According to my girlfriend’s mum (and the Hollywood reporter), the BBC planned to air The Sound of Music after a nuclear apocalypse. This factoid sprung from it being on when arrived at her house for Christmas and ‘perceived as safe to show in the hollowed out radioactive remains of Britain,’ seems the general theme of xmas TV.

This year, as is the case every year, families will curl up like fox cubs after dinner, squished onto not quite enough seating and watch films that everyone can kinda sorta agree on, that programmers guarantee not to cause argument.

The first part of our wasteland entertainment programming was, as mentioned, The Sound of Music. It’s media from a very different time, when musicals did big bucks and everyone had a strict RP accent. Its placement as post-apoc media, as Christmas filler, makes sense. I mean it’s about the rise of Nazi Germany, but wrapped in this warm chocolate box prickly father to loveable bear story and lots of songs and in theory no one could disagree on it’s choice of bad guy. So I do get it. I like how iconic every song is, how anyone could sing along and you’re never surprised by a b-side. I don’t think it’s something I’d seek out and this restoration is a little much, it nearly looks colourised. If you’re interested in watching it, seek out a non-HD, less plasticy version, an old DVD might do the trick. Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews both have so many hits across entirely different era’s of cinema, seeing them here, at the near beginning of their careers, it brings a smile. A very Christmasy experience.

Within less than a minute of the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special starting, before anyone had even started dancing, I came to the conclusion that scoring ball room dancing is probably impossible and certainly pointless. It’s like pedigree dog shows, where they’ve invented an entire ruleset so that one persons poodle can be ruled empirically superior to anothers daxon. This perspective didn’t put me in the best place to engage with ballroom dancing or this BBC production on it’s own terms. Having run for nearly 20 years and being a deeply integrated tradition for many, Strictly is highly polished and very scripted. Everyone says the right thing at the right time, the nasty judge has his catchphrases, the nice one seems blissfully naive. I can see how people get into it. Like a tin of quality street, it is easy to consume and how you’re meant to feel is laid out in advance.

Big Fat Quiz of the Year gets a mention for aggressive use of AI, with generated images of the contestants dragged out for laughs and a deepfake based round. It was kinda weird, unpleasant and bad and quite on brand. The whole show has a very new-labour-neo-lib vibe. Quiz regular Richard Ayoade joked about being newly cancelled. As if his actions were inconsequential, that it didn’t really matter he endorsed some transphobic book. As if he and, in fact, no one here really did anything that mattered.

I get the feeling that for host Jimmy Carr, the worst thing you could do is care about anything. Carr was continually ‘roasted’ for his famous tax scandal, but that took place in 2012. The feeling that noting of note had happened, that time was frozen in those glory days of evening television, with Clarkson waiting two channels over on old Top Gear, permeates this quiz.

This year Banksy put out some ‘drone bombing bad’ art and that’s kinda who Carr is too; displaced from his glory days of actually saying something and fully subsumed into being a safe person for the middle class to nod along with in agreement. Upon getting famous, some just get stuck in place. Banksy keeps saying ‘we can’t let them keep doing this’. Carr continues taking cheap shots at minorities. Both claiming to speak truth to power, when they are the power. Counter culture is always sublimated, I do think Carr used to be more than a Christmas Cracker comedian, that Banksy at one point said something. I just wish that they cared, that they could use these massive platforms they’ve built for good, or at least, for something. It’s disappointing. I dunno, it felt like a show that was gonna call me slurs at the drop of a hat and I don’t want to go back to 2012. Even if the Big Fat Quiz of the Year crew long for less interesting times.

We also watched; The Wheel Christmas Special, Richard Osman’s Festive House of Games, Only Connect Boxing Day Special, University Challenge Christmas Special and probably one or two I’m forgetting. I never really loved quiz shows. My dad is good to the point of having actually appeared on Mastermind. In comparison I always felt a bit inadequate, unable to keep up with whoever’s in the room, let alone a TV load of contestants. Christmas Specials ‘fix’ this with easier questions and shows full of celebrities, a mix of reality show types, presenters from other shows and the odd pop-star. The result is easier quizzing and gentle banter that was recoded at least 2 months ago, nothing too topical, nothing too challenging.

All this cardboard easy watching gentile TV was good background for conversation and building the Lego I got for Christmas. As radio, as fill in for occasional unwanted silence, it succeeds completely, hats off to Christmas programmers, you got us covered. When your joke doesn’t land, when it requires too much background explanation, hand over to the TV, someone will be there to entertain the room. Less programming that really wanted to be transphobic would be good? but at least it never crossed the line.

There’s a requirement for some kind of approachable, high budget and generally fizz bang production for everyone to watch and Doctor Who is kinda perfect in that role. New Who has become a Christmas tradition, especially after a regeneration and this year was no different. This is Ncuti Gatwa’s first full episode as the Doctor and it’s the first time I’ve watched the series in several years. It feels real fresh, newly painted and it’s pretty good. Gatwa spins into the role, dancing in a club wearing a kilt and most of tank top, low key boasting about sleeping with Harry Houdini and generally being a fun time. This doctor is very much here and incredibly queer.

I got burnt out on Dr Who sometime around Matt Smiths tenure, everything had became a grand battle for survival with the largest stakes, wrapped up in muddled politics. It was a show where everything related back to the bad guy from the last season, who died saying the name of the next bad guy and it was exhausting. I hadn’t been hanging on for a revival. I generally didn’t have much pinned on its success. For me, Dr Who has become a show that worked for a bit and then got bad and silly.

But this was a success, with the doctor doing some swash buckling, alongside weird horrible goblin musical numbers and the air of the unexpected. It was imperfect and maybe a little unrefined. Funny and weird and gay and most importantly of all, intriguing. I finally got an episode of Dr Who that made me want to see what happened next, not one that was setting up the next, next apocalypse.

Of all the things we watched, the hours that slipped by, Doctor Who was the best (re)discovery. A little extra gift from Santa this year.