There was a time, children, when you got all your Christmas crying done during Noel’s Christmas Presents. Noel Edmonds would give the perfect presents to lovely, deserving people who had been nominated by others for their loveliness and deservingness. Children who helped care for disabled siblings or relatives would get smashing bikes or great toys, but always with the message that this was just a token of how much their kindness was appreciated. Adults would get holidays or office equipment or something equally tangible for the charity they were running or the cause dearest to their hearts. Edmonds walked the line between mawkish and moving beautifully and you could count on it every year as the perfect purge for your high festive emotions.
Now you have to take what you can – via sad but uplifting seasonal stories on morning television, celebrity charity specials, the one Christmas advert that works. And then there’s The Dog House at Christmas. The Dog House is four seasons old and has a shiny coat and adorable personality. It follows the staff and canine residents at Woodgreen animal shelter in Godmanchester, which sounds like a place Victoria Wood made up but is in fact real and found in Cambridgeshire, as the former try to find homes for the latter. “Forever homes”, if you can cope with the parlance without being sick in your mouth, but I cannot so “homes” it shall be.
There was a previous Christmas special in 2021 but I guess everyone needed time to recover. Now they are back and ready to match dogs to potential owners and bring light and a life worth living back to all.
First up is the Scope family, who are looking for a dog that can be loved by them all but can primarily serve as a companion to five-year-old Elena, habitually sidelined by her eight-year-old twin brothers. If your immediate reaction is to wonder why the parents don’t give the brothers a talking to, you’re probably not the intended audience for The Dog House, let alone The Dog House at Christmas. I know, because I am one of them.
The staff first show them Jeff. The boys love the rambunctious six-month-old bundle. Elena is terrified. Sorry, Jeff. It’s not you, it’s her. But it’s not her either. Some things just aren’t meant to be.
The next candidate is two-year-old shih-tzu, Lexi, a much gentler proposition. It is pretty much love at first sight. “Daddy, I want her,” whispers Elena. “She has a very long neck.” Off home they all go.
Next up is ebullient 62-year-old nurse and empty-nester Lynne, eager for company and a rare applicant who is happy to take on a pair of dogs. She bonds instantly and clearly – OK, OK – for ever with Jock and Macy. I’m not sure how they are supposed to manage while she is on shift all day, but I’m going to assume all arrangements have been investigated and found satisfactory by the staff and that the programme simply does not want to get bogged down in detail. The charity was founded nearly 100 years ago by a Miss Louisa Snow, to take some of the stray and injured animals she saw roaming the streets after the war, and it gives the general sense of still being infused with the indomitable spirit this suggests.
Finally, we have the kicker. Darren and his daughter Jazz come looking for a dog to keep him company. His wife – Jazz’s mother – took her own life a year ago, during a severe, seemingly menopause-induced depression. They had been together 32 years. “She was a fantastic woman … the love of my life,” he says simply. “I’ve lost part of myself. That’s how I feel.”
He and Jazz are introduced to nervous stray Crackers, who shows no sign of nerves with them. She is the one, they all agree, as Crackers nearly wags her tail off. Off home they go, too.
That’s it, really. Dogs meet people. People meet dogs. Dogs go home with people. But the life of each becomes a little bit better as a result and, in some infinitesimal way, the entire world a bit less bleak. It still isn’t as good as Noel’s Christmas Presents but nor will there be a dry eye in the house. Godspeed you to your forever homes, you daft, heartbreaking mutts! Godspeed, and merry Christmas!
• The Dog House at Christmas is on Channel 4.
