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Call the Midwife: 2016 Christmas Special, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Monday, 26 December 2016

While Miranda Hart's Chummy is no more and Jessica Raine (who played Jenny Lee) has long since departed to perish in Line of Duty and pout crossly in Wolf Hall, Call the Midwife has evolved into a sort of Heartbeat with nuns, featuring antique pop songs and round-the-clock childbirth.

Grantchester, Christmas Special, ITV

Adam Sweeting Sunday, 25 December 2016

Cambridge 1954, and Christmas was coming, which meant carol singing, mince pies and an unnecessarily conceptual nativity play. But murder was also on the menu, and once again handsome, jazz-loving vicar Sidney Chambers (James Norton) was about to prove himself a more imaginative crime-fighter than his buddy Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green).

Alan Bennett’s Diaries, BBC Two

Marina Vaizey Sunday, 25 December 2016

Gather round the fire, friends: no Santa down the chimney this Christmas Eve, but the curiously comforting Alan Bennett, with his sardonic and occasionally optimistic diaries. The latest published instalment has the slightly wry title Keeping On Keeping On; Bennett tells us the original title was to be Banging On Banging On.

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Last Tango in Halifax, Christmas special, BBC One

Tom Birchenough Wednesday, 21 December 2016

It could only happen in Halifax. The series' two families, whom we have come to know so well and – with exceptions – love, had arranged a pre-Christmas dinner out, festive-like as Alan, the ever-saintly Derek Jacobi, might put it.

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Darcey Bussell: Looking for Margot, BBC One

Marina Vaizey Wednesday, 21 December 2016

Classical dancers conventionally have the briefest of all performing careers in the arts, knowing from the very beginning that they'll be lucky to have 20 years of performing at the top of their abilities, after at least 10 years training from childhood onwards. But Dame Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991) was a phenomenon, dancing into her sixties, for reasons that this painful and affectionate programme tactfully explored.

Lenny Henry: A Life on Screen, BBC Two

Marina Vaizey Tuesday, 20 December 2016

You couldn’t make him up – a big man in every sense, outspoken, spiky, adored, coming from a black working-class family to move from the proverbial nothing to become so much more than something. How to make a documentary tribute without it being sycophantic or a hagiography? By putting the man centre stage. Arise, Sir Lenny, the subject of a BAFTA tribute.

Strictly Come Dancing 2016 Final, BBC One

Jasper Rees Sunday, 18 December 2016

What is light entertainment for? It won’t save the world or heal the sick or bring warring factions to the negotiating table. It’s teeth and smiles and bread and circuses on a Saturday night and it shouldn’t have to bear any greater weight. The Generation Game was never required to offer vital balm during the Three-Day Week. Barrymore didn’t nurse us all through Black Wednesday and Britain’s exit from the ERM.

Ireland with Ardal O'Hanlon, More4

Veronica Lee Thursday, 15 December 2016

There has been an abundance of celebrity travelogues of late and with each one comes a new USP. Speaking just of Ireland, train enthusiast Michael Portillo nabbed the Victorian Bradshaw's rail guides, while the adventurous Christine Bleakley explored its wild side; and now Ardal O'Hanlon uses another set of Victorian guidebooks to take us on a three-part journey through his homeland.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Netflix

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 13 December 2016

Dirk Gently’s shtick as a detective is interconnectedness. Everything happens for an incalculable reason, there’s no such thing as chance, and all neural pathways lead randomly to the correct outcome. It's a philosophy paper gussied up as a whizzbang entertainment. “I will eventually solve the mystery merely by doing whatever,” says Dirk, having introduced himself as a detective.

Westworld, Series 1 Finale, Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting Monday, 12 December 2016

Anyone who expected a simple robots-versus-humans confrontation, like in Michael Crichton's original Westworld movie from 1973, had another think, or bunch of thinks, coming. The final episode of the Jonathan Nolan/JJ Abrams Westworld was more like a sci-fi manifesto for a post-human world.