Beauty and
the Beast: A
Pantomime
for Comic
Relief
lily James will
star as Beauty in this year’s
star-studded comic Relief
pantomime. expect more
festive fun with appearances
from miranda hart, lenny
henry and more.
Dec 19, BBC2Spitting
Image
tom cruise
saves
christmas and
Rishi sunak is
visited by the Ghost of tory
Glory Past in this festive
edition of the satirical
comedy. it will be only the
second episode of the
puppet show to be shown on
terrestrial tv this year.
Christmas Eve, ITVAnything
Goes: The
Musical
Filmed live at
the Barbican
in london,
kathleen marshall’s and Ross
macGibbon’s revival of the
1934 musical stars the tony
award-winning sutton Foster
as Reno sweeney. expect tap
dancing, corny jokes and
glittering routines.
Boxing Day, BBC2Billy Connolly:
My Absolute
Pleasure
the legendary
Glasgow-born
comedian, 79,
invites us into his house on
the river at key west in
Florida. connolly, who has
Parkinson’s disease, reflects
on his life and picks some
of his favourite routines —
some of which have never
been shown on tv.
Boxing Day, ITVOnly Connect
victoria coren
mitchell’s
idiosyncratic
quiz show,
which has
beaten EastEnders in the
ratings, returns for four
festive editions to make
sure our brain cells keepworking over the holiday
season.
Dec 27, 28, 29 and 30,
BBC2JFK Destiny
Betrayed
in this
four-part
documentary,
the director
of 1991’s JFK, oliver stone,
looks back at the life of the
35th president of the united
states. who was he? who
were his enemies? And
what really happened
when his motorcade drove
through Dallas, texas, on
that fateful day?
Dec 28, Sky DocumentariesThe Book of
Boba Fett
After stealing
the show in
The Empire
Strikes Back,
the bounty hunter gets his
time to shine with a spin-off
series. the character returns
to the sands of tatooine to
claim the territory of the
deceased Jabba the hutt.
From Dec 29, Disney+Attenborough
and the
Mammoth
Graveyard
Four years
ago a couple
discovered a huge fossilised
mammoth graveyard while
walking around a freshly dug
gravel pit outside swindon.
Attenborough heads to
the site to explore how
neanderthals once hunted
mammoths in the area.
Dec 30, BBC1Harry Potter
20th
Anniversary:
Return to
Hogwarts
twenty years
have passed since the boy
wizard hit cinema screens.
in a special reunion, the stars
of the franchise — including
Daniel Radcliffe, emma
watson and Rupert Grint —
look back on old times. its
author Jk Rowling is
controversially absent.
New Year’s Day, Sky/NowJake Helmmenopausal rages can solve
murders (with an honourable
mention to Kate Winslet).
ITV produces a lot of police
procedurals, but few of its
detectives have the presence
of Stuart; few of its shows the
quality of this one. It was
almost as if she couldn’t even
bother to do anything, as
she picked her way through
an (admittedly quite
bog-standard) new case about
the death of a Millwall fan.8
Selling Sunset
Season 4 (Netflix)
Are you feeling
starved of great
houses and long legs? Do you
yearn for acres of calacatta
marble? Selling Sunset is a
reality show where you can
microdose glamour through
hours and hours of property
porn — and for the most part
it is curiously moreish, when
they aren’t tearing each
other’s weaves out in rage.
Every scene begins with some
sky-scraping, underdressed
9ft supermodel stalking into
the relatively tiny real estate
office in Los Angeles,
announcing she’s made half a
million dollars selling the6
Halston (Netflix)
It is incredibly
difficult to film
fashion: you need a
screamingly funny script and
unembarrassable actors. Ewan
McGregor flings himself into
this glittering biopic of the
baked orange Seventies
fashion designer Halston.
Most of the time he is just seen
staring, expressionless and
in sunglasses, into gigantic
mirrors, whispering, “I will
never design a blue jean” or,
“f*** Bill Blass!” The show
makes a big deal of Halston’s
sex life — he eventually died of
Aids in 1990. I lost count of the
number of times the camera
lovingly panned over naked
hook-ups at truck stops, or
Halston took it upon himself
to bury his nose in his lover’s
humongous jockstrap. Were
these scenes the whole point
of the show?
7
Unforgotten (ITV)
For the whole of
March it transfixed us
— Nicola Walker’s
mirthless tache. What a
fabulous experience it was to
be sneered at by her, in her
last outing as the terminally
unamused DCI Cassie Stuart.
If I could sum up Walker’s
contribution to telly, it is
single-handedly showing that
Pushing all the right
buttons From kate winslet
to ewan mcGregor, 2021
was a year of sensational
performances in tv seriesfive-bed, nine-and-a-half
bathroom Tuscan dream-hole
in the Hills. (What is a
half-bathroom?) This season
focuses on the show’s
timeless villain, Christine
Quinn, and whether she
is “lying” over a past
boyfriend. Who said
reality shows needed
a plot, or even
meaningful dialogue?9
It’s a Sin
(Channel
4)
This was
one of the most
exuberant shows
of the year — the
story of four
young gay men
coming out in the
1980s just as the
Aids pandemic
hit. To say it was
filthy would be to
seriously understate the
number of naked bottoms
that flew across the screen. At
one point a gob of bodily fluid
tracked its way through the
air — a first. But beneath the
exuberance there was the
horror — just as gays began to
persuade everyone maybe
they weren’t plague victims,
suddenly they became them.
What I admired most was its
power to fill you with joy then
almost instantly shock you
into silence — you gasped at
the full frame of Colin, a sweet
Welsh boy, in fear and pain, at
the back of an empty hospital
ward, shunned by the staff.10
Impeachment
(BBC2)
The real star of
this show was
Sarah Paulson as the chain-
smoking, Clinton-loathing
office troll Linda Tripp. Over
ten episodes we watched as
this peerlessly unlikeable
Karen slurped down Ultra
Slimfast shakes and gobbled
up her Marlboros and gassed
on the phone to people such
as Monica Lewinsky — all
famously taped. I wasn’t a
huge fan of Beanie Feldstein
— since when was Monica a
dead ringer for Princess
Beatrice? And her waddle —
just like the Penguin. But the
facts of the case, including the
denouement where Monica
is forced to recount every
single sexual encounter in
detail for little more than the
entertainment of the nation
— made compelling slowburn
television. cTV YOU SHOULDN’T MISS
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