Christmas TV guide 2015: Doctor Who, Downton Abbey and Dickensian

From children's favourites to the culmination of Downton Abbey, Alistair KcKay picks the best of the holiday programmes
1/6
Alistair McKay24 December 2015

Adaptations of Julia Donaldson’s rhyming stories for children are a natural for Christmas TV, and both The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child have become seasonal classics.

The appeal of The Gruffalo wasn’t hard to spot. On the face of it, Stick Man (BBC1, 4.45pm, Christmas Day) is a harder sell, being the rhyming story of a twig who gets separated from the family tree and finds himself having to fend off the attentions of children, dogs and swans, who have their own ideas about how to treat uppity bits of driftwood.

Donaldson’s world is ultimately safe, and Axel Scheffler’s beautifully cosy drawings are rendered as sunny animation, but there is an underlying bleakness to Stick Man’s ordeal which isn’t entirely due to Martin Freeman’s voiceover.

Rest assured, though it starts out like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, everything is going to be fine. (The Gruffalo’s Child is repeated on BBC1 on December 29, at 4pm).

Finale: Downton Abbey will air its final episode on Christmas Day

Speaking of cute monsters, Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who (BBC1, 5.15pm, Christmas Day) hasn’t been entirely without controversy, with recent episodes taking the Time Lord into dark terrain.

The Christmas special, written by Steven Moffat, is altogether lighter, and more obviously aimed at a family audience.

Mostly it’s a two-hander, with the Doctor taking refuge on a distant colony in the year 5343 as he responds to the distress signal from a crashed spaceship.

The story reunites the Doctor with his old love interest River Song (Alex Kingston) who is conspiring to extract a priceless diamond from King Hydroglax (Greg Davies), who may or may not have a comedy robot bodyguard with a detachable head.

Adventure: Tune in to Doctor Who on Christmas Day
BBC

Keeping things topical, the Doctor issues a Jeremy Corbyn-style speech, so it’s not all snogging and comedy antlers.

Romance is also in the air at Downton Abbey — The Finale (ITV, 8.45pm, Christmas Day) as the upstairs-downstairs world prepares to stop spinning on New Year’s Eve in 1925.

Robert, Earl of Grantham, reveals his plans to excavate the basement and fit an Olympic-size swimming pool and Sensurround cinema, leaving Mr Carson homeless.

Actually no, but there is much bleary reflection on the changing times, with Carson accepting that “the world is a different place… and Downton Abbey must change”.

The earl (Hugh Bonneville, who voices Santa in Stick Man) suggests that the toffs at least will be fine. But will Mrs Hughes (Phyllis Logan) get the words to Auld Lang Syne right? For the sake of the tear-jerking finale, we must hope so.

Meanwhile, in 1939, a group of strangers gathers in a house off the coast of Devon to add gore and violence to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (BBC1, Boxing Day, 9pm, continuing on 27, 28 December).

There is no policeman in the house, so the top-drawer cast, headed by Poldark rent-a-hunk Aidan Turner, don’t know where to turn as they start dying one-by-one.

Soap writers often suggest that if Dickens was around he’d be writing one. In Dickensian (BBC1, Boxing Day, 7pm, 8.30pm) EastEnders’ godfather Tony Jordan gets to reimagine Dickens as a dramatic Jive Bunny megamix with a top cast. A good idea, or a narrative folly?

Finally, it wouldn’t be Christmas without Raymond Briggs, so look out for Fungus the Bogeyman (Sky1, 27 December, 6pm, continuing 28, 29 December) with Timothy Spall heading the cast of this “three-fart special” which combines live action, animation, and oodles of snot.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in