Christmas TV guide: 20 of the best shows to watch

Christmas Eve

Christmas at Home
RTÉ One, 9.10pm
We won't be able to attend a carol service this Christmas, but the good news is that Santa will be bringing the carols to us, with help from presenters Mary Kennedy and Ruth Smith, and host of singers and musicians. Home is the theme of this year's special programme, as we've all had to tune into our home space during this pandemic year. Such talented guests as Lisa Hannigan, Loah, Imelda May, Una Healy, Mick Flannery and Susan O'Neill will be beaming Christmas cheer straight into your home – all you have to do is pour yourself a mulled wine, put some cream on your mince pie, and just sit back and listen. (Sing along if you want to as well – no one is going to complain).

Musical highlights include country ‘n’ Irish legend Ray Lynam, who will join Healy to perform a Christmas song by the late John Prime, who died from Covid-19, teenage YouTube sensation Allie Sherlock, and Celine Byrne, who will deliver a stunning rendition of Silent Night with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Cor na nÓg. There will also be spoken-word musings from Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh and Donnah Vuma, and some socially distanced rí rá agus ruaille buaille from the Kerry Wren Boys and Girls. The big takeaway? There’s no place like home.

The 2 Johnnies Christmas Spectacular
RTÉ2, 10.15pm
So, you thought Morecambe and Wise were the champions of the Christmas variety special? Well, think again, because Eric and Ernie are about to be ousted by the podcasting duo of Johnny B and Johnny Smacks, soon to be better known to classic Christmas telly listmakers as The 2 Johnnies. The Johnnies have always been fans of ye olde-fashioned Christmas telly spectacular, so they decide that what viewers across the land needed in these trying times was a good holiday hooley on screen, in the vein of Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and other family friendly music and comedy spectaculars. Can they pull off this entertainment coup? Don't underestimate the lads from Cahir, Co Tipperary.

They’ve lined up a winning team of guests, including Una Healy, Marty Morrissey, Des Cahill, sports impressionist Conor “Sketches” Moore and Kerry sports star Kieran Donaghy. Among the entertainment delights in store is a special “Club Around the Corner” featuring kids from Cahir GAA shooting straight from the hip, a “Mammy Bake Off” with Darina Allen, and the reunion of a very famous boyband (if you don’t recognise them, ask your parents).

Netflix: 10 of the best new shows and films to watch in December

---

TV guide: 22 of the best shows to watch this week

---

‘Bodies left for weeks. People eaten by dogs’: What the Famine did to Ireland

---

“I can’t believe they let us make this” say the duo. “They’re going to really think we’ve lost the run of ourselves around Tipperary now.” You have, lads, you have.

Roald & Beatrix, The Tale of the Curious Mouse
Sky One, 8.15pm
Christmas is a time to believe, and you will really believe this tale of a true-life meeting between two great children's authors – one nearing the end of her brilliant career, and the other just starting off on his own wondrous journey of the imagination. Beatrix Potter (Dawn French) is under pressure to write another book for her vast young readership, but her eyesight is failing and she's growing weary of the writing process. As Christmas approaches, she just wants a quiet life in her Cumbrian cottage. Meanwhile, in Wales, an unhappy young boy named Roald Dahl (Harry Tayler) is dealing with tragedy by escaping into his Beatrix Potter books. He wants nothing more than to meet his literary heroine, and when he sets off to find Potter, both their lives are changed. Two giants of children's literature for the price of one? I'm in.

Christmas Day

Michael McIntyre's Christmas Wheel
BBC One, 6pm
We hear the same complaints every year about RTÉ shows pulling from a shallow pool of colleagues and presenters for their "celebrity" guests. (Louis Walsh famously labelled one RTÉ show "Dancing with the Staff"). Well, we've had enough griping from you people, especially since the worst offenders in that regard are the BBC, who seem reluctant to wander even 10 yards from Television Centre in search for guests for their latest series.

Well, to be fair, they went a bit further afield for Michael McIntyre’s festive episode of The Wheel, bringing in Holly Willoughby, who presents This Morning on ITV, and Alan Carr, usually to be found doing his chatty man thing on Channel 4. These celebs, along with Strictly dancer Oti Mabuse, will be competing to complete the Wheel and win money for their chosen charities. Luckily, they have help from a panel of celebrity experts, not all of whom have a day job with the Beeb.

