SARAH VINE’S My TV Week: A trio of horrifyingly hilarious Christmas nightmares

GREAT COUNT

Friday, BBC2

INSIDE NO. 9 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

THURSDAY, BBC2

MOTHER COUNTRY: LAST CHRISTMAS

Friday, BBC1

The Inside No. 9 team! Shearsmith and Pemberton’s story also features a long-dead pilgrim, just not quite as ugly: Saint Nicholas.

For someone who finds Christmas a bit like a nightmare, I confess that I even love Christmas Eve. That wonderful moment when the shops close and the streets start to empty, and you can really feel the magic in the air.

I particularly love a Christmas ghost story, the spookier the better. Two cookies last week, one from the master of the modern macabre Mark Gatiss, the other from Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton.

The three used to be partners, of course, like The League Of Gentlemen, BBC2’s surreal horror-comedy set in the village of Royston Vasey.

Gatiss first. He takes an icon of the genre: MR James, famous for his ghost stories that typically involve an eccentric scholar, some sort of ancient text, and various malevolent, often tentacled, entities. But don’t be fooled by the Victorian veneer of gentility: James knew how to stretch the reader’s imagination in sinister ways.

Anna Maxwell Martin is her usual stroke, along with Diane Morgan as deadpan Liz (pictured)

Jason Watkins (no stranger to horror himself: he was brilliant as the oily Simon Harwood in W1A, the BBC’s self-deprecating comedy about himself) is perfect as an Englishman traveling around Sweden for academic purposes. His annoyingly cheerful manner and sense of superiority would be reason enough to see him meet a difficult end, but darker forces are at work.

Specifically, a long-dead count who went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and returned with something profane in his luggage. A chilling story of what happens to those who don’t listen to Swedish innkeepers.

Shearsmith and Pemberton’s story also features a long-dead pilgrim, just not quite as ugly: Saint Nicholas, the fourth-century saint who is the inspiration for Santa Claus. The Bones Of St Nicholas takes place on Christmas Eve inside a church, where another eccentric Englishman (Pemberton) has his academic pilgrimages abruptly interrupted by the arrival of an annoying pair of ‘champers’ (church campers) who have booked the place for the night on Airbnb.

Sarah Vine (pictured) said she particularly enjoys a Christmas ghost story.

Simon Callow is superbly Simon Callow-esque as the Sexton filled with amazing (literally) stories of beings lurking behind the Christmas tree. Needless to say, his warnings fall on deaf ears, with deadly consequences.

Of course, for many of us, Christmas nightmares tend to be more of a domestic variety – enter the Homeland Christmas Special. In my opinion, Motherland ranks right up there with Outnumbered as one of the greatest parenthood sitcoms ever written: funny, clever, and bittersweet in equal measure, and this year’s special was no exception.

Anna Maxwell Martin is her usual apoplexy, along with Diane Morgan as the deadpan Liz, Paul Ready as the downtrodden Kevin, and Lucy Punch as Amanda, who has to negotiate the horror of a post-divorce ‘mixed’ Christmas (it sounds, as Liz points out, like a particularly disgusting milkshake), not helped by her toxic mother, played by Joanna Lumley.

Still, none of them have it as bad as poor Meg, whose husband goes off track with her Christmas present. The horror! The horror!

THE SNOWMAN? I MELTED

THE SNOWMAN: THE MOVIE THAT CHANGED CHRISTMAS

SATURDAY, CHANNEL 4

The stars of The Showman: The Film That Changed Christmas were undoubtedly Hilary Audus and Joanna Harrison (pictured), whose job it was to animate Briggs’ drawings.

If you like your Christmases snuggly and delicate, you will have enjoyed this, the story of how Raymond Briggs’s illustrated story was brought to life 40 years ago by Channel 4.

The stars of the show were undoubtedly Hilary Audus and Joanna Harrison, whose job it was to animate Briggs’ drawings and add a bit more (Santa Claus) to the story. Now a rather elegant pair of middle-aged ladies, they were just girls then, in awe of Briggs, whose caustic wit was legendary.

And there was a great cameo from the man who commissioned the film in the first place in 1982, Paul Madden, one of those old-school TV guys who sadly don’t exist today.

Plus, who knew it wasn’t Aled Jones who sang the haunting Walking In The Air tune from the movie, but a boy named Peter Auty? The story is corrected.

A court snorathon

VARDY VS ROONEY: A COURT DRAMA

WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY, Channel 4

Classification:

Natalia Tena as Rebekah Vardy. This dramatization is based on court transcripts.

I approached this thinking it would be a cross between Footballers’ Wives and Rumpole Of The Bailey. I was sadly wrong.

How anyone could turn the most high-profile celebrity fight of the decade into such a snorathon is a mystery. The problem is that this dramatization (Natalia Tena as Rebekah Vardy) is based on court transcripts.

Star witnesses squirming in the box can be entertaining if it’s the real thing: Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, for example.

But when it comes to actors reading their words from a script, it’s not so much fun. Honestly, I’ve been to livelier PTA meetings.

Read more:

It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas TV: from the Strictly special with Anton Du Beke, Gemma Collins building snowmen, and even more Ant and Dec… is this REALLY the best we can do?

Let me see! BBC1’s Christmas Day 2022 schedule is almost identical to its 2021 and 2020 lineup… with Mrs Brown’s Boys, Strictly Come Dancing, Call the Midwife and Vicar of Dibley all set to air again for the THIRD year running

How much Alesha! The 44-year-old singer will be crowned the Queen of Christmas TV and will hit our screens for over seven hours over the festive period with the Britain’s Got Talent spin-off and performances.