Despise schmaltz and kids singing and people learning the true meaning of the season?

Of course you do, you’re only human…

 

The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special

This exists as pretty much the midway point between the dark sketch show that spawned it, and League member Mark Gatiss’s later series of festive TV horrors, Crooked House.

Taking the form of an anthology tale such as those produced by powerhouse horror studio, Amicus, the special shows us a series of bleak festive vignettes: the awful truth behind the bad luck of veterinarian Dr Chinnery, the voodoo cult that get their claws into combative couple Charlie and Stella, and German exchange teacher Herr Lipp’s run-in with vampire choirboys.

A final gut-punch to explain Reverend Bernice’s hatred of Christmas is just the icing on a gloriously rotten cake.

 

Blackadder’s Christmas Carol

Ebeneezer Blackadder is the nicest man in all England and, more surprisingly, the only nice man in his entire family line which both before and after consists of cowardly, vicious bounders and cads.

After another festive season of being ripped off by those who would take advantage of his charity, Blackadder is visited by a Christmas spirit (Robbie Coltrane, looking like a prototype Hagrid) and learns, via visions of new sketches based on the second and third Blackadder series, as well as a future sci-fi version) that bad guys have all the fun.

It’s a fairly obvious reversal of the concept but the characterisation is so good and the barbs so vicious that it rises above its limited concept admirably.

 

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Now, don’t get angry. We only said that Die Hard wouldn’t feature.

Die Hard 2 is often ignored in favour of its, frankly better, predecessor, but it really does lay on the Christmas feeling far more heavily as John McClane takes out another series of terrorists in gruesome ways (hey, it’s okay. They’re bad guys!).

The airport setting allows for lots of seasonal detail as well as lots of snow and, as our hero’s wife is stuck on a plane with a man she punched in the face in the first film, it also explores the fine Christmas tradition of being trapped with people you don’t like.

 

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