Christmas specials aren’t just the province of television. Every year all sorts of media throw Santa coated tat at us left, right and centre. All it takes is to go back to the Victorian age and there is Dickens knocking out a Christmas Carol, and other Christmas stories that no-one ever uses to theme their popular sketch show into some sort of loose limbed narrative arc.
Sketch shows are tough for Christmas specials because, well, there is nothing special about a set of sketches. You could do it so that all of the characters are doing something Christmassy, but that is still a bit scattershot. Luckily all sketch shows have at least one Scroogelike character for us to laugh at, and have other characters take them through their life in a Ghost of past, present and future way.
So who had a Ghost Of Christmas Past like this?
Of course this was not Tennant’s special, but his old Doctor Who companion Catherine Tate, essaying her second most popular character “Nan”. And I wonder how many people watch Nan’s Christmas Carol with a similarly curmudgeonly grandmother last year. And had to explain what popular beat combo Madness was doing there, and how something quite so broad and self referential got a nice Christmas Day slot.
You can watch it here, though I don’t recommend it!