The Christmas TV Strategy Guide 2022 #05

It’s Christmas Eve Eve! So lets start the day with an Old School Hollywood musical; a bald lad doing some dancing and some singing, all being wrapped up in a happy ending (I think, and I can’t comment on any historical inaccuracies) that should get the day off to a good start

Is this still the only 100% film on Rotten Tomatoes or whatever? Do we still like it even after all that stuff where Paddington was escorting the Queen off to heaven or whatever? Who knows, lets just try to enjoy a good film with a very entertaining turn from Hugh Grant

Not 100% sure but hopefully that 4 o’clock film is the 2003 live action version of Peter Pan which has a great turn from Jason Isaacs in it. If not, then well you roll the dice you take your chance am I right? After that you get one of the high points of the recent DC Universe films, although considering some of the films its following thats not exactly as impressive as that sounds

In the wake of all things Potter film studios were throwing themselves around trying to find The Next Big Thing, which we all remember was Brock Lesnar. Anyways, Chronicles of Narnia seemed like an ideal series to put on screen, but it never really caught fire in the same way. Or at least, the first one did then the second one didn’t so this one didn’t get made by Disney like the first two and ended up being made by someone else which didn’t do quite as well as the second which caused the whole thing to fizzle out. Which is a shame as they were all good, and now the licence is with Netflix it probably won’t hit the big screens for a fair old while

If historical accuracy isn’t your thing, but oily muscle bound men in their pants are then this will be well up your street. The sequel is a step down from the first, but both are stylish action romps. The only real downside is that the first film is probably what gave us the idea of the Visionary Zack Snyder, rather than the filmmaker Zack Snyder which is how we ended up with Justice League

Not your typical double bill here, from an ultra violent near future dystopian action film to one of the definitive neo-noir films of the 80s. Both are good fun, although only one has high octane martial arts based fight scenes. I’ll let you guess which one that is

This one didn’t have to start at 9 but boy do I like AEW; its had a rough few months thanks to some back stage shenanigans but its still a great wrestling show with some superb action in the ring. So if you’re a lapsed wrestling fan I thought I’d flag it as it as something for you to give a go, then as a reward you can watch a film that shows you what happens when someone becomes war

Fancy some spooky Christmas ghost stories? Well, here’s a couple of them for you; get some candles lit, wrap up tight on the sofa and get yourself spooked up

If you don’t want to get spooky, then you can get Dolly’ed instead; she’s a legend who should be in charge of things rather than the dicks we’re stuck with. So if we can’t have her as a world president, then we can at least enjoy her music whilst she’s still about

Speaking of people being dicks, time to exercise our “separate the art from the artist” muscles with the Father Ted Christmas Special. It probably is the best of all time when it comes to Christmas Specials, its just a shame that we have to accept that it was made by somebody who now tries to actively make the world a worse place for lots of people.

One from the period where werewolf transformations were apparently the coolest thing in the world; you had this, An American Werewolf In London and the opening of Thriller. This is probably at the bottom of that list, depending of your opinion of Michael Jackson that is, but is still a great film.

Time for more late night spookiness; the first is an anthology film of various spooky stories from the EC horror comics that is much better than the more famous Creepshow that followed in the early 80s. The second is a bit of a forgotten film, being that it was based on a book by Thomas Harris that didn’t have Hannibal Lector in it. And it isn’t that spooky, much more of a thriller so that opening sentence was a bit of a lie