TVReview: It's curiously fitting that Celebrity Stars in their Eyes should be sponsored by Rennie, the indigestion remedy. After all, this plastic bauble of a programme is exactly the sort of mindless offering you end up watching after stuffing yourself silly with too many mince pies.
Lying in a state of quietly burping inertia, you somehow lack the will to press the off button. And so it comes to pass that you spend a comatose hour in the company of a small band of minor celebs, all of them bravely giving their best impressions of major celebs.
The whole thing felt tired and effortful, despite host Cat Deeley's increasingly desperate attempts to inject the flaccid old format with a bit of pizzazz. "These showbiz hedgehogs are ready to be flattened by the tyres of glamour," she shrilled hysterically at one point, summoning up a bizarre image of singing roadkill.
Probably the best moment of the whole sad farrago was the background footage of chummy yet obsequious celebrity butler Paul Burrell and his wife Maria wrapping bouquets in their flower shop. The interchange between the pair was strangely reminiscent of the repartee shared by Keith Harris and Orville, the fluorescent green duck.
"Don't wet the tissue," fussed Paul petulantly. "I 'ate that duck," you half-expected Maria to reply. Unfortunately, it all rather undermined Burrell's attempt at impersonating the barnstormingly virile Richard Gere, singing Razzle Dazzle, from the musical Chicago. It'll take more than a sparkly waistcoat and a few grey highlights, Paul, believe me.
Of course, the real allure of these programmes is in seeing the desperate D-listers make an utter pig's ear of their performances. Coronation Street actress Jayne Tunnicliffe came closest to that nadir. She swapped her Ramones T-shirt for a dowdy frock, white tights and a great deal of clumpy mascara to become a tunelessly lisping version of 1960s rock chick Marianne Faithfull.
But it was blokeish DJ Mark Radcliffe who won the audience's hearts (and votes) with his parodic evocation of Shane MacGowan, whiskey in hand, reeling and bawling drunkenly into the mike. He'd even coloured in two of his front teeth black for maximum authenticity. Sweet. It's that kind of attention to detail that marks out a winner. Or maybe the audience just couldn't resist an "under-the-table Irish rogue", as Cat simperingly dubbed him.
MORE HOWLINGLY CRUDE stereotypes ahoy as the cast of Little Britain took a trip overseas. The freak-scape of Little Britain has entered the collective cultural consciousness in an almost unparalleled way. Even little tykes barely out of nappies can parrot the show's catchphrases verbatim: "yeah but no but yeah but" and "I'm the only gay in the village".
The foreign transposition of the usual gang of grotesques was sure to delight their legions of fans. In the first episode of this two-parter, lantern-jawed Carol Beer found that "computer says no" even when she's a Spanish holiday rep. Dafydd - resplendently kitted out in rainbow-striped spandex tank top and matching briefs - remained absolutely assured that he was the only gay on the Greek island of Mykonos, despite the large number of buffed and oiled men disporting themselves on the beach.
And of course Bubbles de Vere was right at home, forcing her acres of rolling, leathery flesh into a misshapen Marilyn Monroe dress for the occasion. (Matt Lucas's luridly stretch-marked and distended stomach appeared in almost every scene - it's practically a character in its own right these days.) Throw in guest performances from Steve Coogan and Ronnie Corbett and you've got a hilarious seasonal line-up: a garrulous, garish but essentially harmless frolic.
Or do you? Little Britain is pantomime for postmodernists - all that cross-dressing and crude, slapstick, wilfully un-PC humour, delivered with a hidden smirk of knowing irony. The trouble is, as the show becomes ever more self-referential, the irony is increasingly hard to detect. When does portraying disabled people as a bunch of slobbering degenerates with discoloured teeth stop being funny and start looking like a cruel, hateful and complacent sneer? Maybe we've just become inured to it all through constant exposure, but there's a streak of real nastiness at the heart of Little Britain that's hard to swallow.
