Advent Calendar 2021 Day 5: A Christmas Celebration

Television has had more trouble with the god slot when Christmas Day falls on a Sunday than you'd think given the absolute lay-up. The religious symbolism and elements of the occasion have already been dealt with that morning by the worshipful church service across all significant channels, so what to do come prime-time when the family is all together and expecting entertainment? The last time the question needed to be asked before the ITC loosened the reins on the teatime religious necessity was 1988. ITV refocused it into a Save The Children charity appeal with the West End bred likes of Ball, Essex, Crawford, Paige, Nicholas and Langford singing their spirituality. Against that number of big hitters singing in the name of the lord BBC1 went for the big one, Cliff Richard in the year Mistletoe And Wine was number one. We join Cliff and Sally Magnusson shivering outside All Souls Church, where Richard blithely tells us he and his celebrity mates gather every year for festive commemorations and "we call ourseves the Arts Centre Group". Cliff really goes go full on trendy vicar in his presenting style, fortunately not much of it as the set-pieces include Thora Hird monologues, an Ian McCaskill light comedy weather forecast leading into his giving Cliff and Wendy Craig a snowstorm, Precious Wilson singing Up Where We Belong and a man who turned up in his various guises seemingly every year around this time, John Wells, this time in his Denis Thatcher variant. Cliff ends with an appropriately arm waving rendition of the hit, though he doesn't do the "have a great Christmas everybody!" ad lib during the pause from his Pops performances, so points off for that. We note the production credits include Adam Tandy, who went secular very quickly afterwards as his production/director credits include The Thick Of It (and indeed most of Iannucci's work), Inside No.9, Detectorists and Catastrophe.