Christmas Bake Off, seasonal Netflix offerings and Santa Claus on Disney+: what to watch over the festive weekend
- Call the Midwife makes a return, this time at Christmas in 1967, and 2021’s The Great British Bake Off: Christmas Special is airing for the first time in Asia
- Lindsay Lohan and Chord Overstreet star in Netflix festive film Falling for Christmas, while Tim Allen puts on the big red suit in Disney+’s The Santa Clauses
Two thousand years ago, a heavily pregnant mother-to-be arrived in a strange town looking for lodgings, only to be let down by a combination of private-landlord greed and local-government-flunkey incompetence.
A similar theme is one of several explored in the Call the Midwife Christmas Special (BBC First, from tomorrow), in which the long-running period drama dishes up more delights from the deprived East End of London, this time at Christmas in 1967.
In such circumstances, a talent show is clearly called for: cue Poplartunity Knocks!, inspired by a real, cherished television show to ratchet up the goodwill.
Less mawkishly sentimental than might be expected is festive film Falling for Christmas (Netflix), which had the budget to attract stars Lindsay Lohan and Chord Overstreet as a couple at cross purposes who are obviously bound for the mistletoe.
As Tad exclaims while trying to post another video of himself: “What kind of c*** forest doesn’t have a cell tower?”
Where do streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ go from here?
More at home with snow – you would think – is North Pole resident Santa. But four-part Disney+ series The Santa Clauses delivers a shock: Santa wants to quit his day (and night) job.
Tim Allen again fills out the capacious red tunic that Santa – losing weight and “down to only three chins”, according to his annual medical – is keen to vacate after decades.
Hope comes, however, with the discovery of a contractual clause that will allow him to retire – if he can identify a worthy replacement. And chimney-scaling sleigh drivers are not that easy to find.
It is a simple formula – bake a pie from Christmas dinner leftovers; fashion a Christmas-tree-shaped dessert from biscuit and meringue – but the bakers are all dedicated and their festive joy irresistible … despite the odd soggy bottom and collapsing chocolate trimming.
It is also impossible not to cheer on a favourite competitor.
And where would Christmas be without a jolly animated adventure? From Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman comes Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (Netflix), wherein an intended Christmas stocking heist leads to potential disaster, with Timmy the lamb being inadvertently abducted and the flock flocking to save him before he becomes a fleecy stocking filler.
Nor can it be Noël without a visit from the spirit of seasonal meanness. Musical cartoon caper Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (Netflix) adds the voices of Luke Evans, Olivia Colman and Jonathan Pryce to those of a desperate, Dickensian and frankly Disneyfied London, warm in palette but chilled by the grumpy old miser.
This Scrooge is tormented by melting, waxwork ghosts and what look like the spawn of Yoda. Given that scenario, who would not be a cantankerous grinch?
