CRITIC’S CHOICE
Pick of the day
Grantchester (ITV, 9pm)
It would be fun, wouldn’t it, if just for once a heavily pregnant woman in a drama went inconveniently overdue and was to be found at the beginning the new series still huffing about heartburn, but it would take a brave writer of a church-set Christmas episode to dispense with a Nativity scene. So it is that Amanda (Morven Christie) is pregnant — although still dainty enough to put up decorations — but her one true love, the vicar and jazz fan Sidney Chambers (James Norton), can’t see a future for them. “Take Joseph,” advises Robson Green’s Geordie (a DI, not a theologian): “Mary’s kid wasn’t his … it worked out for them.”
As usual, it is the drunken scenes of bonding between Geordie and Sidney that provide the heart of a thoroughly pleasant murder mystery. Tonight, a man is found dead with two wedding rings in his mouth on the very morning he is due to marry.
Helen Stewart
Finnish combover
Winter — Earth’s Seasonal Secrets (BBC1, 1.15pm)
The Irish actor Andrew Scott, soon to return in Sherlock, narrates this dreamy nature documentary, a fact that can be somewhat unnerving as the voice of Moriarty lulls viewers into a reverie with sweet stories of animal survival against the odds. Take the Finnish least weasel, which protects itself from temperatures of -45C by catching voles to eat then plucking their skin bare and weaving the hair into a nest to sleep in. “Bed and breakfast in one convenient package” purrs Scott.
Too cute to thrill
We’re Going On A Bear Hunt (C4, 7.30pm)
This adaptation of Michael Rosen’s children’s book captures the magic of Helen Oxenbury’s illustrations but fails to do justice to the words. The things that make the story enchanting — the rhythm, the sound effects, the repetition — are diluted and, while the tale has always been a kind of quest where children face fears and overcome obstacles, the expanded plot about grief makes such heavy weather of the subtext that a swirling whirling snowstorm is nothing in comparison. Worse, the bear is mishandled, any thrill of fear replaced by defanged sentiment.
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Change of habit
Alan Bennett’s Diaries (BBC2, 8pm)
The director Adam Low has worked with Alan Bennett before, on a film in which the author and Nicholas Hytner discussed the production of Bennett’s play The Habit of Art. The project must have met with sufficient approval for Low to be invited to this series of interviews with the great man in his home and to follow him on a trip to New York to accept an award. Bennett is an intriguing character, someone who thinks of himself as an observer yet who has spent the majority of his life being recognised.
Arabian night
Birds Of A Feather (ITV, 8pm)
Nobody watches Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran’s sitcom expecting cutting-edge hilarity, but this episode still feels like a warning about the future of comedy. Linda Robson’s Tracey, Pauline Quirke’s Sharon and Lesley Joseph’s Dorien travel to Morocco, leading them into a caper involving stolen artefacts, Martin Kemp and innuendos that may cause a reflex snort of laughter. What really matters, though, is that it is nearly 2017 and there’s a scene that uses a niqab as a comic disguise.
Helen Stewart and Victoria Segal
Radio pick of the day
A Festival Of Nine Lessons And Carols (R4, 3pm)
Live from King’s College, Cambridge, as it has been every year since 1928 (excepting only 1930), this is the quintessential Christmas programme, never to be missed. Later, Frederick Forsyth’s haunting story The Shepherd, about a young pilot in the cockpit of his plane over the North Sea, is adapted for Between The Ears (R3, 9.15pm); and Midnight Mass (R4, 11.30pm) comes live from Westminster Abbey on the 950th anniversary of the coronation of William the Conqueror.
Paul Donovan
FILM CHOICE
Penguins Of Madagascar (2014)
(BBC1, 4.50pm)
The flightless birds who messed about on the sidelines of the three Madagascar cartoons soar to new comic heights in this spin-off, borne aloft by elaborate slapstick and daft verbal jokes. John Malkovich’s gift for disdainful enunciation is put to good use in his voicing of a peculiar villain. Co-dirs: Eric Darnell, Simon J Smith
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The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
(C4, 5.50pm)
Channel 4 today offers us two extreme reworkings of the Dickens morality tale. Scrooged (2.45pm), featuring Bill Murray as a grouchy television executive, has its moments, but it cannot compete with this adaptation from Kermit and friends. Guest-starring Michael Caine as Scrooge, it delivers plenty of Muppet mayhem yet still allows the story’s magnificent pathos to work its effects. Dir: Brian Henson
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
(BBC2, 12.20am)
This Elvis vehicle is essentially just another of his inane musicals, but here the show is hard to dislike. Vegas is a perfect gaudy backdrop; the King seems to enjoy himself; and in Ann-Margret he has a co-star who rivals him as a song-and-dance dynamo. Dir: George Sidney
Rear Window (1954)
(Film 4, 12.55am)
Starring James Stewart as a photographer who spies suspicious goings-on in the apartment block opposite his, this wily Hitchcock thriller shows the director’s knack for toying with viewers’ instincts. Can we disapprove of the hero’s nosiness while watching along with him?
Edward Porter