Christmas box unwrapped

Time Lords, chefs, ghosts and comics... TV schedulers have assembled a colourful cast of festive characters to keep us entertained, writes Al Senter

All but the most hard-hearted of Scrooges will admit to a latent fondness for the predictable trappings of Christmas and each family will observe its own pattern of long-standing rituals. But common to everybody except the most high-minded of killjoys is a fascination with the parade of goodies unwrapped by TV schedulers. For people confined in unnatural proximity to one another, festive television can provide a welcome distraction from flagging conversation and family feuds.

Some seasonal stalwarts, notably the Queen's broadcast and the annual arrival of the bumper double issue of Radio Times are enduring institutions. But the television landscape is radically different from the conditions that produced such landmark entertainments as The Morecambe and Wise and Two Ronnies Christmas Shows in the 1970s and 1980s. Eric and Ernie's Yuletide extravaganzas, with their bevy of star guests, steadily advanced in both ratings and ambition, culminating in a 1977 spectacular that drew an audience of almost 30 million.

The kind of viewing figures that these programmes achieved are impossible in a multiplatform, multichannel age. But there is still a deep seam of nostalgia for such vanished days when avuncular personalities such as Leslie Crowther would bring seasonal cheer to youngsters in hospital over Christmas and tug the nation's heart-strings in the process.

Five years ago, in an irresistible appeal to nostalgia lovers everywhere, Channel 4 undertook an exhaustive survey of the nation's 100 Greatest Christmas Moments. Topping the poll was Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?, the pop world's heartfelt response to the Ethiopian famine of 1984. More traditional favourites included the animated version of Raymond Briggs's The Snowman and the Hollywood classics, It's A Wonderful Life and White Christmas. But the list is dominated by comedy. In the top 20 alone there are festive versions of Father Ted, The Office, Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley, French and Saunders, Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge and Blackadder's Christmas Carol. Such a welter of laughter-makers suggests that we all need some comic relief over Christmas.

By contrast, drama is relatively absent from Channel 4's roll of honour and is usually confined to the soaps. Canny producers invariably reserve their strongest story-lines for the pre-Christmas period, with the climax scheduled for Christmas Day itself. In 1987, 27 million viewers switched on to watch the departure of Hilda Ogden from Coronation Street while 29 million had tuned into EastEnders in the previous year as Angie Watts handed divorce papers to her cheating hubby. In 2009, nothing has changed. We are promised both murder and serious illness in the soaps this Christmas to add to our diminishing fund of festive goodwill.

In recent years, ITV has tended to downplay Christmas, reasoning that only holiday firms wish to advertise to overspent consumers by the time that the big day arrives. Channel 4 will turn to its stable of chefs for ratings help, with the regulars dishing up in the Jamie at Home Christmas Special, Gordon Ramsay's Christmas F Word and Heston's Christmas Feast. So it's left to the BBC to unwrap the sought-after treats.

In drama, David Tennant looks set to claim the lion's share of attention. Not only will he be seen as Doctor Who in a Christmas Day special but his acclaimed performance as Hamlet for the RSC was filmed on location in north London in June and will be shown on BBC2.

What have been dismissed as "bonnet sagas" seem to be out of fashion at the Beeb, but there will be a plethora of such headgear on display in the return of Cranford. The all-star adaptation of a number of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford novels was rightly praised on its first appearance in 2007 and now a further two films have been hewn from the material, with newcomers including Jonathan Pryce, Celia Imrie, Lesley Sharp and Rory Kinnear joining the established cast.

Film buffs will need no encouragement to sample BBC Four's A Celebration of Orson Welles, which attempts to encompass the life and work of a great director and a man who was a larger-than-life personality in every way. There will also be a 30-minute animation feature based on The Gruffalo, with Robbie Coltrane supplying the voice of the eponymous creature.

Although we crave laughter at Christmas, we are not averse to a little spine-tingling, as the BBC's regular festive adaptations of the chilling ghost stories of MR James would tend to suggest. On similar territory, Sandy Welch, fresh from adapting Emma, has tackled The Turn of the Screw, a rare venture into the supernatural by Henry James, in which a young governess is forced to fight the malign forces possessing the two orphan children in her care.

Finally and on a more upbeat note, Victoria Wood, the past mistress of dead-eyed observational comedy and a dab hand at well-aimed parody, returns to a BBC festive season for the first time in almost a decade. Julie Walters will also be joining the revels. Can we therefore hope for a comeback for Mrs Overall, the diminutive daily in Acorn Antiques? That will be a Christmas wish from us all.