It was with an element of scepticism that I sat down on Christmas day to turn on this year’s Christmas television offerings. It feels as though there has been a real drought of quality programming over the festive period ever since that golden era of Morecambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies. In recent times, the lure to make the Christmas billing has led otherwise successful shows into travesty. My Family’s attempt at a Christmas treat for one and all a few years back ended up as the final nail in the rapidly-depleting-quality-show’s coffin and many other shows have shared a similar fate.
It seems as though there is a overwhelming pressure to tweak a winning formula to give the audience a little extra at Christmas. This is a deluded conclusion for two reasons, one, if the tweaks improve the recipe then they should always be there and not just at Christmas, and two, to make it into the eligible-for-a-Christmas-special category the formula must be of some merit already so why change now? It’s like getting to the Olympics as a sprinter then deciding at the opening ceremony that you’re going to enter as a flyweight boxer instead.
The real television turkey this Christmas would have to be The Royle Family, after such a highly acclaimed episode last Christmas they had to go and balls it up with an joke-grabbing, slapstick-hungry romp for 2008, which is pretty much the opposite of everything The Royle Family has been before.
The Royle Family is famously set in real-time and takes place in the Royle’s worn living room, not a lot usually happens and much of the humour derives of the characters themselves. These quintessential aspects where thrown out the window this year as Craig Cash and Caroline Ahern produced a script more reminiscent of Chucklevision than one of Britain’s most successful sitcoms of all time. The idea of setting the majority of the show outside of the familiar Royle house was a mistake and to move away from real-time, it can only be assumed to be the result mulled wine and festive cheer going to some heads.
Producing a Christmas special, I can imagine, is a daunting task. Eric Morecambe famously described the pressure he felt he was under to make every laugh at Christmas and many believe this pressure was a major contributor to his poor health in his later years. To Eric’s credit though he always produced. It’s a pity that none of the renowned performers involved with The Royle Family were able to say: “Let’s stick to the formula that got us here” and with it saved the sitcom’s legacy.
What a shame we couldn’t have had another Extras Christmas special like last year which was probably one of the best pieces of Christmas television of my lifetime.