Mrs Brown's Boys: Mammy of the People
RTÉ One, 9.45pm
Let's face it: Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without Brendan O'Carroll eing and blinding in a pinny and hair curlers, and the good news is that Covid hasn't stopped O'Carroll and his family and friends from getting together to deliver another brace of bawdy seasonal specials, just to remind us that there's something even more infectious than coronavirus: laughing your head off at dirty filthy jokes. In this first comedy special, Agnes has emerged blinking from lockdown, and the Brown family is getting ready for a very different sort of season, where they can't get up to their usual boundary-crossing shenanigans. Happily, Agnes and Winnie have something to keep them busy: they've entered a Radio Times contest to come up with an alternative queen's Christmas speech. Will Finglas become the new Balmoral? One suspects this will be a right royal set-to. The second special hits our screens with a rolling pin on New Year's Eve.

Bridgerton
Netflix
Nothing gussies up the Christmas TV schedules quite like a good costume drama. All that lace and taffeta, and those chandeliers and big drawing-rooms – it just screams traditional Christmas. Here's Netflix's contribution to the petticoat parade, a series "inspired by" (read "very loosely based on") the novels by Julia Quinn. Phoebe Bridgerton, eldest daughter of the powerful, well-connected Bridgerton family, is a debutante with definite ideas about what she wants in a suitor. But her idea of perfect husband material doesn't necessarily coincide with the opinions of her family – or with reality.

Sure, her own parents married for love, but that’s not always practical in the unforgiving world of Regency London high society. Things become more complicated when the local gossip columnist, the mysterious Lady Whistledown, starts dishing out the dirt on Daphne, and when the dashing Duke of Hastings, a committed bachelor, appears on the scene, well, it’s not long before love is a battlefield, and Daphne must get armed and ready for hand-to-hand romantic combat.

Call the Midwife Christmas Special
BBC One, 7.40pm
Coronavirus kicked in just as the Call the Midwife actors were about to start filming the 2020 Christmas special, and they had to wait five months before they could go back on set, working flat out to get the programme finished in time for its Christmas day airing. They also worked doubly hard to make sure no one could tell the programme was being made while keeping to hygiene and social distancing protocols.

While some TV dramas can incorporate the pandemic into their storylines, Call the Midwife has no such luxury, as it’s set in a time when measles and mumps were the big public health menaces. The year is 1965, and the nurses of Nonnatus House are looking forward to kicking off their Scholls and kicking back for a quiet, traditional Crimbo. But of course, nothing goes according to plan, and when the circus arrives in Poplar, the nurses find themselves having to juggle several different tasks.

Maureen O'Hara: Banríon Hollywood
TG4, 9pm
If you think Maureen O'Hara was just about The Quiet Man, you've got that one wrong. Hollywood's first Irish leading lady had a lot more strings to her bow. She was a superstar of the screen, making more than 65 movies in a career that spanned eight decades. She was often cast as a fiercely independent woman, but she was also fiercely independent in real life, and a role model for young Irish actresses hoping to make it in showbiz.

This special documentary marks the 100th anniversary of O’Hara’s birth, and looks back at her incredible career which saw her star alongside some of the greatest acting legends, often upstaging them in the process. The programme also looks at her full life outside Hollywood, exploring her talent as a singer, her reputation as a businesswoman and her activism in the cause of women’s rights. Ah, sure, go on – might as well watch The Quiet Man again, just for the craic.

The Dubliners: The Parting Glass
TG4, 9.55pm
In January 2012, the last two surviving members of The Dubliners' original line-up – John Sheahan and Barney McKenna – decided to go out with one last gig, a 50th anniversary concert at Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral. It was a long way from O'Donogue's pub (well, actually, just a taxi ride away), where The Dubliners played their first, raucous shows in 1962. For this farewell gig, they were down three original members, Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly and Ciarán Bourke, but they were joined by "new guys" Sean Cannon, Eamonn Campbell and Patsy Watchhorn, and they had no shortage of talented "deps" eager to join them on stage, including Declan O'Rourke, Máire Breatnach, Sean Keane from The Chieftains and the Dublin Gospel Choir. At the last minute, Sheahan thought it might be a good idea to film the concert, so he hired a crew to capture the event. Two months later, McKenna died, and the film immortalises his rendition of I Wish I Had Someone to Love Me. The film also features such Dubliners classics as Dirty Old Town, Whiskey in the Jar and The Irish Rover.

