"The Santa Clause" is coming to town for a fourth installment of the Tim Allen franchise, now in the form of a six-episode television series, "The Santa Clauses," premiering Wednesday on Disney+. Following the much-derided "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause," one could call it something of a recovery, and though it's thin in characterization and obvious in the emotional beats — sort of the point in a work like this, anyway — it's a respectable, fairly amusing holiday entertainment for anyone who would like to start their Christmas now.
For those fresh to this epic, which first came down the cultural chimney in 1994 with "The Santa Clause" — the contractual "clause" being the pun the whole series is built on — Allen plays Scott Calvin, a distracted, divorced dad who startles Santa on his roof one Christmas Eve. Santa slips, falls and dissolves, leaving only the suit and a card instructing the finder to put it on; this turns him into the actual new Santa, fat, bearded, jolly, etc. (Frankly, this forced transformation always struck me as more curse than blessing. Also, "The Santa Clause" begins with the death of Santa, an oddity the new series — which, incidentally, has a quite frightening credit sequence — finds an opportunity to address.)
In the second film, Scott acquires a wife, Carol (Elizabeth Mitchell), another legal obligation. As the Disney+ series begins, they've got a couple of teenage kids (Elizabeth Allen-Dick as Sandra, Austin Kane as Cal), and Scott/Santa, who is as old as Tim Allen, is slowing down. He's losing weight no matter how much junk he eats, his magic has become unreliable and, realizing that the last 28 years have been more about him than his family, he's considering retirement.
