other kind in fiction?). Before long she was reading
Peter Pan to the other young patients and under anaesthetic imagined she was Wendy, while the surgeon (Stanley Tucci, acting with manly conviction under a frightful toupee) became Captain Hook. It was not a bad idea, and the hospital scenes were played with a fair degree of conviction. Yet the magical events in Neverland were strangely underpowered and it was hard to be convinced, or even entertained, by Tucci’s villainous, moustachetwirling old Etonian. Peter Pan spoke in a broad Northern dialect, as if the producers had worried he might come across as a bit fey if he spoke in RP. It also added a strange new dimension, as Peter and Wendy’s flirtation suddenly took place across class boundaries.
Oh, and I should mention that pop star Paloma Faith played Tinker Bell. Faith didn’t open her mouth (a blessing, some would say) and her lines were rendered instead by an infuriating bell noise that made me need the toilet.
Fantasy of a more satisfying shade came from Doctor Who ( ★★★★ ). It’s been a tough year for Peter Capaldi’s Time Lord, as he’s had to face up to dwindling ratings, accusations of impenetrable plots and ongoing fears of unsuitability for the kiddies. It’s all rather unfair, as Steven Moffat’s latest series was a work of dark and startling imagination. The now institutional Christmas episode, “The Husbands of River Song”, was inventive, too, as the Doctor found his spouse (played with festive camp by Alex Kingston) on a human colony and became embroiled in an inter-galactic jewel theft. River, it turned out, had married a cyborg with a priceless jewel lodged in his brain. Her attempts to extract it played out like a sort of cross between a Douglas Adams novel and a Feydeau farce.
Moffat is an amazingly subversive writer who has smuggled a fair degree of radicalism into teatime telly. “This is where genocide comes to kick back and relax,” River told the Doctor at a restaurant not dissimilar to Adams’s one at the end of the universe. “Do try the fish.”
You made my Christmas, Doc. Please come again next year.