CHRISTMAS TELLY:CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT getting the family together, enjoying each other's company, laughing together, eating together, reminiscing together, and then convening to the sitting room where everybody shuts up for a few hours so that some telly can be watched.
Being the person in RTÉ or the BBC who is in charge of the Christmas schedule must be a tough gig. This is the one and only time of the year that the entire family - three generations at least - will sit in front of the one station for the entire night. The choice has to suit a range of tastes, but not be so challenging that an audience, now little more than stuffed humans soaked in alcohol, can't keep up.
The movie has to be new enough that it's a "network television premiere", a term which has about as much currency now as those products proclaiming "As seen on TV". Because by the time the big Christmas movie is aired, it has probably been seen either in the cinema, on DVD, by download or on the countless showings on Sky Movies.
They know that when they announce a "network television premiere" now, half their viewers are moaning, "Sure I saw this on my iPod before it even got to the cinema . . ."
There are some things, you will never see on RTÉ on Christmas night. The whole family is unlikely to settle in for a David Lynch movie, say. And the movie must not be too shocking. They wouldn't be throwing on the likes of Last Tango in Paris. Speed, which RTÉ aired on Christmas night in 1997, is pretty close to the perfect movie. There's no sex, and only cartoon violence, but there is the occasional profanity. You can see, then, why Michael Collinswould be probably be RTÉ's choice every year.
There are others that shouldn't have made it onto the Christmas night schedule. In 1998, for example, ITV showed how not to do it by scheduling The Godfather Part IIat 10.30pm. It's a classic movie, obviously, but when you throw a few ad breaks in it stretches out to four hours. It didn't end until 2.20am on St Stephen's morning. Although few will have stayed up long enough to confirm this.
As for the home-produced stuff, every station needs a staple. The BBC now has its Doctor WhoChristmas specials, which have acted as the successors to the previously long-running Only Fools and Horsesannual special. In recent years, RTÉ has hit the jackpot with Killinaskully, a programme which was one of last year's most popular programmes, even if at least three of those were exasperated, disbelieving TV critics who were beginning to feel like the only humans left in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The proliferation of TV stations means that some have veered away from the traditional big movie. This year, TV3 is showing Ghost, a 20-year-old blockbuster, and TG4 is showing High Noon. Aside from a Royle Family Christmas special early in the night, Channel 6, with an episode of Friends, possibly has the least seasonal schedule in television history.
The other staples are the soaps, which attract huge audiences on the night and none of which do so by indulging in the festive spirit. In 1986, the BBC got historically high ratings thanks to a thoroughly miserable episode of EastEnders, and since then each soap must fulfil a rigid quota of divorces, murders, arguments, affairs and corner shops revelations within an hour.
If you fancy taking your Christmas watching into the digital age, you could always gather the family around the computer screen and watch an RTÉ Christmas special from 1970 which some dedicated soul has posted on YouTube. Hosted by Patricia Cahill and John McNally, it reminds you of how Christmas television used to be: snow-frosted sets, presenters decorating trees in pretend houses, surreal comedy inserts, someone bursting into a carol every 45 seconds. It makes you nostalgic for a time when television was so much simpler. And thankful we've left all that behind.
