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Christmas is a time steeped in traditions. And one big tradition that exists in many of our homes over the period revolves around TV: rewatching old favourites, hunkering down for that special you’ve been dying to see or sitting in a post-lunch fugue with a beloved family film. And, as we published last week, there’s a bounty of Christmas telly to get stuck into this year.
But what about people involved in making TV? What do their Christmas viewing habits look like? Here, a variety of actors, writers, directors and comedians – many of whom may be popping up on your screens this year – share their Christmas TV favourites.
Jools Holland
Oliver Twist
My mother always told me that my great grandmother’s mother had, a bit like the protagonist in the story, died in the union workhouse in Greenwich. So we’d sit watching the film, holding hands, and it was like, wow, I felt like it was us somehow. There’s something about it at the end where you want to get to Mr Brownlow’s house – the kindly gent that takes Oliver Twist in. Mr Brownlow’s house is the archetype for a place that is safe, which I think is what everybody wants. It had a lasting impression on me and I have probably tried to make a Mr Brownlow’s house in my own life – somewhere to run back to. I like to watch that every Christmas and force the children and grandchildren to watch too.
Holland presents Jools’ Annual Hootenanny on New Year’s Eve, 11.30pm, BBC Two
Ben Wheatley, director
Quincy’s Quest
This was a 1979 Tommy Steele Christmas Special. I’ve got a very vivid memory of it. It’s bonkers. It’s nightmare fuel. It’s about a toy soldier inside a department store who has adventures with all sorts of toys, giant robots, Lego bricks, witches and so on. As a kid it’s a major fantasy to be able to play with giant toys and it really stuck with me. You can watch it on YouTube and it’s funny as fuck. Just don’t watch it all because it will make you go blind.
Maisie Adam
Hallmark Christmas films
The Christmas film I’d watch when I was little was always Home Alone – but only one and two. You’ve got to have a Culkin in there – if you go beyond that it doesn’t count. But now that I’m grown up, my husband found a channel that exclusively shows Hallmark Christmas films. It’s become a bit of a game to find ourselves on the Hallmark Channel and to pick the title of a film and try and guess what the plot is based on that. They’re always terrible with cheap sets and the acting is really bad, like they’ll just suddenly look down the lens of the camera by accident. We love them.
Adam is in Taskmaster: Champion of Champions on 22 December, 9pm, Channel 4
Arabella Weir, actor
Fart films
Growing up, pretty much without exception, we’d watch Meet Me in St Louis or It’s a Wonderful Life. But we have another tradition. In our family, on Christmas Day, you can fart as much as you like and you don’t have to apologise and nobody can complain. So after lunch, brussels sprouts and lots of farty food, we’d sit down to watch these films. I had two older brothers and, of course, in the true tradition of boys, the longer, louder, smellier, the more extended the better. It was farting as a sport and very much the soundtrack to both of those movies.
Weir is in the Two Doors Down Christmas Special on Christmas Eve, 10pm, BBC One
Jeremy Dyson, co-creator of The League of Gentlemen
A Christmas Carol
On Christmas Eve, we watch Richard Williams’ peerless 1971 animated version of A Christmas Carol. It’s some of the most beautiful hand-drawn animation ever committed to film by the genius behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It throws me right back to being seven years old, snow on the ground, a carol concert at primary school. Just gorgeous. If you’ve never seen it, savour the 4k restoration here.
Bridget Christie
The Box of Delights
We watch The Box of Delights every year without fail. Schoolboy Kay Harker is given a magic box and goes on a journey through time and space. There are wolves and rats that eat gone-off cheese, and it’s one of those delightful children’s shows we used to make in the 1970s and 80s and don’t any more because everyone’s too scared to commission things that are a bit thoughtful and weird nowadays. We started when the kids were little and have carried on the tradition and even though they’re now teens they still love it. Part of the fun of it is me trying to remember what it’s called every year – A Box of Tricks? The Magic Box? A Tray of Delights? It’s captivating and beautiful and has snow in it. Remember that?
Paris Lees, writer, What It Feels Like for a Girl
Titanic
In 1998, my mum took me to see Titanic at the Odeon in Nottingham and it’s the only time I’ve heard applause in a cinema – when Kate Winslet mouths: “I’d rather be his whore than your wife!” So when the BBC aired it on Christmas Day, 2000, it felt like an event, and the whole family gathered to watch. I used to find mainstream culture oppressive and corny, but in these fragmented times I’ve come to miss it. Christmas feels like one of the rare times where we still watch as one.
Iain Morris, co-creator of The Inbetweeners
James Bond
The occasional postprandial Bond film was as close as we got to a tradition, and that’s the only thing I’ve carried over with my own kids and any Christmas guests. I am very strict though, and maintain that Roger Moore was peak Bond, so it’ll be one of seven films, with a thumb on the scale for A View to a Kill due to my love of Duran Duran and Grace Jones. I’m forcing my teenage nephews to watch the Inbetweeners at the moment, so there’s a possibility I’ll put that on after Max Zorin’s demise, leave the room to avoid embarrassment, then stand listening at the door praying for laughs.
