An Armchair Christmas: The Entertainment Round-Up

Former TV director and the Arb’s ‘on screen’ critic, Paul Joyce, offers an appraisal of this Christmas’s TV offerings…

I am told (advisedly) that readers much prefer critical rather than praising reviews, so my first Christmas present to you all is a damning one indeed; an all-out assault on a true behemoth of BBC broadcasting, Dr Who.

Here I am not talking about any kind of Christmas Special which might be upcoming, such as ‘Dr Who at the Albert Hall’ (feeble music blown up to a monumental Albert Hall scale), rather a much-vaunted restoration of what we are all assured was a masterpiece from way back in the sixties, The War Games – in colour! – marking the final disappearance of possibly the second doctor, one Patrick Troughton, into the far reaches of outer space. Suffice to say that it took an agonising 90 minutes for the 10 originally black and white episodes to be magically transformed into full colour. As a child in the Granada cinema in Sydenham I had occasionally fanaticised about seeing an old classic black and white movie acquire wings and soar into full colour and now, blow me, they can, and they do!

And here I have to declare an interest because I co-authored and directed what some say is a minor classic of the genre, Warrior’s Gate in 1982, but in all its many manifestations I have never been invited back to supervise, or even comment on, upgrades to the original sound and images, and there have been quite a few. To see my four episodes collapsed into a feature-length film, which would absolutely accord with its original intention, I would happily crawl from High Wycombe to BBC Television Centre clutching only a begging bowl.

Now it was possible to see, in The War Games, and in even greater detail, second tier actors giving puppet performances, second tier cardboard sets and second tier cardboard lines all beautifully and needlessly stitched together courtesy of our ever-increasing licence fees. I wonder what the cost of this unwieldy and un-necessary transformation actually was? BBC Whistleblower needed now!

Around the same time as this farrago was unwinding, over on BBC2 Mackenzie Crook – late of The Office and Game of Thrones – was remembering how his series The Detectorists gestated. What a delightful, modest and greatly talented man he has turned out to be. He was thinking about such a series for over a decade before he seriously put pen to paper, and it was Ricky Gervais who urged him to take on the director’s role as well. And what great advice that turned out to be. His subtlety of image-making and especially the use of carefully placed drone shots in and around the fields he and Toby Jones were detectoring, was remarkable. Moreover, they defied his relative inexperience in the director’s role.

And what about the movies over Christmas? I don’t know about you, but there are some I studiously avoid, as I know that even if I catch mere seconds of them, I will be hooked for the rest of the evening. These include Die Hard, Home Alone, Some Like it Hot and almost anything by Stanley Kubrick. Fortunately, most of them appeared this Christmastide, so hours reliving great screen moments seem a comforting part of holiday normalcy.

It is no accident that three of the best were directed by the same (can I say genius?) John McTiernan – including one brushed with eyeball fixing glue, Predator, and the now Christmas classic, Die Hard. McTiernan has had a life that does somehow imitate art; from pleading guilty to perjury and lying to the FBI about illegally wire-tapping phone calls of two people (one of whom was a co-producer of his 2002 action film remake, Rollerball), he was incarcerated in federal prison during which he filed for bankruptcy amidst foreclosure proceedings for his large ranch residence. But the fact remains that if you dissect the original Die Hard, there is never a wasted shot, neither a scene protracted for too long, or an un-necessary or badly timed quip. Pure cinematic genius and multiple McTiernan bonuses for us during our holiday times.

In terms of unimaginable terrors, I think the ultimate for me would be strapped to an operator’s chair, like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, and obliged to watch all available episodes available of – wait for it – Gavin and Stacey, including this year’s Christmas Special. Hands up, please, anyone who agrees. Anyone, that is, other than the 12.3 million people who tuned in on Christmas Day, making it the most watched TV comedy in over a decade. That’s about as much as I know, but then millions also read The Daily Mirror.

So, come the big day, come the big offerings, surely, although no…it’s ALL re-runs! Morecombe and Wise, the eponymous Gavin and Stacy (twice!), Downton Abbey, Notting Hill, Mrs Brown’s Boys, Raiders of the Lost Ark and, yes, even Some Like it Hot! Not something original? How about Dame Kiri Te Kanawa at Christmas? But no, it’s a programme ‘first shown in 1985’. I’m surprised the video tape survived that long.

