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Christmas TV: the week ahead

 

Sunday 22 December 2013 01:00 GMT
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JP is selling the house - so this may be your last chance to watch a - possibly last - brilliant episode
JP is selling the house - so this may be your last chance to watch a - possibly last - brilliant episode

Monday

Would I Lie to You? At Christmas (Panel Show) 8.30pm BBC1

Miranda Hart, Stephen Mangan, Barry Cryer and Miles Jupp are Rob Brydon’s guests in this festive edition of the mendacious (or not) comedy panel show. Switch your brain off from all the planning and let a little silly seasonal cheer wash over you.

Gary Barlow: Journey to Afghanistan (Documentary) 9pm ITV1

The ubiquitous Barlow gets yet another showcase, this time wrapped up in a good cause as he heads out to Camp Bastion in Helmand province to gain an insight into life at the military base while performing for the troops.

John Bishop’s Christmas Show (Comedy) 9pm BBC1

Even if you don’t find Bishop’s own easy-going observational humour all that funny, he’s got chucklesome chums with him here: he’s joined at London’s Lyceum Theatre by stand-up Jason Manford, ventriloquist Nina Conti, king of the one-liner Tim Vine, and the brilliant David O’Doherty.

Fresh Meat (Comedy) 10pm Channel 4

Vod runs against Oregon for president of the student union on the single issue of ‘“cheaper chips”, Josie and Kingsley decide to have an open relationship (“the whole Scandinavian thing”). Elsewhere, more romantic romance is brewing: Howard and Candice finally – finally! – go on a date (“Geologists go deeper” reads her morning-after T-shirt). As for J P, he’s putting the house on the market, rather worryingly. This is the last for now of this brilliant student comedy, the formula showing no signs of flagging just yet.

Bluestone 42 Christmas Special (Comedy) 10pm BBC3

More from the quite amusing comedy about a British Army bomb disposal team working in Afghanistan. In this episode they decide to put on a nativity show. Plus, a new team member, Corporal House, joins the Bluestoners’ detachment. But his cheeky attitude doesn’t endear him to everyone ….

Christmas Eve

Carols from King’s (Worship) 6.15pm BBC2

Poems by Edwin Muir, G K Chesterton and Ben Jonson supplement the traditional service of lessons and carols from the Chapel at King’s College, Cambridge. Warble along to old favourites like “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”, “Away in a Manger”, and “Once in Royal David’s City”. Because Christmas doesn’t really start until this choir sings ….

Midsomer Murders (Drama) 8pm ITV

A new series gets off to a spooky start. Les Dennis plays a local historian and Elizabeth Berrington his tetchy wife as Neil Dudgeon’s DCS Barnaby returns with a new partner, played by Gwilym Lee. The suitably otherworldly case (in more senses than one) involves a ghost-hunter gruesomely run through with an antique sword. Barnaby also gets a surprise of a more celebratory kind when he learns that his wife is expecting.

Last Tango in Halifax (Drama) 9pm BBC1

Sally Wainwright’s warm blanket of a drama ends its current run with Caroline’s pregnant girlfriend, Kate, being rushed to hospital. But, this being a Christmas special of sorts, it climaxes with a wedding – Alan and Celia’s.

Not Going Out Christmas Special (comedy) 10pm BBC1

Lee (Lee Mack) wants to create the perfect Christmas for Lucy (Sally Bretton), so he invites her to a cosy old country house that used to belong to his dear, dead old aunt – cue spookiness that’s even sillier than that of Midsomer Murders. Needless to say it all ends in low farce and so-cringeworthy-they’re-funny gags and puns.

The IT Crowd Manual (Comedy) 10pm Channel 4

A treat for fans of Graham Linehan’s geek-com about Moss, Roy and their supposed boss Jen. Last summer’s final episode, The Internet Is Coming (at 9pm) is followed by an above-par celebration with input from the stars, plus Noel Fielding, Cory Doctorow and Paul Whitehouse, who deadpans that “the last legacy for me will be the technical advice ... if in doubt, turn it off and then turn it back on again”.

