Christmas TV Comedy Review

Time was when British families planned Christmas Day around The Queen in the afternoon and (depending which generation you fall into) Morecambe and Wise, Victoria Wood, French and Saunders or The Vicar of Dibley in the evening. But now it seems television bosses have all but given up on offering family entertainment, as BBC One's comedy fare was transmitted entirely after the watershed and ITV1’s sole offering, Ant & Dec’s Christmas Show, was broadcast on Boxing Day.

My appetite for Victoria Wood’s Midlife Christmas had been whetted by a wonderful night devoted to the Lancashire comic on BBC Two last Monday. It started with Seen on TV, a 90-minute documentary about Wood’s career, in which her “repertory company” of actors and friends - Julie Walters, Duncan Preston, Celia Imrie, Susie Blake - and others extolled her talents, and rightly so. She was interviewed by offscreen producer Lucy Kenwright, although I’m not too sure we learned much more about the famously private Wood, but the interesting notion of her comedy being quintessentially Northern was explored, and there were generous clips of her sketch shows and stand-up. Her last Christmas special, from 2002, and an edition of her sitcom, Dinnerladies - with one of my favourite Wood lines, ever: “Can you smell my Charlie?” - followed. Bliss.

Less blissful was Victoria Wood’s Midlife Christmas (BBC One) on Christmas Eve. There were three interspersed strands - a send-up of bonnet dramas, a spoof behind-the-scenes documentary, and an Olympics for middle-aged women - woven into a disappointingly patchy whole.

Most of the programme was devoted to "Lark Pies to Cranchesterford", in which Wood played the postmistress. It was immensely detailed, knowing and clever, and certainly skewered all the right targets in modern TV, but sadly I think French and Saunders (who would admit they owe Wood an enormous debt) cornered this market long ago.

"A week in the life of" followed terrible actress Bo Beaumont, who played Mrs Overall in Acorn Antiques, as she auditioned for various celebrity reality shows and faced one humiliation after another (the ice-skating one with Torvill and Dean being particularly funny), but sailed through each torture with a mixture of monstrous ego and complete lack of self-awareness. It was beautifully performed by Julie Walters, who with Wood has rounded out a character most writers and actors would have turned into hideous caricature.

The less said about the middle-aged women’s Olympics, the better. Women who can’t park, anyone?

Midlife Christmas started with Wood doing a bit of live stand-up and ended with her performing a full orchestral version of “The Ballad of Barry and Freda" (better known as “Let’s Do It”) but, it pains me to say, too much of the show felt tired and uninspired. Walters was the only member of Wood’s regulars to appear and they were missed: as Wood has said, she often writes for individuals because she knows their idiosyncrasies - and much of the time here it felt like she had just been introduced to the cast. And some of the gags - dangerously near homophobic or ageist stereotyping - were beneath her.

And so to Christmas Day itself, with three comedies shown on BBC One after 9pm, starting with an hour-long The Royle Family special. Essentially a four-hander with Barbara, Jim, Denise and Dave, this one took us away from the Royles’ settee as Jim and Barbara celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with their first holiday. “I want to go abroad,” says Barbara, so off to a minging caravan in Prestatyn they went, with Denise and Dave along for the drive. The car had satnav - “Isn’t it great she knows where we’re going?” said Barbara, “I mean, we only decided on Friday.” Denise responded, “Women’s intuition.” There were so many cracking one-liners displaying the family’s knucklehead stupidity that some rather predictable plotting could be forgiven.

The Christmas edition of Gavin and Stacey was actually set on a summer bank holiday on Barry Island, as the Shipman and West clans gathered for a day at the beach. This series, written by Ruth Jones and James Corden, has been darker than the previous two, its underlying narrative being a rather touching study of two young men’s difficulties with fatherhood - Smithy’s (Corden) unplanned and strife-riven role as father to Nessa’s (Jones) son, and Gavin’s (Mathew Horne) inability to conceive with Stacey (Joanna Page).

Amid the often broad comedy (by Alison Steadman as Pam and Rob Brydon as Bryn, in particular), it would be easy to overlook some intelligently moderated acting, which gives Gavin and Stacey its emotional pull. The father-and-son chat between Mick (Larry Lamb) and Gavin about the latter’s low sperm count was exquisite in its simplicity of writing and delivery, and therefore genuinely moving. This scene and another spat between Smithy and Dave (Steffan Rhodri) also served to set up the very last episode (to be shown on New Year’s Day), where Nessa and Dave are due to be married.

This was followed by Catherine Tate: Nan’s Christmas Carol, in which the foul-mouthed old girl needed no makeover to appear as Scrooge in a one-character special. Nan’s nephew (Richard Lumsden) and family had travelled seven-and-a-half hours on a coach from the north of England without managing to master a believable Northern accent between them on the way. They were to spend Christmas with “Auntie Joanie”, but “I was pissed when I invited you,” she said as she threw them out for a miserable Christmas on the street. “Where’s your Christmas spirit?” drew the inimitable response “Shove it up your arse!”, proving that swearing really is both funny and clever, at least when it’s done by Nan.

Ben Miller, David Tennant and Roger Lloyd Pack appeared as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future respectively, and we saw the moment when the sweet young Joanie turned into the potty-mouthed miserablist later known as Nan, when all that Santa brought her was a single tangerine. Tate herself appeared as a vampish younger Joanie, and all came good as Nan saw the error of her ways. But there was, of course, a delicious sting in the tail as the Nan we know and love was restored to her nasty self. A treat.

Bringing up the rear, as it were (and definitely not the sort of gag you would find on this programme) was Ant & Dec’s Christmas Show (ITV1), good old-fashioned variety with sketches, songs, star guests, silly games and prizes. Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly have their critics (not me, I love them), but there are few entertainers who could carry off this kind of programme with such verve - and all credit to ITV for actually attempting to provide a family show over the holiday.

And what joy to turn to BBC Two to find its precursor, the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show from 1973, with more stars than you could shake a cliché at clamouring to be part of the action. This one’s roll call included Yehudi Menuhin, André Previn, Rudolph Nureyev and Sir Laurence Olivier in walk-on parts, with the star guest up for ritual humiliation being Vanessa Redgrave, or Vanilla Rednose as Eric Morecambe called her. She was in a play what Ernie Wise wrote, about Napoleon and Josephine, with Little Ern as the knee-high emperor and Morecambe as the Duke of Wellington. The script, by Eddie Braben, stood up astonishingly well.