Bridget Christie
The Box of Delights
We watch The Box of Delights every year without fail. Schoolboy Kay Harker is given a magic box and goes on a journey through time and space. There are wolves and rats that eat gone-off cheese, and it’s one of those delightful children’s shows we used to make in the 1970s and 80s and don’t any more because everyone’s too scared to commission things that are a bit thoughtful and weird nowadays. We started when the kids were little and have carried on the tradition and even though they’re now teens they still love it. Part of the fun of it is me trying to remember what it’s called every year – A Box of Tricks? The Magic Box? A Tray of Delights? It’s captivating and beautiful and has snow in it. Remember that?
Christine Gernon, director of Gavin and Stacey
Strictly Come Dancing
The thing that really sums up Christmas for me is the Strictly final. We watch it with friends; it’s generally the beginning of the Christmas week and it feels very festive. We normally have people over: nibbles, champagne, hats, getting into the vibe. I love the show because I love a journey, which is why I always like the people that come in and are a bit shit but get better. It’s a really happy-making bit of TV. It’s very hard to watch without smiling.
Elf
It brings me great joy. I insist my family watch it every year and for some people – my brother – it can provoke great fury. But what is not to love about a man who thinks he is an elf trying to find his long-lost father in New York City? I worked out years ago that the reason I love it so much is that when I was 19, I moved to New York and I weirdly relate to an optimistic, naive, elf-like creature struggling to fit in.
Holly Walsh, writer, Amandaland
The Christmas Day film
I would beg my parents to buy a TV listings magazine so my brother and I could carefully plan exactly what we’d watch over Christmas. It was a complicated timetable – working out what shows we’d watch live and what we’d record on our ancient video player so as to maximise viewing. Obviously, the Christmas Day movie was the biggy: you’d definitely record that, because it’d be on during lunch – Back to the Future III, Jurassic Park, Crocodile Dundee. Although I never got to see Labyrinth because someone accidentally taped the Paul Daniel’s Christmas Special over it.
The Amandaland Christmas special is on Christmas Day, 9.15pm, BBC One
Alan Titchmarsh
All Creatures Great and Small
There are several films that are a must in our house at Christmas: The Holiday, It’s A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street. But more than anything I’m looking forward to the All Creatures Great and Small Christmas special – a bit of Yorkshire to keep this tyke who’s doing missionary work down south happy. It’s so beautifully filmed and the characters have real depth. We are ardent Mrs Hall fans in our house.
Love Your Christmas with Alan Titchmarsh is on ITVX
Arthur Matthews, co-creator of Father Ted
Top of the Pops
I used to watch the Top of the Pops Christmas specials with my sister. I especially remember the 1970s ones with Slade and Wizzard. It was a big show for me and I’m very nostalgic about it. I watch the reruns but I wouldn’t bother with anything after 1981/82. I think Top of the Pops was terrible after then, with all this very synthetic, artificially sounding stuff. I just didn’t like the 80s. But when I think about Christmas TV it’s still always Top of the Pops.
Jessica Swale, writer, Paddington the Musical
Christmas Day soaps
We were never allowed to watch soaps as a child. My dad always said, “imagine what you could be doing with that time instead”. But the exception to the rule was every Christmas at my grandma’s house. She loved EastEnders and Coronation Street and we would watch the Christmas specials. I always thought they were the best TV ever because there was so much drama – so surely the other 364 days of the year, it was just as good. That was our Christmas treat because my parents couldn’t say no. I didn’t understand what was going on but I loved it.
Ben Whitehead, voice actor, plays Wallace in Wallace and Gromit
A post-dinner film
Watching a film after Christmas dinner is my TV tradition. It doesn’t have to be a classic, just entertaining and preferably new to me. But mostly it’s about who you watch it with. Last year was special. When I learned that Vengeance Most Fowl was premiering on Christmas Day, I was nervous and excited knowing millions would be watching. My brother hosted a family feast and afterwards we watched the film. I’ll hold that memory very dear for many Christmases to come.
Tony Dow, director, Only Fools and Horses
Bringing Up Baby
Once my kids got to a certain age, I couldn’t get them to watch a black and white movie, so watching one over Christmas became a bit of an obsession. Bringing Up Baby is absolutely amazing. The quality of what Cary Grant does is gobsmacking. They call it screwball comedy but there’s something naturalistic about it. Grant does all the falling over and Katharine Hepburn is completely natural and just reacts. She doesn’t try to act. Don’t over act is one of the great notes I’ve always given actors, especially in comedy. I look at David Jason and Nick Lyndhurst as having a similar amazing quality – David was the energy, the driver, and Nick was the reactor.
Chenée Taylor, actor, Just Act Normal
The John Lewis Christmas advert
This is the first Christmas advert that I was old enough to properly remember, as I was around 10. I loved it so much: the story of this bear who has never seen Christmas. I like an emotional, sentimental, sad advert for Christmas. Lily Allen’s version of Somewhere Only We Know is still on my sleep playlist. I love it and it calms me. Watching this advert makes me feel hopeful. I watch it every year. It doesn’t even need to be Christmas. It could be June. If I’m feeling like I just want to sit and watch something wholesome and cute, this is my go-to.
Isy Suttie
The Snowman
