Christmas 24 is on during the November weekends

As mentioned before, Christmas 24 is on now on Sky channels 327 and 328. Put your mind on the hook and let the festiveness wash over you! Although as I said before, don't expect greatness - flicking through the listings on the EPG shows that the movies on this weekend weren't amongst the better ones they showed last December!

1991 Flashback: Drop The Dead Donkey

Another trip back to 1991, this time to an iconic Christmas special. Channel 4's Drop The Dead Donkey was a satirical comedy set in a newsroom, and for the first two or three series was scripted and acted 24 hours before transmission. It kept the comedy sharp and the satire fresh,
making it a must-watch for anyone looking for something a bit more substantial than what the BBC were offering at the same time.

The end of the second series was right next to Christmas, so a take on the office Christmas party was an obvious target for the writers. The first half showed the cast getting completely ratted and came complete with every office stereotype you can think of, from the smug tea-totaller lecturing about how much healthier he is, through the management trying to keep the staff working in a professional manner, to the almost inevitable drunken one-night stand.

The second half of the episode featured the aftermath, as people's memories slowly returned in sobering clarity, with the unseen events of the previous night revealing themselves through their consequences and damage trail. The meekest guy in the office turns out to be the centre of a whirlwind of drunken debauchery. And there's of course the massive payoff as the one-night stand resolves itself.

The Christmas party episode was the pinnacle of the whole run of Drop The Dead Donkey - soon after they phased out the up-to-the-minute satire, instead focussing on the relationships between the staff of the news company, losing the edge that made the series unmissable back in the day. Fortunately it's repeated often on the comedy channels on satellite TV, and the whole run is even on 4OD - including the Christmas episode. Well worth a look - for me it's still funny after several viewings and after all these years.

Two months to go...

There's some chatter on a few web forums about what's going to be on TV this Christmas. If you think that TV is rather mediocre these days, and that it was much better twenty or thirty years ago, well... hold that thought...

This was from 1981, and wasn't bad for ITV. The appearance of black-and-white movie footage in an out-takes show seems so alien these days!

1991 Flashback: The Ghosts of Oxford Street

This is a little forgotten gem that I came across whilst looking at old YouTube videos. This was part of Channel 4's Christmas Day 1991 line-up, got very mixed reviews, and was never seen again.

Enter the internet - in particular the 4OD online on-demand service, and Ghosts Of Oxford Street gets a new lease of life.

It was a Malcolm McLaren vehicle in which he is let loose to tell some of the tales of London's Oxford Street in the days and years before it became the hustling, bustling centre of shopping and commerce that it is today. If you believe McLaren, a hundred years ago it was dangerous, seedy, and full of poverty and crime. He presents a series of tales and stories from that time in his rather unique way - not sure how to describe it beyond saying he presents it in a similar way to a fully camped up Johnny Rotten.

The stories have little musical numbers from big names of the time dotted through it. There's the Happy Mondays singing their own version of the BeeGee's "Stayin' Alive" around a gallows before being hung, which is... different... Tom Jones plays the flamboyant founder of Selfridges, and gives a belting performance of "Money (That's What I Want)". "Fairytale Of New York" gets a look in, and Sinead O'Connor pops out of nowhere to sing "Silent Night".

Go to 4OD and give it a go - it lasts for just under an hour, and it draws you in slowly.

Christmas 24 is returning part-time in November

I'm still a bit of a Sky newbie - last Christmas was my first one away from Freeview. One of the channels I discovered was "Christmas24" - a festively rebranded version of the Movies24 channel on Sky channel 327. Every day last December featured wall-to-wall Christmas movies, and it's returning for every weekend in November, presumably as a taster before going full-time in December.

The movies... aren't great. Don't expect the big names such as Love Actually or It's A Wonderful Life - these look like strictly straight-to-video and TV movies from the American networks. They're not challenging, they're schmaltzy, but they make nice festive wallpaper to have in the background whilst doing other things. The plots are so simple that you could easily miss half an hour and still follow the story.

Go for the tinsel, snow and holly, stay for the feelgood factor.