Christmas on the telly Ð more repeats than stale stuffing

Date Published: 07-Jan-2013

Christmas on the box is a bit like the season itself – a big build-up, loads of expectation, and when it’s all over, you wonder what all the fuss was about.

Thankfully most families are too busy eking out 101 new ways to disguise turkey to be really bothered – but if you’d spent the festive season in front of the telly waiting for something to take your breath away, your only chance was asthma.

The clear exception to that was Call the Midwife, which has evolved into a classic – beautifully paced and produced and a fitting vehicle to show that the wonderfully funny Miranda Hart has more talents than simply falling over.

Her own sit-com is also back and that too is unmissable – the fumbling, bumbling woman mountain with an unerring ability to put her foot in her mouth when she isn’t falling over it – and this time she’s found love. Have no doubt, however, that this will not run smoothly.

But as Chummie Noakes (nee Browne), born with a silver spoon but by choice a midwife in London of the Fifties, she has created one of the most wonderful characters to grace the small screen in a very long time.

The beauty of the writing here is that the ‘author’ doesn’t try to position herself as the main star – in many ways, Jenny is merely the eyes through which we see this deprived part of London in the years after the war.

And it has that feeling last captured in All Creatures Great and Small – a simpler age, even if times were tough – casting the work of the midwives and the nuns in a most positive light.

It was just as well that Christmas had something to gladden the heart because, unless heart attacks are your thing, you couldn’t depend on Eastenders. The folk around Albert Square must see the festive season as a sort of deadly game of musical chairs because there’s always one who falls off the face of the earth each December.

Equally, you wouldn’t be storing Mrs Brown’s Boys in your locker of great Christmas classics either; frankly this has been lost on me from the start and while one or two scenes give you a giggle, the whole thing is puerile at best and frankly in fairly bad taste.

The big disappointment this time was the Royle Family, which at best succeeded in proving that sometimes it’s best to get out while you’re still ahead.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.