CRITIC’S CHOICE
Pick of the day
Call The Midwife (BBC1, 8pm)
Leaving a B-team behind, a party of nuns and medics decamp over Christmas to a South African mission hospital that is in danger of closing. While the midwives assist with difficult births, Reverend Tom (Jack Ashton) and Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter) have to overcome the obstacles to improving Hope Clinic’s water supply, and Patrick (Stephen McGann) tries to diagnose the illness afflicting Myra (Sinead Cusack), the cantankerous doctor who runs it.
Medical dilemmas, tests of persuasive skills and a bit of romance are again deftly mixed, but the extended drama has two puzzling aspects: it is neither very South African nor very Christmassy. A cake is the sole festive reference and, apart from a single scene reflecting apartheid — when a cop stops white and black women socialising — the setting could be anywhere else on the continent where missionaries operated.
John Dugdale
Here be dragons
The Last Dragonslayer (Sky 1, 5.45pm)
Jasper Fforde’s novel springs to life in this movie-length fantastical drama that creates a world in which magic has weakened and witches and wizards are reduced to using their remaining skills to do plumbing and rewiring jobs. Jennifer Strange (Ellise Chappell), a teenage “non-magical indentured orphan whose only talent is for tea and toast” discovers her destiny among a star-studded cast that includes Ricky Tomlinson, Pauline Collins and the Game of Thrones star John Bradley.
Men must endure
King Lear (BBC4, 7pm)
A Radio 4 broadcast on Boxing Day of Glenda Jackson’s Lear has been cancelled but the BBC still has this other unconventional version — “The two are unconnected,” said a BBC rep — for Christmas Day: Don Warrington gives a powerful performance as the king losing his mind in a recording of a Talawa Theatre production in which the majority of the cast (including all three of Lear’s daughters) are also black. Directed by Michael Buffong, the play is staged in the round on a bare, cockpit-like set.
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Punch, not presents
Victorian Bakers At Christmas (BBC2, 9.30pm)
When Victoria took the throne in 1837, Duncan, Harpreet and the two Johns learn, the modern focus on Christmas Day had yet to emerge: Britons ate giant “12 cakes” on Twelfth Night, the culmination of a long holiday when they also consumed punch and meat-filled mince pies. An absorbing programme explains that the Victorian Christmas subsequently evolved in response to social changes (the industrial revolution, the expansion of the railways) and German and American influences, with the introduction of better cake icing, mass-produced biscuits, Santa Claus and Christmas puddings.
Humbug humour
Mrs Brown’s Boys (BBC1, 10.30pm)
Agnes kicks off this edition by declaring that there will be no Christmas tree this year, but Brendan O’Carroll’s great skill as a writer is to treat his words as a skeleton over which his show hangs, and to jettison them immediately a laugh emerges elsewhere. So when Mrs Brown’s grandson makes a mistake, the blooper stays in — much to the delight of the studio audience.
John Dugdale and Helen Stewart
Radio pick of the day
Sunday Feature (R3, 6.45pm)
Sir David Attenborough plays some of the world music he has amassed since the 1950s in Borneo, Sierra Leone, Java, Aboriginal Australia and elsewhere. Earlier, in Private Passions (R3, 12 noon), Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, plays music from his local church in Uganda, York Minster’s choir singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Elgar’s cello concerto with Jacqueline du Pré. HM The Queen (R4 and R5 Live, 3pm) delivers her traditional annual message to Britain and the Commonwealth.
Paul Donovan
FILM CHOICE
Frozen (2013)
(BBC1, 3.10pm)
With each television screening, this hugely successful Disney cartoon will reach children who have not yet seen it, and there is no reason to think new generations will be immune to its spell. The film’s wintry fairy tale (inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen) is well told, and it shrewdly focuses on the relationship between two sisters, as opposed to a lovey-dovey romance. Co-dirs: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
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The Jungle Book (2016)
(Sky Cinema Premiere, 1.30pm/8pm)
Disney’s remake of its 1967 cartoon replaces simple animation with a realistic blend of live action and CGI. The story’s comic aspects do not always thrive in this new ecosystem — despite vocals from Bill Murray as Baloo and Christopher Walken as King Louie — but the flora and fauna look wonderful. Dir: Jon Favreau
Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
(C5, 10.30pm)
Matthew McConaughey won an Oscar for his committed performance in this slightly fictionalised account of Ron Woodroof, a Texan good ol’ boy who was diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s and found crafty ways to defeat bureaucracy barring vital drugs. Dir: Jean-Marc Vallée
Great Expectations (2012)
(BBC2, 11.15pm)
Mike Newell’s film of the Dickens perennial is a plain but serviceable version that allows a new batch of actors to have a go at those familiar roles. Jeremy Irvine’s Pip meets a mangy, sombre Magwitch (Ralph Fiennes) and a quite young-looking Miss Havisham (Helena Bonham Carter).
Edward Porter