The Christmas TV Strategy Guide 2024 #01

Here it is, the perennial background channel for whenever you need it this Christmas; all festive films all the time and are any good? Probably not, although starting off with a film with Daniel Stern and Matt Frewer in the cast must be a solid opener. Will it be good though? I’ll let you find out

Bit of an increase in quality here, switching over from lets see whats on the Christmas Channel, Laughing All The Way to one of the definitive films of the Golden Era of Hollywood. Still a banger and no mistake

Speaking of bangers, lets cross over now to World War II as a bunch of lads try to escape some Nazis. Do they succeed? What do you think? Yes its a bit depressing but its also a holiday TV tradition so best to settle in and get ready to whistle that theme tune for a good week or so

There’s very few musicals as iconic as this one; big old technicolour set piece with loas of lads and diamonds? Thats the one!

Yes mate! Bail Rathbone didn’t exactly deliver an exact representation of the classic Sherlock Holmes character but the majority of what he did is what people think when they think of Holmes even to this day. What we have here is from the Universal tranche of films, with the earlier Fox releases arguably being the best. The Universal films saw Holmes moved from Victorian to World War II era London, which only really updates the car he’s driven around in and the people he’s chasing after. Whilst not the best its still an enjoyable B Movie romp. And why not follow it up with some random Hitchcock TV, it’ll be a hoot

Oh boy, here’s some nostalgia for any of you fellow 80s kids out there. Just look at some of those names: Black Box! Chas and Dave! Keith Harris and Orville! A special commendation should go out to the lads having to check these specials for any appearance from any Certain Characters of the Era because, as usual, we can’t have anything nice forever

Listen, right, we can have a chat about the relative merits of Brosnan’s Bond Tenure all day long; if you twisted my arm I’d say arguably there’s more misses than hits but the one that did hit is one of the best ever so surely that overshadows the others? Point is, Die Another Day has one of the best Bond Themes and I will die on that hill as many times as needs be until everyone else agrees with me

A nice double film here, part of the run of insane form that Eddie Murphy was in during this period; you have his stand up, then his awesome run on Saturday Night Live, then the one-two punch of these films. In 3 years! Then he follows it up with Beverley Hills Cop! Thats a crazy run and no mistake.

‘Technically accomplished’ is a bit of a back handed compliment there. Fairly sure this film got in ahead of the Legacy Sequel trend a good 3 or 4 years ahead of everyone else? Its pretty good, loses a bit of a daftness of the original Universal Soldier which is replaced by a load more grit which isn’t great. Essentially if the original UniSol was Fortnite then this one is Call of Duty Warzone so take that as you will

A good film to end the night on, despite this Monty Python film being somewhat of a regression as it loses the story structure of Life of Brian and is more of a loose anthology of sketches. Still good thought! Also, wanted to highlight Dark Side of The Ring as all of these used to be on the All4 app till they all dropped off a while ago. And here they are back! They’re great little documentaries about wrestlers or events like The Plane Ride from Hell. No clue which one this is but they’re all worth a watch