About Those "Christmas Specials"

Do NOT expect this in an English “Christmas special”

The exact origins of the clever phrase “divided by a common language” are disputed.  Various sources credit Oscar Wilde; others plump for Wilde’s contemporary and fellow Anglo-Irishman, George Bernard Shaw.  Both said or wrote something quite similar; neither used those exact words. 

Counting the time Curmie spent working on his MA at the University of Birmingham, a honeymoon in London, a couple of vacations and a few work-related trips, he’s spent a year or so in England.  He was also the primary point-person for his department’s exchange program with a British conservatory for about a decade.

Thus, Curmie learned about the opposite definitions of the verb “to table.”  He knows that articulated lorries have bonnets but not boots.  And he’s been able to help students from both sides of the Atlantic avoid potentially awkward or embarrassing moments involving words and phrases like “fag,” “ride,” “knock up,” and “pants.”

One expression he didn’t expect to elicit confusion, however, is a television program having a “Christmas special.”  It’s true that he sort of knew better than to expect anything especially Christmas-related from such an episode if it originated at the BBC or Thames.  Curmie and Beloved Spouse have long joked about the “Christmas specials” of the ‘80s cop show “Bergerac,” which were often set in the summer and literally never had anything to do with Christmas.  They earned their sobriquet, apparently, simply by being shown in December (“Christmas”) and having something out of the ordinary (“special”) by being temporally isolated from the rest of the season", or occupying a 90-minute instead of a 60-minute timeslot, or whatever.

On Christmas Eve this year, we watched a “behind the scenes” view of the Christmas episodes of the series “All Creatures Great and Small.”  All three of the highlighted story-lines, all of which we thought were wonderful, were specifically and indeed intimately linked to the celebration of Christmas—the parties, the meals, the gifts, the especial loneliness of those spending the holiday apart from those they love, and so on.

More than one of the show’s cast and staff talked about how important a “thing” such presentations are, both to those involved in the program itself and to the British people in general.  And, in fact, there are a number of particularly good examples.  Series in which a lead character is a member of the clergy—“Father Brown,” “Grantchester,” and the like—provide memorable Christmas episodes, but even secular super-sleuths Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot get called into duty over the holidays.  (Yes, it helps that Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie provided the material to be adapted to the small screen.)

Anyway… the only Christmas fare Curmie and Beloved Spouse watch literally every year is “Blackadder’s Christmas Carol” (on DVD, since Britbox shows a censored version), which we’ve viewed sometime in December, usually on Christmas Eve, every year since we bought it on VHS a couple of decades ago.  I know.  We’re weird.  Moving on…

Of course, there are plenty of Christmas-specific movies that have been watched and re-watched chez nous: “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” “Miracle on 34^th Street,” “The Bishop’s Wife,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” three or four different variations on the theme of “A Christmas Carol”… 

This year, on Christmas Day, we watched the “Crow’s Christmas Carol” episode from the series “Upstart Crow,” and we had a couple of PBS history and/or food-related specials on in the background while we were preparing the evening repast.

All of which brings us to Christmas night.  For whatever reason, neither of us was in the mood for the usual fare, but we didn’t want to give up on Christmas altogether.  I’d noticed that Acorn was dropping a “Christmas special” of “Madame Blanc,” so we decided to give that a try.  And Britbox had conveniently provided a list of their Christmas fare; we chose a “New Tricks” episode.

Here’s the Christmas content of what we watched: There’s a Christmas tree (we think) in the background of one scene in the former.  Yes, that’s it.  It’s an OK episode, even if the identity of the villain is a little too obvious a little too early, but there’s literally no dialogue that even addresses what time of year it is, and the characters are wearing only light jackets when outside.

In “New Tricks,” our heroes are, as usual, called upon to investigate a cold case.  Why does Britbox list this episode as a Christmas show?  Well, because the body was discovered on Christmas Day, of course.  The crime had been committed a couple of days earlier, and had nothing to do with the season beyond the fact that the victim fell through ice to her demise.  It’s not Christmas-time, or at least not noticeably so, as the renewed investigation proceeds.  But the body was found on Christmas.  That’s enough, apparently.

Again, a decent enough plot, and one of our favorite actresses, Sharon Small, has a guest spot.  But whereas I know we’d seen it before, I recalled nothing about the story-line, meaning it was neither good nor bad enough to be remembered.  (There were a couple of moments unrelated to the main plot that seemed familiar.)

In other words, on Christmas night we watched two different “Christmas” episodes from two different series on two different streaming services.  Neither had anything in particular to do with the holiday season.  It’s a strange world out there, Gentle Reader.

The good news is that a night or two later we watched the Christmas specials of “Death in Paradise” and “Beyond Paradise.”  The former was clearly set at Christmas, although that was only indirectly related to the plot.  The latter was an honest-to-God Christmas episode, up to and including the prospect that Father Christmas (or a imposter) might be the culprit in a series of break-ins.  It was, by the way, probably the best-yet episode of a series we had hitherto found rather disappointing.

Curmie isn’t sure what the foregoing ramble means, and he’s pretty confident that it’s inconsequential.  But it does at least provide the opportunity to express his hope that you, Gentle Reader, and those you love, had a joyous holiday season whatever your faith or lack thereof, and that your 2024 will be better than your 2023 irrespective of how high or low that hurdle may be.