But wait…there nestling amongst the golden oldies is The Piano at Christmas, co-hosted by a famous singer I have never heard of, Mika, and the ubiquitous Claudia Winkleman, with a fringe as sharp as a WW2 bayonet. The diminutive man with the magical hands, Lang Lang, joins the triumvirate, but all positive anticipations were ground into the dust as amateur performer followed amateur performer. It was incongruous that in the first series the ‘contestants’ seemed to possess unusual abilities right up to the public concert at the end, but now they just seemed, well, amateurish. Only one participant, Fredlin, with a Justin Bieber song, might have awakened a record company scout, but this was quickly obliterated by an army of elderly Welsh singers, all dressed in garish Father Christmas jumpers looking like escapees from an Oxfam Final Reduction rail. At last, and thankfully, they climbed onto Battersea Power Station’s upward escalator and my migraine reverted back to a level of merely unbearable.

Frustration and boredom fought for control of the sofa and the remote control placed upon it, which I grasped gratefully, pressing the button which got me to Saving Private Ryan. Not, in my opinion, a great film, but one touched by greatness especially in its extraordinary opening, charting the assault by US forces on Omaha Beach, demonstrating Spielberg’s elevation from a children’s to an adult’s auteur. A mosaic of astonishing mini scenarios, with one in particular where a shell explodes on the beach blowing the arm off a marine. He gets up, starts to walk away, then turns and retrieves his missing limb. Shell shock brilliantly delineated in mere seconds. Later, when the army realises that 3 of her 4 sons have been killed, the top brass arrive at Mrs Ryan’s doorstep to deliver the grim news. In a single masterly shot, from behind, as she waits on the porch for the official car to draw up, she simply sinks to the ground, overcome by the unutterable horror of knowing what she is about to hear. This was the only time throughout the whole Christmas schedule that a real tear (of mine that is) broke cover. Yes, and that even after a large slice of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Boxing Day now and what might be called the fag-ends begin to tumble over each other in a bid to get aired, whilst live football is obliterating all else. Like the final knockings of Gladiator, each channel tried to outbid the other with the strength of its weaponry: Gladiator itself against Die Hard, Indiana Jones against, hold on, what’s this, What’s Up, Doc? At last, a forgotten jewel in the flagging network crown, an early – and really great – Bogdanovich! It’s quite clear that as a director Peter Bogdanovich (of The Last Picture Show and that absolute classic, Targets) had a fantastic comic touch and in retrospect should really have stayed in that milieu. But having said that his heroes like Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby et al) who went to make Red River and Rio Bravo were able to cross genres with ease; such talents helped shape his own career and he certainly wanted to emulate those skills in his subsequent choices of subject matter. But it seems to me to be a sad commentary on the dearth of original television over the holiday period. In the olden days, surely there were live programmes running for hours on BBC1, games, things for children, carols even? Something a family might gather around. Isn’t that the whole idea of Christmas which we seem to have lost – or perhaps simply abandoned?

I realise that a great deal of this diatribe concentrates on feature films and their makers, but I would place the blame for this squarely at the feet of those giants of terrestrial TV who rely on old box-office hits to bump up their flagging ratings. I have hardly had a chance to discuss alternative choices on subscription services, but their output rarely seems to reflect changes in the calendar. They probably simply view a holiday period as a chance to hoover up a whole set of new subscribers.

I was hoping to stretch this highly skewered and personal commentary for a few more days, maybe even until the New Year, but by the 27th the dreaded droop factor had kicked in and we found ourselves on the slippery downwards slope to a dusty death. Imminent asphyxiation being in the guise of Return To and Beyond Paradise; I, Tonya; Escape to the Jungle and King Richard. So, nothing for it but back to the Q box and 100 hours of classics, at least until Sky comes knocking to pick up their older equipment.

So, in summary, this time it took an old film from 1972 to provide the final, and most satisfying laugh out loud moments over Christmas while available channels, even with all their guns blazing, were left mainly shooting off noisy but empty blanks.