Christmas Day

Call the Midwife (Drama) 6.15pm BBC1

Polio, an unexploded bomb, post-traumatic-stress disorder (though it obviously wasn’t called that in 1958) and a wedding ... Heidi Thomas’s midwifery saga returns with a deftly tear-jerking Christmas special. The usuals, including Jessica Raine, Jenny Agutter, Miranda Hart, Pam Ferris and Laura Main, are joined by guest star Sandi Toksvig.

Don Quixote (The Royal Ballet) 8pm BBC4

Carlos Acosta’s first production for the Royal Ballet, a reworking of the ultimate 19th-century ballet romcom, received encouraging, if not ecstatic, reviews when it opened in October. Marianela Nunez and Acosta himself take the principal roles of the effervescent Kitri and local barber Basilio at the Royal Opera House – but here’s a chance to watch them leap and spin from the safety and comfort of your sofa, their bodies stretched taut while yours reclines with a box of Quality Street.

Downton Abbey (Drama) 8.30pm ITV

It’s flaming June in the Downton Christmas special as the household decamps to London for flapper-debutante Rose’s coming-out ball – joined by “the American contingent”, including Shirley MacLaine and Paul Giamatti, the Sideways star playing Cora’s disgraced brother Harold. The main storyline involves Robert’s attempt to save the Royal Family from a scandal.

The Tractate Middoth (Drama) 9.30pm BBC2

Between writing the opening episode of the returning Sherlock on New Year’s Day and the recent Doctor Who drama, An Adventure in Space and Time, Mark Gatiss has found time to make his directorial debut – in this slight but effective M R James ghost story involving a cursed Hebrew text. Sacha Dhawan and John Castle star.

M R James: The Ghost Writer (Documentary) 10.05pm BBC2

Mark Gatiss now pops out in front of the camera to explore, with his customary relish, how the conservative Victorian bachelor Monty James, a medieval scholar and provost of King’s College, Cambridge, became such a master of the ghost story, and how the stories have remained popular down the years.

Boxing Day

Gangsta Granny (Children's) 6.05pm BBC1

As any adult who has read to small children will know, there is plenty of dross out there. David Walliams’s Gangsta Granny is, by contrast, an inventive blast, and this adaptation (following last Christmas’s screen version of Walliams’s Mr Stink) stars Julia McKenzie as the aged relative concerned. And the stars really have lined up for this one: Walliams and Miranda Hart play the boys’ ballroom-dancing parents, alongside Joanna Lumley, Rob Brydon and Robbie Williams, with Reece Buttery as young Ben.

Still Open All Hours (Comedy) 7.45pm BBC1

David Jason is back as Granville in this one-off re-boot of Roy Clarke’s comedy, Open All Hours, which supposedly shut-up shop back in 1985. He’s no longer the dogsbody, mind, having inherited the business from miserly uncle Albert Arkwright, (Ronnie Barker in the original). These days, he’s got a son (the product of a one-night stand in Blackpool 25 years earlier) to help him run the business. Leroy is played by James Baxter as a bit of a lothario. Lynda Baron returns too, and Johnny Vegas puts in an appearance.

Great American Rock Anthems: Turn It Up to 11 (Music) 9pm BBC4

“If you don’t get them on the chorus you don’t have an anthem,” says Alice Cooper, whose 1972 hit “School’s Out” is pinpointed here as the first true American rock anthem. Big drums, screaming vocals and soaring guitar solos (“the guitar was the sex”, says songwriter Holly Knight) were also vital ingredients, as Dave Grohl, Meat Loaf, Todd Rundgren and many more discuss the anthem’s heyday.

Ben & James Versus the Arabian Desert (Documentary) 9.15pm BBC2

Four years after On Thin Ice – their Antarctic expedition for BBC2 – James Cracknell and Ben Fogle reunite to attempt an unguided crossing of a portion of the Rub’ al Khali desert known as the Empty Quarter. They’re following in the footsteps of 1940s explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who was nicknamed Mubarak bin London by Bedouin tribes.

