Family dramas, tired old jokes, attempts at sentimentality. Yep, we all know when Christmas has arrived at home, but what’s it like on the telly? Well... there are lashings of that stuff too when it comes to the festive TV episode – one of the most difficult challenges going for writers and producers, despite the prospect of a large, almost literally captive audience. Yet some Christmas specials deliver with all the panache of Santa making a grand entrance down the chimney and kicking the coals into the centre of the living room.
So here we go with a rundown of our favourites. Laughs, we’ve got those. Tears, yes, those too. We’ve taken a few liberties: the episode of The Wire featured below went out on 10 December in America, for example, and who knows when we saw it on that ghost of Christmas past, the boxset. But it has carols and that’s good enough for us...