THERE WAS NO such artful dissembling in the Bachelors Walk Christmas special, just good old heart-warming gormlessness from Michael, Barry and Raymond, reunited for the festive season years after they left their shared existence at 49 Bachelors Walk behind them. You knew exactly what you were getting well before Ol' Blue Eyes started crooning: "Here's to the losers, bless 'em all" over the opening credits.
Yes, Frank, we know this trio of stumbling child-men are losers: Baz with his non-existent job and "commitment issues"; Michael retreating from a messy divorce to be tucked up by Mammy under his AC/DC duvet; and Raymond with his sad little beard and hopelessly cocked-up marriage plans.
The big problem with Bachelors Walk was that it couldn't quite make up its mind what it wanted to be. Veering chaotically between bouts of jocular high-jinks and moments of stark pathos, neither the comedy nor the drama were given enough room to breathe.
The irksome jazz soundtrack highlighted this difficulty: every time the action reached a pitch of emotional intensity, up started the tinkling tune again, like an endlessly joking partner who will never face up to a serious conversation.
But the sheer dumb manliness of the three thirtysomething losers carried the day. Poker playing, drinking, swearing, chewing with their mouths full, puking in the gutter - ah, doesn't it give you a sweet nostalgic reassurance that some things never change? Nodding in solemn agreement at Sting's cod- philosophy - "if you love someone, set them free" - it was impossible to dislike their brand of confused innocence. And, as befits the spirit of the season, it all turned out beautifully in the end.
Love blossomed for two of the three, thanks in part to the improbable intervention of an old flame in a sexy short Santa dress. No doubt we'll revisit the lads in festive seasons to come, by which time their lives will have crumbled into abject failure again. They'll still be belching and drinking great big pints though, that's for sure. Bless 'em all.
AS WELL AS feel-good romps such as Bachelors Walk, the other staple of the Christmas television schedule is the period drama. Our bottomless capacity for sunlit lawns, silk skirts with oversized bustles and men in tight breeches is usually filled by a Jane Austen adaptation, well equipped with sparkling repartee and delicious social comedy. It's the perfect post-prandial telly fare, and it won't scare the horses.
While it delivered generously on inflated bustles and intense conversations by candlelight, The Ruby in the Smoke reneged on this unspoken agreement to keep the Christmas period action as light and frothy as a walnut whip. This Victorian melodrama, adapted from a Philip Pullman novel, was a veritable gore-fest, the body count rising from the word go.
Cigar-smoking patriarch (check out the proliferous grey sideboards - that's how you spot a patriarch) Mr Higgs was the first to hit the deck, rendered apoplectic by a visit from Sally Lockhart, played with glorious aplomb by Billie Piper. Lockhart (or "Salleh Lock-aat" as the Cockney voiceover delighted in calling her) was the type of heroine inevitably described as "feisty" - that is, able to fire a pearl- handled pistol and to speak fluent Hindustani.
"Feisty" turns up regularly as lazy shorthand for any young woman who is dynamic and assertive (Rebecca West might just as easily have said, "I only know that people call me feisty when I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat"). But Piper was so much more than merely feisty in the role of the orphaned heroine. She lit up the screen with her presence: her corn-gold hair the only point of brightness in the smog-filled alleyways of Victorian London, where much of the action took place.
The plot of Ruby was devilishly twisty: lurking assassins, triad gangs, blackmailers and opium addicts were crammed - sometimes uncomfortably tightly - into the 90-minute action, as Sally tried to solve the mystery of her father's death in the South China Seas - and the whereabouts of the fatally beautiful Ruby of Agrapur.
Of course, the tale of the peach-cheeked and vulnerable young orphan would have been hopelessly lacking without an evil witch to prey on her. Julie Walters, as the ruthless dead-eyed Cockney crone, Mrs Holland, fitted the bill perfectly. Just one small element jarred. The fate of little Adelaide, Mrs Holland's unhappy child-sidekick, who went missing in the final moments of the melodrama, was left unresolved. Don't these programme-makers know that we want our period dramas tied up nice and tightly, like a fat Christmas parcel? No trailing loose ends, please. Just give us closure so we can curl up untroubled for a snooze on the sofa.
Hilary Fannin is on leave