Yes, ’tis the season to hibernate in front of the telly. From Prince Andrew: The Musical to Sam Ryder’s NYE party.
Keith Watson selects the best holiday viewing to get you through the Christmas period.
Even better, there’s plenty to watch too! All you need is your comfy PJ’s, a cup of tea and a mince pie…
Christmas Eve
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse, BBC1, 4.55pm
The Snowman has long ruled in the Christmas animation stakes but it has a worthy challenger here in the artful shape of this charming adaptation of Charlie Mackesy’s tale, a homage to hope in hard times.
Christmas Carole, , 8pm
Suranne Jones gives Ebenezer Scrooge a power-dressed update in this blackly comic twist on the classic Dickens tale.
The Great Christmas Bake Off, C4, 8.25pm
If you’re having trouble with your last-minute mince pies take heart from the mess Gaby Roslin, Terry Christian and more – we’re at the crusty end of the celeb yule log – make in the Bake Off tent, above.
Christmas Day
Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker! BBC2, 1.30pm
Choreographer Matthew Bourne has reinvented dance for a new generation and his eye-popping take on Tchaikovsky’s classic seasonal ballet is one of his very best.
Strictly Come Dancing, BBC1, 5.10pm
The heat has barely cooled on this season’s final before we’re off whizzing round the dance floor again with the likes of Amy Dowden. Larry Lamb and Girls Aloud’s Nicola Roberts are in with a cha cha chance.
Ghosts, BBC1, 7.25pm
It’s panto time in Button House as this gently beguiling comedy, happily coming back for a fifth season next year, sets about lifting our spirits.
Call The Midwife, BBC1, 7.55pm
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without midwives delivering love and goodwill in the frosty streets of Poplar. The TV equivalent of the warm glow you get from the fireside after a tramp through the snow.
Doc Martin, ITV1, 9.05pm
If Martin Clunes stays true to his word this really is the last ever visit to Portwenn. So what does the misanthropic doc diagnose for his farewell? He declares Santa’s Grotto a health hazard! Contrary to the last.
Boxing Day
Detectorists, BBC2, 9pm
It’s five years since we left Andy, Lance and the ragtag gang waving their metal detectors in Essex fields, so it’s high time we caught up with this buried treasure of a show. It’s feature length, so dig in.
Death In Paradise, BBC1, 9pm
It’s cold-case-in-hot-climes time as Derry Girls’s mighty Siobhan McSweeney hops over to Saint Marie to play a true-crime podcaster unearthing fresh clues to an old murder. Take a nip of rum every time the commissioner cracks a scowl.
Tuesday 27th
Lionesses: When Football Came Home, , 9pm
England winning a major football tournament? Who’d have thought it. Here’s a chance to revel again in how Jill Scott and her team-mates turned women’s football into a major player by winning this summer’s European Championships.
Wednesday 28th
Mayflies, BBC1, 9pm
This touching but never sentimental two-parter stars Martin Compston and Tony Curran as a pair of lifelong friends whose loyalty is put to the test when one receives a terminal diagnosis. Tully (Curran), you see, wants to go out with a bang.
Thursday 29th
Prince Andrew: The Musical, Channel 4, 9pm
Kieran Hodgson, otherwise known as Gordon from Two Doors Down, is the scurrilous scamp behind this melodious mickey-take that charts Prince Andrew’s sweatless fall from grace.
Friday 30th
My Old School, BBC2, 9pm
This one’s a diverting oddity – it’s the true tale (told partly in animation) of Brian MacKinnon, a 30-year-old Glaswegian who passed himself off as a 16-year-old called Brandon Lee in the early 1990s. Surely the stubble gave it away.
New Year’s Eve
Sam Ryder Rocks New Year’s Eve, BBC1, 11.30pm
Mr Eurovision caps off a remarkable year by launching himself into falsetto orbit. Well, belting out Space Man will make a change from Auld Lang Syne.
Jools’s Annual Hootenanny, BBC2, 11.30pm
There’s a heavy whiff of nostalgia hanging over this year’s Hootenanny: The Real Thing, Andy Fairweather Low and Roland Gift hark back to past glories, while Self Esteem drags things into 2023.
New Year’s Day
The Masked Singer, ITV1, 6.30pm
No, you haven’t overdone the sherry – that really is a singing Jellyfish. The maddest talent show returns.
Happy Valley, BBC1, 9pm
Sarah Lancashire makes her eagerly awaited return as Sgt Catherine Cawood, her life and beat once more disrupted by the malign presence of Tommy Lee Royce – James Norton ripping his heartthrob status into tiny pieces.
Taskmaster’s New Year’s Treat, Channel 4, 9pm
Sir Mo Farah is ultra-competitive – so how will he fare submitting to the whimsical despotism of Greg Davies? This could get testy.
Stonehouse, ITV1, 9pm
This political scandal centres on the Labour MP who faked his own death in Miami in 1974 so he could start a new life with his secretary. Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawes star.
