From The Traitors to Amandaland, here are our picks of the festive TV treats. Plus five new films to stream this Christmas.
While this isn’t going to be a vintage year for festive television, there’s still a lot to enjoy, with perhaps the best shows airing on New Year’s Day, which seems to have become the new battleground for TV’s big-hitters.
What, then, are the 12 shows of Christmas? The ones you really shouldn’t miss. And where and when are they airing? Allow us to guide you through the best on the box during the holiday season…
Bringing together some of the key players that made Giri/Haji so special – writer Joe Barton, director Julian Farino, Bafta-winning actor Will Sharpe – this reimagining of Peter Shaffer’s stage play has all the vigour and tragedy of Milos Forman’s 1984 Oscar winner, but a substantially less annoying lead in Sharpe (whose Mozart remains empathetic even at his most conceited) and a solid Salieri in Paul Bettany.
With the time to explore Mozart’s relationship with Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy, also excellent) and a super turn from Rory Kinnear as Emperor Joseph, it is an engrossing illustration of genius and mediocrity – and a lot of fun.
Finding Father Christmas
Channel 4, Christmas Eve, 7.30pm
A cast of sitcom pros join forces with a hit squad of public intellectuals (and, er, SAS: Who Dares Winsstalwart Jason Fox) in a story which has its Christmas cake and eats it when it comes to the existence of Father Christmas. Lenny Rush is 16-year-old Chris, whose unshakeable belief in St Nick dismays his struggling father (James Buckley): is it time for The Chat?
Cue a road trip with nods to classic spy thrillers, featuring cameos from Asim Chaudhry and Greg Davies, while roping in Fox, Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Stephen Fry and Hannah Fry (no relation) for some fun science bits en route to an encounter with a familiar face. Also, look out for fun caper Stuffed (December 23, BBC One, 9pm), which stars past Taskmaster favourites Morgana Robinson and Guz Khan as a married couple whose family holiday to Lapland goes wrong.
A first postwar Christmas, and the Darrowby Nativity play looms. But Helen is ill, Siegfried is preoccupied with Hilda the goat, Tristan is hunting for a tree and Mrs Hall is focused on winning a turkey in the Drovers’ darts competition. So it falls to James to organise it; could Mrs Pumphrey put aside her concerns about Tricki Woo and save the day? Put it this way, All Creatures won’t be spoiling anyone’s Christmas. For those still unsated, don’t miss Dogs Behaving Badly’s Graeme Hall touring the set and meeting the cast in All Creatures Great & Small: Behind the Scenes (Channel 5, Christmas Eve, 8pm). And for more vintage drama, there’s a two-part Call the Midwife special (BBC One, Christmas Day, 8.15pm and Boxing Day, 8.30pm).
A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Room in the Tower
BBC Two, Christmas Eve, 10pm
While best known for Mapp and Lucia, his exquisite series of social comedies, writer EF Benson also turned his hand to the occasional ghost story. Mark Gatiss (who else?) adapts one of Benson’s finest, a pre-war chiller with Tobias Menzies (an actor whose face comes with angst fitted as standard) as Roger Winstanley, a man troubled by a nightmare in which Joanna Lumley’s sinister matriarch invites him to spend the night in the titular bedchamber. Events conspire to make his dream come true – but what unseen terrors lurk in the tower, and with what consequences for poor Roger? Happy Christmas!
Making it a baker’s dozen of delightful adaptations for Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s instant childhood standards, The Scarecrows’ Wedding is also the 13th to feature the voice of Rob Brydon, alongside another quality cast. It is a tale of love in a cornfield, where – spoiler alert – companionship and care eventually win out over the brash, grand gesture. Sophie Okonedo narrates, Domhnall Gleeson and Jessie Buckley are the betrothed scarecrows Harry and Betty, and Brydon has a ball as new arrival Reginald, a straw-stuffed cad who uses Harry’s brief absence to woo the unsuspecting Betty.
The Great Christmas Bake Off 2025
Channel 4, Christmas Day, 8pm
While a Peep Show-themed Bake Off won’t be quite as good as Mark, Sophie, Super Hans, Dobby and Big Suze entering the famous tent themselves, watching David Mitchell, Olivia Colman, Matt King, Isy Suttie and Sophie Winkleman place their offerings on the gingham altar should still be a blast.