St Stephen’s Day

After a Woman's Heart
RTÉ One 9.30pm
What's it like to be part of the biggest-selling album in Irish music history? Back in 1992, Eleanor McEvoy was a jobbing musician, going down the pit (the orchestra pit) with the RTÉ NSO and Concert Orchestra, and playing fiddle and keyboards with the Mary Black band. All that changed when she wrote her song A Woman's Heart and recorded it with Black. Suddenly, the song was all over the radio, and a generation of Irish women adopted it as an anthem of empowerment. The accompanying album featured McEvoy, Black, Dolores Keane, Maura O'Connell, Frances Black and Sharon Shannon, and in this documentary, McEvoy reunites with her collaborators on this landmark record, and they talk about the changes wrought in Irish society in the three decades since its release. Of course, there'll be a few aul songs too.

Monday, December 28th

Two Doors Down Christmas Special
BBC Two, 9pm
Beware the comedy special that whisks the main characters out of their familiar environment and sends them off on a "holiday". We've seen the On the Buses movie. In this Christmas special, the neighbours of Latimer Crescent decide to spend Hogmanay in the Highlands. Will it all end badly? Probably, but the bigger question is, will it get the same laughs as usual, or will the crescent residents be like fish jokes out of water? With their plans to spend Christmas in Dubai derailed by Covid, Colin and Cathy decide to rent a lodge in the Scottish Highland, and invited the neighbours along, as you do. Once you've suspended your disbelief at the idea of an entire street going off on holidays together, you can settle in for some festive fun, frolics and misunderstandings as things inevitably spiral out of control.

Tuesday, December 29th

The Francis Street Photographer
RTÉ One, 6.30pm
John Walsh was the John Hinde of the Liberties, taking stunning photographs of the people and places in his Dublin inner city neighbourhood. Francis Street in the 1940s and 50s was hardly picture-postcard perfect, but Walsh tirelessly chronicled the daily life of the Liberties through his lens, building up a superb archive of images that captured the social history of the area. He snapped people going about their business, local weddings and communions, and took portraits of people in their homes.

After he died in 1999, his daughter Suzanne Behan, who was recovering from cancer, decided to pass the time by pulling some of her dad’s old negatives out of the shed and going through them. What she found was 100,000 images going back through several decades – a veritable treasure trove chronicling life in and around Francis Street. This documentary is a celebration of a unique Dublin neighbourhood and a tribute to the man who documented it with his trusty camera.

2020: Thank You, Next!
Virgin Media One, 9pm
Round about this time, pundits are fondly looking back through the year just gone, and dissecting all the events and trends of the past 12 months, Not this year. We just want to get shot of 2020 and never have to think about it again. Neil Delamere points his sharp wit at the annus horribilis just past, and gathers a celebrity panel to look at the funny side of this very forgettable year, which included Brexit, Megxit, Golfgate and the general election, but was dominated by that pesky coronavirus. We might all be spending New Year's Eve at home, but we'll all be reunited in our relief that this year is finally over.

Billy Connolly: It's Been a Pleasure
Virgin Media One, 10.15pm
There are some great British comedians about, but the Big Yin was the one comic to rule them all, and he bestrode the stage like a quipping colossus, endearing himself to, well everyone. In 2018, Connolly announced his retirement from stand-up comedy, and no one would begrudge the man (now 78) some well-deserved down time. But we're not going to let him ride off into the sunset just like that. In this special programme, the viewer is invited into Connolly's home in South Florida to share some of his finest comedy moments over the past five decades. There are also contributions from Connolly's closest celebrity friends, including Paul McCartney, Elton John, Sheridan Smith, Whoopi Goldberg, Russell Brand, Lenny Henry, Aisling Bea and Dustin Hoffman. And there'll be a very special contribution from Connolly's wife and soulmate, Pamela Stephenson. It's a fitting farewell to one of comedy's most beloved treasures.

Moya
TG4, 9.20pm
No last names needed. This musical documentary looks back at the 50-year career of the High Queen of Celtic music, Moya Brennan, who has brought the traditional Irish sound of her native Gweedore into the wider world as both a solo artist and a member of Clannad. Brennan has plenty of achievements to sift through, from winning Emmy, Grammy and Novello awards to performing for presidents and popes to featuring on the soundtrack of Titanic.

The programme features interviews and performances with her family, and with musical friends Paul Brady, Imelda May, Damien Dempsey, Liam Ó Maonlaí and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh. The programme makers, Dearg Films, are promising a deeply personal insight into the woman who, according to Bono, “has one of the greatest voices the human ear has ever experienced”.

