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Holiday Telly | Red Dwarf Marathon

© Hunter Peters

The bells are jingling, Jack Frost is nipping at our noses and the holiday's are here again. After the hustle and bustle of shopping and cooking and exchanging alarming amounts of good will will our fellow men and women there's nothing nicer than settling down in front of a warm telly and taking in some holiday themed programming. Here are some of my favorites this holiday season:

Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire: Airing this month on the Fox Family Channel this BBC / Comic Relief co-production written by the likes of Richard Curtis and featuring all-star vocal talent (Jane Horrocks, Ardal O'Hanlon, Ricky Tomlinson, Steve Coogan and so on) tells the story of Rudolph's son Robbie who joins Santa at the North Pole to act as Christmas Eve navigator for the jolly one's sleigh. Reindeer team leader Blitzen, however, has other ideas. I was hoping Robbie would be an updated version of the classic Rankin/Bass holiday shows we all remember from our childhood like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town , and as far as the look and feel Robbie is indeed an updated, upgraded version of those well remembered specials. the stop-motion animation, reminiscent of Aardman's work on Wallace and Grommit and Chicken Run, is superb and the voice characterizations are very well done, the only problem with Robbie is that the script has no heart. Instead of a charming holiday fable with an English twist we get a clever confection that tickles the taste buds but has no depth, worse yet it has no heart. 

The forces behind Robbie decided, it seems, to go for a trendier demographic and robbed Robbie of classic status by adding a rave loving Santa, female reindeer with breasts, an evil Blitzen (who, voiced by Steve Coogan sounds uncannily like Jeremy Irons in one of his many villainous roles) and a stuck up strumpet Vixen. Witty? Yes, but wholly unnecessary given the prodigious talents of all involved, it's a shame they tried so hard to be hip and edgy when they could just have easily taken a bit more care in their craft and created an all time holiday classic. As it is Robbie the Reindeer is a fine and fun diversion but smaller children may be put off by some of the alterations made to the North Pole mythology.

Bernard and the Genie:: This 1991 tele-film stars Alan Cumming and Lenny Henry in a holiday comedy that combines Robbie the Reindeer like irreverence with a much warmer holiday spirit. Written by Blackadder, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Robbie the Reindeer scribe Richard