Expect plenty of straight-to-camera antics from Noel Fielding and Alison Hammond, plus Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood failing to prove they’re taking it all seriously. Over on BBC One, a Christmas special for close relative The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC One, Christmas Eve, 7.25pm) sees Sophie Willan taking over from Sara Pascoe as wrangler, consoler and wit-in-residence.
Amandaland Christmas Special
BBC One, Christmas Day, 9.15pm
Seeing Absolutely Fabulous stars Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders reunited – as Amanda’s (Lucy Punch) mother and aunt, respectively – is reason enough to tune in to the Christmas special of this beautifully excruciating sitcom of social mores and thwarted dreams, deservedly given the prime slot of the season; the ensuing tragicomedy when Samuel Anderson’s long-suffering Mal finds a family photo seals the deal.
In fact, BBC sitcoms are in fine fettle this year: watch out, too, for the Two Doors Down Christmas special, two years on from the last series (BBC One, Christmas Eve, 10pm) and a typically chaotic road trip for the Jessops in the splendid Here We Go (BBC One, New Year’s Eve, 8pm).
It may have been the longest farewell since Frank Sinatra’s, but Stranger Things has still wrapped more quickly than plenty of Dungeons & Dragonscampaigns; over the festive period, the gang will be saying goodbye for good. But to us, to each other, or to this mortal coil? Over three Boxing Day episodes and one final, final one to greet 2026, expect Demogorgons, a last hurrah for Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and plenty of nods to the 1980s escapism that inspired the whole thing; but not, Netflix will hope, the sort of tech issues that momentarily crashed the site for November’s first episode drops.
Judi Dench: Shakespeare, My Family and Me
Channel 4, December 27, 9pm
Dame Judi Dench re-engages with “the man who pays the rent” – no, not Kenneth Branagh, although he does sit down for some Tea with Judi Dench (Sky Arts, Monday 22 December, 9pm) in an onslaught of affectionate ribbing and name-dropping anecdotes – to discover whether William Shakespeare might have met her eight-times-great-grandfather, a member of the Danish royal court in the 17th century.
Expect heart-stopping ad hoc recitations of the Bard’s finest work, a celebration of the tight connection between Britain’s greatest writer and one of its greatest actors, and some fruity language, delivered with that mischievous laugh.
Wild London
BBC One, New Year’s Day, 6.30pm
As he nears his centenary year, Sir David Attenborough may not be retiring, but has unarguably earned the right to pick on-camera projects a little closer to home to go with his tireless work in narration. As a long-time resident of Richmond, Attenborough has much of the wildlife of London on his doorstep.
This documentary finds him celebrating the ways in which animals refuse to let humanity have its way entirely – whether deer invading gardens, snakes exploring Regent’s Canal, parakeets creating a squawking cacophony in parks or pigeons using the Tube to get around.
The Traitors
BBC One, New Year’s Day, 8pm
Days after her Strictlyswansong on the Christmas Day edition (BBC One, 5.30pm), Claudia Winkleman is back with the show that turned her from light-entertainment stalwart into national treasure. She’ll be grinning, grimacing and stirring the pot from behind that fringe as members of the public convene at a Scottish castle with up to £120,000 at stake and betrayal on the mind.
Will anyone “do an Alan Carr”? Which poor sap will follow Paloma Faith to an early grave? With the soaraway success of the celebrity edition still fresh in the memory, expect this to be one of the biggest shows of 2026, 364 more days notwithstanding.
The Night Manager
BBC One, New Year’s Day, 9.05pm
A decade after we last saw him (and his celebrated posterior), Tom Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine is back, albeit in the guise of “Alex Goodwin”. Working quietly for MI6, Pine is rapidly and unexpectedly drawn into the Colombian conflict via Diego Calva’s businessman, an associate of Pine’s nemesis from the first series, Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie).
Screenwriter David Farr has returned alongside Olivia Colman’s FCO bigwig and Alistair Petrie and Noah Jupe as Richard Roper’s banker and son, respectively. With all that in mind, surely it would be a waste not to bring back Laurie? After all, the psychopathic arms dealer was last seen being carted off to almost certain death…
WHAT’S YOUR CHOICE?. Let’s know in the comment section!