Wednesday, December 30th

Callan's Kicks of the Year
RTÉ One, 9.25pm
Comedian Oliver Callan Callan reaches into his grab-bag of uncanny impressions and gives 2020 a right old duffing-up before casting it right back into the hell from which it was forged.

The whole 2020 gang is here, including Leo, Boris, Mary Lou, Trump, Francis Brennan and Saoirse Ronan, as Callan casts a satirical eye over the events of the past year, including Golfgate, NPHET, Matt Damon in Dalkey, Fungie going missing in Dingle, the Healy-Raes going mad in the Dáil, and covidiots getting in our faces wherever we went. I’ve always been more of a fan of Callan’s radio show and podcast, but I’m happy to tune into this just to see 2020 get the kicking it deserves.

New Year’s Eve

Mrs Brown's Boys: Mammy's Memories?
RTÉ One, 9.10pm
We've been waiting patiently since Christmas Day for the second Mrs Brown's Boys special to come along and break up the post-Christmas boredom, but how is everyone in Finglas faring as we head into a new year with no sign of the new normal ending soon? Well, Cathy has her 50th birthday coming up, and she's not exactly counting down the days. And a mysterious burglar has stolen a very special heirloom from Winnie's house – her mammy's wedding ring. But when Agnes gets the gardaí in, Winnie can't seem to be able to give a proper description of the perpetrator.

Jools' Annual Hootenanny
BBC Two, 11.15pm
Every year, a bunch of top muso gather with no social distancing to take part in Jools Holland's annual celebration and rock in the new year. This year, however, things are going to have to be done a little differently, so yes, we're going to get great music, but no, there won't be lots of group hugs and kisses as the world counts down to 2021. Jools and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra will be performing with special guests, but the focus will be more on pulling out great archive material from 28 years of the Hootenanny. That's a lot of great material to choose from, and we can trust Jools to choose wisely.

New Year’s Day

The Man Comes Around: Johnny Cash in Ireland
RTÉ One, 6.30pm
In 1963, at the age of 31, American country superstar Johnny Cash took a figary and flew over to Ireland to do a short tour of small rural venues around the country. At the time, he had his biggest-ever hit with Ring of Fire, but was also battling alcoholism and drug addiction,and having an affair with June Carter, the co-writer of Ring of Fire. Accompanying him on his Irish trip was his band The Tennessee Three, with Carter as the support act, and they performed in local dancehalls in Cavan, Dundalk, Belfast, Mullingar, Galway, Limerick, Athy, Kilkenny and Rush, culminating with a show at Dublin's National Stadium.

This documentary tells the story of Cash’s Irish visit, when Irish audiences got to see the Man in Black up close and sharing the stage with local showbands. Eileen Reid recalls meeting Cash when her band The Cadets supported him, and fans bring their memories of the star as he cut a swathe through rural Ireland. And among the archive material and first-hand accounts, the film unveils a “lost” live recording of Cash performing at the National Stadium, which had been languishing in a biscuit tin in a shed for more than 50 years.

Dr Who: Revolution of the Daleks
BBC One, 6.45pm
This Christmas, there'll be lots of R2-D2s and BB8s under the Christmas tree, but how many kids will be asking Santa for a Dalek for Christmas? The answer is very few, because the Daleks are JUST TOO SCARY. Okay, they may be little more than warlike wheelie bins with grating voices, but stand still long enough and they'll eventually trundle up, surround you and exterminate you with their laser-powered proboscis. This latest Dr Who Christmas Special grapples with the eternal problem of the Daleks – they're just too clunky and slow to frighten even a toddler – but they seem to have acquired the power of flight, so that helps, and they still have that gloriously malevolent electronic bark (what, that doesn't scare you?)

Jodie Whitaker returns as The Doctor, and John Barrowman makes a comeback as Captain Jack Harkness – wait until he sees the Doctor’s latest incarnation. Also back is Sex and the City guy Chris Noth as Jack Robertson, and Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole will be making their final appearance as the Doctor’s loyal team members Graham and Ryan. But what of the plot? Well, the Doctor’s been locked in a space prison, which is a pity, because the Daleks are busy taking over the Earth, and so Yaz, Graham and Ryan will have to recruit Harkness to help out until the Doctor can bust loose from her alien incarceration.