What joy to be back with the Shipman and West families, created by writing team James Corden and Ruth Jones.

The series of short films, A Ghost Story For Christmas, became a Yuletide staple on BBC One in the 1970s. Most of them were adapted from the works of medieval scholar M R James, and drew their unsettling supernatural aura from the understated and academic tone of the writing.

This divertingly daft sequel to the Cinderella story (Sky 1) was the brainchild of David Walliams, who introduced it as himself, sitting smugly by a roaring fire in his authorial smoking jacket. What, he wondered, happened after Cinderella and Prince Charming were married and lived “happily ever after”?

This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father can quite remember. He felt (he told us) that it was a kind of family tradition as about 800 of his own children have been born there since.

If you came to this expecting to be reminded of such ghosts of Scrooges past as Alastair Sim or Bill Murray, you will have been reaching either for the brandy or the defibrillator.

Heston Blumenthal, of triple-cooked chips fame, is a mad food scientist. Well, that’s how we’re introduced to him in Heston’s Marvellous Menu. Tonight’s BBC Two programme had a rather theatrical premise: a chef recreating the complete dining experience (menu, team, decor, diners) from a pivotal year in their restaurant’s history.

All the TV networks like to big up their news journalists as major players, but are they as important as they like to think?

This three-part series by historian Lisa Hilton is a follow-up to her previous effort from last July, Charles I: Downfall of a King (BBC Four).

Christmas and Agatha Christie are a very good fit – how better to spend time with your loved ones than sitting down to watch some murder and intrigue together?

Alibi is usually your one-stop shop for re-runs of Father Brown or Death in Paradise, so well done them for commissioning this new murder mystery. It comes with a glittering pedigree, having been created by actor-turned-writer Amelia Bullmore (Scott & Bailey etc) and bestselling crime novelist Val McDermid, but despite a cracking cast it struggles to pass the credibility test.