And so, with one last speech on the importance of kindness, Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat bid farewell to the TARDIS. In their final Doctor Who episode, Twice Upon a Time subverted expectations with a small, sweet adventure which valued character above plot.

What joy that Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were persuaded by the BBC to celebrate their 30 (ish) years as a comedy duo with this programme – and that this sweet confection was shown on Christmas Day. It was a pleasing mix of old clips and new material, and a reminder that when F&S are good, they are very, very good.

Whatever the Waitrose and Morrisons commercials are telling you, as far as TV schedulers are concerned ‘tis the season for murder. Thus a Christmas Maigret has become an instant tradition, with Rowan Atkinson reprising his performance as Georges Simenon’s dolorous detective.

Luca Changretta got his just desserts, Alfie Solomons made a last gasp for the quiet life, and Thomas Shelby revealed his true enemy – Peaky Blinders wrapped up another exciting series in a high-octane and neat finale.

In 1994, a group of students at Bretton Hall drama school – Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith – began writing and performing together. They took as their name the title of a Jack Hawkins film, The League of Gentlemen, and in 1997 won the Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe.

“I am going to find out how much my trees live, breath, and even communicate. I am Judi Dench, and I have been an actor for 60 years – but I have had another passion ever since I was a little girl: I have adored trees. My six acres are a secret woodland, and my trees are part of my extended life.”

Crooked House is being released as a film in various territories, but has already been shown on television in America and has now surfaced as a drama on Channel 5 bearing the title Agatha Christie’s Crooked House. It duly falls in with a recent televisual tradition for serving up the Queen of Crime as a Christmas treat.

It’s remarkable how pervasive the Scandi-noir formula has become, with its penchant for weird and perverted killers, labyrinthine plotting and intriguingly flawed protagonists.

For the third and allegedly final time, we hasten back to the Kent coast for another outbreak of cross-Channel crime.

This week we were all meant to be gripped by a bunch of ancient geezers nicking diamonds in Hatton Gardens. The postponement of ITV’s nightly four-part drama – the second of four (four!!) different versions of the infamous burglary – is a bit of a mystery. Now you see it on the cover of the Radio Times. Now it’s in mothballs. The beneficiary of this hasty swerve was Bancroft.