The Christmas TV Strategy Guide 2023 #12

Couple of great family treats for you here; Big Hero 6 is a really good Disney film with its heart firmly in the right place. What it really needs a bit more character, the designs are good but just feel a bit flat. In this post Spider-Verse world it makes you wander just how good it could look. And Dodger has Christopher Eccleston running around as Fagin which is as good as that sounds.

Film4 coming at you here with a load of lesser known family films, which isn’t to say that they aren’t good, they’re all crackers. The one I want to highlight is the Narnia film, these were all really good but suffered as they were always in the shadow of Harry Potter. But you should really give them a chance, they’re really good

Time for a stone cold classic! Is it a classic though? Does it hold up? Yeah, pretty much. The film has enough enough heart to keep you going despite it beginning to creak around the edges a little

If you watched that Parkinson show from a few days ago it had Michael Crawford on there and he talked about being cast for this film, so hows that for synergy? Its great and if you’ve ever watched Wall-E then you should probably watch it just because.

Another of those animated films that got swept away by other films, for this one it was The Lego Movie as that really dominated the year they came out. But Book of Life a still good though, really utilising the Day of The Dead art style to the fullest.

More Tremors! I think we can all agree that, by this point, the horse wasn’t any where near dead but he certainly wasn’t happy about the flogging it was getting. Its still fun though, the film still has that swagger and twinkle in its eye from the first film to keep you watching.

One of the best sequels ever? I mean, with the cast that they had for the first film it wouldn’t be too hard doing a great sequel but still, I don’t think anyone expected it to be quite this good. A belter.

“Phil”, I remember you saying, “I’d love it if I could spend a whole evening watching a load of shows about Frank Sinatra. What do you think the chances of that are?” Well, I’d say they’re really good based on the above screen shot. I mean, thats a lot of Sinatra for you and no mistake

The Christie-fest continues, this time with one of the more recent goes at Hercule Poirot. Thats a tough ask, considering the greatness that the ITV series achieved, but here you have Kenneth Branagh giving it all with a moustache to match. And its good! My heart still says the David Suchet Poirot is better but this is a fine stab at the subject matter

A brilliant series this, so well worth settling down to for a while. And its a Hogmanay Special so getting you ready for the upcoming New Year Celebrations which is handy

The last of the Mariachi series goes out with a ‘that was alright’ rather than a bang which is a bit of a shame. You can certainly feel the ambition here to tell a much larger story and dig into everything a bit more but it just doesn’t quite hold itself together to really make its mark

Speaking of excellent sequels, here’s another one. The best sequel? I mean, it probably is the right answer to that question, few films have taken the themes of the first and expanded them in quite the way this film did. But Toy Story 2? Is it a better sequel than that? Its certainly a tough one.

You thought I had forgotten about your Daily Clint didn’t you? And not only that its another amazing sequel continuing this theme for the day! I mean, its only real connection to A Fistful of Dollars is the Man with No Name so its not a full on sequel but thats just quibbling. Its probably just about better than the first film, and only loses out to The Good The Bad and The Ugly due to that being one of the greatest films ever made. Get it watched!