Christmas TV is relying on sitcom specials once again. Where is all the money going?

With ‘Gavin & Stacey’ leading the BBC’s lineup this year, and no prestige literary adaptations to be seen, Nick Hilton is wondering if the hegemony of festive telly is ending

Every Christmas I get to sit down with a mince pie and a hot toddy, and watch as the BBC desecrates another of my beloved Agatha Christie novels. It’s a Christmas tradition – or so I thought.

This year, however, the schedule is looking barer than a blacklisted stocking. Back in the halcyon days of 2023, we had one-off dramas such as The Winter King and Men Up, plus the final instalment of The Crown, and then, on New Year’s Day, Mr Bates vs the Post Office and The Tourist. But the advent calendar of TV offerings in 2024 looks like my advent calendar after 3 December: almost totally empty. To call it “thin gruel” would be too Dickensian for a seasonal slate that has eschewed prestige literary adaptations entirely. So where is the money going? And is this just a natural ebb and flow, a conspiracy of accidental forces, or a sign that the hegemony of Christmas TV is ending?

British households structure their Christmases around the telly schedule. It punctuates the day: presents, TV, breakfast, TV, dinner, TV, charades, TV, bed, TV. It harks back to an earlier age – from the 1960s to the new millennium – when the TV set was the hearth of the home. Since 1969, the Radio Times has published a special double issue with the full TV listings for the festive period, which is still its bestselling edition of the year, even though all these listings are now available online (you can even get ChatGPT to compose a minute-by-minute viewing itinerary, if you’re so inclined). Whether they’re sipping mulled wine during Carols from King’s on Christmas Eve or adjourning the turkey guzzling for the King’s message on Christmas Day, families rely on the broadcast routine to make sense of the turbulent festive period.

The question that commissioners must ask themselves, then, is: what do audiences want to watch during the festive season? The viewing dynamics are changed somewhat. Audiences for linear television – the old-fashioned way of watching live broadcasts – skew older. A report from Ofcom this year found that those between 16 and 24 watched an average of just 20 minutes of live TV per day (a figure that still seems implausibly high), compared to more than four hours, on average, ingested by Baby Boomers. But at Christmas the kids come back from university, granny and grandpa tramp in from the country, and the generations mingle on the sofa.

And so, broadcasters have to put out programming that satisfies an unusual set of demands. Grabby enough to capture everyone’s frayed attention, but fundamentally family friendly. That’s why pride of place on the BBC this yuletide is being given to Aardman’s second Wallace & Gromit feature film, Vengeance Most Fowl, and a reimagining of The Primrose Railway Children, itself mash-up of two heavyweights of children’s literature: Edith Nesbit and Jacqueline Wilson. Both of those are airing on the BBC, which has usually understood that the December calendar must put the onus on appointment viewing. But the former will be available on iPlayer from Christmas Day and Netflix, internationally, from 3 January. A rumoured budget of nearly £70m has likely necessitated this partnership, though squeezed licence fee payers might well feel ripped off. The Primrose Railway Children, meanwhile, is already available on iPlayer, even though it doesn’t air on BBC One until Sunday 22 December. As shows of confidence in linear TV go, it isn’t a ringing endorsement.

Instead, there is, once again, a reliance on the “special”, a distinctively festive version of a much-loved programme. Gavin & Stacey will prove the headline act, going out with (hopefully) a bang on Christmas Day, shortly after Doctor Who and Mrs Brown’s Boys deliver their gift-wrapped contributions. But the Christmas special is a sop to people already invested in shows. There are few newcomers who will encounter Gavin or Stacey for the first time on Christmas Day, and fewer still (hopefully) who’ll make the acquaintance of Mrs Brown or her boys. For most families, they offer only partial communion.

‘Gavin & Stacey: The Finale’ headlines the BBC’s schedule (PA)

The most unifying presence on the Christmas schedule has long been a good period drama. It’s why the recent run of Christie adaptations – And Then There Were None, Witness for the Prosecution, The ABC Murders and Murder is Easy – have been triumphant successes, despite making my blood boil. And the BBC does have another Christie in the works – Towards Zero, with a cast including Anjelica Huston, Matthew Rhys and Mimi Keene – which is due to be released at an unannounced point in 2025. Mark Gatiss will deliver the BBC’s annual yuletide ghost story for the seventh year in a row, but while it’s set in Victorian England, this one-off tale (another Nesbitt adaptation) provides just 30 minutes of period immersion. This dearth of time-travelling temptations has resulted in my partner forcing me to rewatch the 2005 adaptation of Bleak House.

I hope that 2024 is just an accident of scheduling

The decision not to programme a big multi-part crowd-pleaser over the festive season demonstrates a growing ambivalence towards the role that linear television plays. The closest thing to a prestige vehicle launching in the next few weeks is Sky’s Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, a dramatic retelling of the aftermath of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, starring Colin Firth. It’s a meaty subject, no doubt, but rather light on obvious festive cheer. Other shows returning over the next month – such as SAS: Rogue Heroes and The Split – don’t have that multigenerational appeal.

Are we doomed to spend Christmases watching shows on our own (or, worse, actually talking to our loved ones)? Estimates put the amount of daily content consumed by children on video-sharing apps, such as YouTube, at between 70 and 90 minutes. That sparks an almost dystopian vision of granny and grandpa watching the King’s Speech while their grandkids inhale MrBeast videos on their smartphones and mum and dad catch up on the sexy rabbi show on Netflix. Generations divided by a common language: TV.

It’s why I hope that 2024 is just an accident of scheduling. Communal TV watching has been in decline for a decade, written off again and again. But the BBC, of all institutions, ought to understand that Christmas offers a chance to reassert the magic of the small screen. It is a rare moment when the country watches together, freed from the self-selection bias that has led you to mindlessly rewatch Gilmore Girls three times in the past six months. Christmas TV is like brussels sprouts: a kind of revolting seasonal speciality but, if you get through that first sinewy bite, not all that bad and, most importantly, good for you.