#christmas-special

#christmas-special

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, I was pretty grumpy about this warmhearted Christmas special. I started full of hope! Wow, a bonus episode like we get every season. We had a big finale where we all cried, but let's tack on this little bit of Christmas cheer in February. But I was not prepared for the BETRAYAL I would face at the hands of the writers and showrunners. Dorothy? We're bringing back Dorothy?

A one-off Christmas special must have the following traditional ingredients to be entitled to the name. First and most vitally, it must have a grumpy character to soften over the hour. (And it must be an hour 75 minutes, tops. Anything longer and we're out of letting-the-children-stay-up-and-watch-as-a-treat territory and that disqualifies it as a contender. Yes it's a hangover from the days when television was broadcast at fixed points, instead of thrown into the digital ragbag to be pulled out at any time, but what is tradition if not such harkings-back? Come on).

When taxi drivers in London started shouting punchlines at him that's when Jonathan Watson knew that Two Doors Down, the BBC Scotland sitcom set in a Glasgow suburb, had gone from slow-burn to blazing. The yelling is appropriate in itself, since Watson's character, Colin, is congenitally unfiltered. Whether it's telling his neighbours they needn't worry about a spate of burglaries because nobody'll target your place

The Heroes & Villains Christmas Special from 1996, which features Del Boy and Rodney dressed as Batman and Robin, was once voted the UK's favorite festive show.