Friday

Idris Elba – King of Speed (Documentary) 8pm BBC2

In the second half of his exploration of car racing (which began at the same time on Thursday), the Luther star wrestles a powerful Nascar racer in a recreation of a 1930s police chase, is trained to pilot a rally car by the astonishingly talented Finnish driver Ari Vatanen, and learns how to “drift” – a discipline developed in Japanese street racing that involves sliding a car sideways around corners as stylishly as possible.

Death Comes to Pemberley (Drama) 9pm BBC1

Wickham’s arrest leads to the cancellation of the ball, and Jane arrives to help quell Lydia and Mrs Bennet’s hysterics, in the second part of this Pride and Prejudice extension story. Darcy, meanwhile, begins to retreat into a version of his younger self, which will please Colin Firth fans, although it alienates his wife. Matthew Rhys and Anna Maxwell Martin star. Concludes on Saturday.

Vicious (Comedy) 9PM ITV

“The least funny sitcom in recent memory,” according to one critic, which is rather harsh (didn’t he see The Wright Way?). Anyway, Sirs Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi get to bandy their archly camp repartee for the festive period. As Freddie unveils his “method” department-store Santa, Ash (a hapless role for Iwan Rheon) volunteers to cook dinner.

Queer as Pop: From Gay Scene to Mainstream (Music) 10.55PM Channel 4

“The audiences are treated like fools,” laments Erasure’s Andy Bell as Lady Gaga becomes the latest star to target the pink pound. This excellent history of the gay influence on pop music passes familiar milestones (Bowie hugging Ronson, disco, boys bands styled like gay-porn pin-ups) before it hits the interesting stuff – including how gay music is re-finding its voice in hip-hop.

Christmas University Challenge (Quiz) 7.30PM BBC2

Brain shrivelling as a result of too many sherries and sentimental Christmas specials? Give it a work-out with Paxman, and teams of alumni from St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and the University of Stirling.

Saturday

Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2013: Life Fantastic (Science) 8pm BBC4

In the first of this year’s three Christmas lectures, Oxford University biochemist Dr Alison Woollard examines how we emerge from a single cell into the multi-trillion-celled organism known as the human body. Life is fantastic, this lecture posits, but also full of questions. And the more answers we find, the more questions arise. If we succeed in using stem cells to build new body parts, what are the implications of tinkering with the fabric of life?

Moonfleet (Drama) 8pm Sky1

A new contender for Saturday-night, gather-the-family drama. Ray Winstone stars in a salty two-parter adapted from John Meade Falkner’s 1898 novel about an orphan (Aneurin Barnard) and a grizzled smuggler (Winstone, natch). They’re thrown together on a quest to find a fabled diamond said to belong to the pirate Blackbeard. Phil Daniels and Ben Chaplin co-star.

50 Funniest Moments 2013 (Comedy) 9pm Channel 4

Expect to revisit Miley Cyrus twerking and Prince Harry’s skill with helicopters in this TV listicle of “the funniest, most jaw-dropping, and quite frankly wrong” moments of the year. Deeply intellectual stuff, as further underlined by a list of contributors including Danny Dyer, Charlotte Crosby and Helen Flanagan.

Mad Dogs: the Finale (Comedy) 9pm Sky1

The extended lads’ holiday from hell – which has spun out into three series now – comes full circle in two concluding episodes, as Woody, Quinn, Rick and Baxter (Max Beesley, Philip Glenister, Marc Warren and John Simm) finally make their somewhat overdue way back to Britain, attending Baxter’s daughter’s wedding.

Charlie Brooker’s 2013 Wipe (Comedy) 10.40pm BBC2

Edward Snowden, Oscar Pistorius, the horse-meat scandal, the death of Margaret Thatcher, Russell Brand’s appearance on Newsnight and the US government shutdown … there’s no shortage of material for Brooker’s darkly sardonic gaze to rest upon this year. A grumpy antidote to all those “totes hilar” moments playing on the other side (see Channel 4, above).

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