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Louisa Mellor Dec 12, 2016

We’ve taken a pen to the UK Christmas TV and radio schedules and circled the shows we’re looking forward to. Add yours below!

Amid the cosy repeats, big movies and inescapable cranberry-stuffed cookery shows on TV this month are a few original gems. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s Inside No. 9 festive special The Devil Of Christmas (Tuesday the 27th of December, 10pm, BBC Two) is top of our must-watch list. Hot on its heels is Yonderland’s family friendly Yonder Yuletide (Saturday the 24th of December, 6.30pm, Sky One). Another for families on Sky is the Christmas Day Jasper Fforde adaptation The Last Dragonslayer, while Channel 4 has the non-festive-but-essential-for-fans-of smart-sci-fi Humans series two finale (Sunday the 18th of December, 9pm).

See related James Cameron's Avatar: five years on Avatar review

Not to forget, of course, the Doctor Who Christmas Special, a brand-new series of Sherlock,...

Patrick Stewart graced the stage of the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal this week, and BroadwayWorld's Racheal McCaig was on hand to snap these exclusive photos Check them out below. Tony nominee Stewart, known to many as Star Trek's 'Captain Jean-Luc Picard', hasgraced the New York stage in A Life in the Theatre, Macbeth, The Caretaker, A Christmas Carol, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, The Tempest, A Christmas Carol and A Midsummer Night's Dream. After a start with the RSC, Stewart went on to appear in West End productions of Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Hamlet and manymore.

Alex Kingston’s River Song will join Paul McGann’s 8th Doctor for a new audio adventure with Big Finish. Also, Churchill is back...

Exciting news here – the rumoured return for River Song to Doctor Who has been confirmed, but not in the way you might expect. Alex Kingston’s character won’t be teaming up with Peter Capaldi on TV, but instead joining Paul McGann in the audio world of Big Finish.

River will join the eighth Doctor, as well as his companions Liv (Nicola Walker) and Helen (Hattie Morahan) for Doctor Who: Doom Coalition 2. Seeing as this Doctor hasn’t met River yet (David Tennant’s version, in Silence In The Library, was the first to meet her), River will have to help him without revealing too much about herself.

“The idea of River meeting previous Doctors was actually proposed by Steven Moffat,” producer David Richardson said.

Strictly Come Dancing topped the ratings last night (December 21), with an average of 11.5 million tuning in for the BBC One dancing competition's grand finale.

The earlier instalment of the show's first ever all-female final at 6.30pm received an audience share of 48.1%, while 45.8% returned at 8.40pm to see Abbey Clancy win the 2013 Glitterball Trophy.

Photo gallery - the 2013 Strictly final:Elsewhere on the channel, Atlantis pulled in 5.59m (24.6%) for the penultimate episode of the current series at 7.55pm.

Over on BBC Two, a repeat of Dad's Army brought in the channel's biggest ratings of the night with 1.75m (7.21%) tuning in at 8.20pm, while an episode of The Many Faces of, focusing on the late Ronnie Barker, was seen by 1.43m (7.37%) at 10pm.

ITV continued its season of Harry Potter films at 6.30pm, with the franchise's fifth instalment Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix bringing in 3.5m (14.8%). A further 516k (2.15%) tuned...

Channel 5 has unveiled official details of its Christmas and New Year schedule for 2013/14.

The new listings include transmission times for Lady Gaga & The Muppets Holiday Spectacular and the final instalments of Us series The Bible.

On Saturday, December 21, the channel will kick off its festive programming with the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, starring Richard E Grant and Patrick Stewart, at 8pm. The penultimate episode of the The Bible will air at 10pm.

Lady Gaga & The Muppets Holiday Spectacular airs on Sunday, December 22 at 5.25pm. The special will see Lady GaGa teaming up with The Muppets for special performances of songs from her latest album Artpop, as well as comedy sketches and a sneak peek at the forthcoming film Muppets Most Wanted.

The final episode of The Bible will air later that evening at 9pm.

Greatest Ever Christmas Movies is the highlight of the channel's Christmas Eve lineup. The almost-three-hour...

Doctor Who, 2012 Christmas Special: “The Snowmen”

Written by Steven Moffat

Directed by Saul Metzstein

Aired Christmas at 9pm (Et) on BBC America

Another Christmas, another Doctor Who special. Though the series has a dubious track record for specials, to say the least, it’s become somewhat comforting to be able to count on new Who each December 25th. The high water mark for Doctor Who Christmas specials remains the enchanting and whimsical “A Christmas Carol”, which saw the Doctor (Matt Smith) channeling Dickens in his own timey-wimey way to transform a bitter man, saving the Ponds in the process. Though this episode doesn’t live up to that standard, it is one of the better specials thanks to charismatic performances from Matt Smith and new Companion Jenna-Louise Coleman and the welcome return of Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax.

Showrunner Steven Moffat seems highly interested in revamping the series. Aside from the new Companion,...

Mixing Sci-Fi and Christmas often has mixed results. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it's forced. This fact is best represented by the Doctor Who Christmas specials, which have become an annual holiday tradition over the past eight years. Some have been awesome and some have been awful. How does this year's special The Snowmen rate? Let's look at the eight specials and see which were Christmas gifts for the fans and which were lumps of coal.

  The Feast of Steven (1965)

Way back in 1965, before Dr. Who Christmas specials became a regular thing, we had "The Feast of Steven", a classic series episode starring William Hartnell as the first Doctor. It was the seventh episode of a 12-part serial called "The Dalek Master Plan", which took up much of the fourth season of the classic show. Since the episode was due to air on Christmas Day, the producers decided that...

Broadway favorite Jackie Hoffman is currently starring in A Chanukah Charol, her holiday-themed, pseudo-autobiographical, one-woman show inspired by Patrick Stewart's A Christmas Carol. In this interview, Richard chats with Hoffman about about growing up on Long Island, her new gig on 'The New Normal,' how she got cast in Hairspray, and so much more. Click below to watch the full interview...

There are less than 2 weeks to go before Christmas and in recent times for a Doctor Who fan, one of the highlights is of course the Doctor Who Christmas Special. The bonus with this episode is that it is the first of the 50th anniversary year, which started on 23rd November so it’ll be interesting to see how that begins to impact on the show. I however, have managed to skip all the drama and indulgence of Christmas day, for my eyes have been privileged to witness the Christmas Special ahead of transmission at a preview screening in Cardiff.

Now I’m going to share some of this knowledge with you because I’m a nice guy, but I’m not going to spoil anything as everyone at the auditorium was told that if we do, Steven Moffat will turn up at our house with a Dalek and do unspeakable things to us.

There have been more than 400 film and TV adaptations so far, and counting, some brilliant, some memorably awful

The opening credits of BBC1's new three-part adaptation of Great Expectations (27-29 December) show a chrysalis cracking open to reveal a pair of trembling wings. A few seconds later this delicate emergence is replaced on screen by the escaped convict Magwitch (Ray Winstone) erupting from the stagnant waters of the Essex marshes. Covered in blood and slime, he is at once the monster of nightmares and a huge misshapen baby gasping its first breath.

In a single sequence, the director Brian Kirk gets to the heart of Dickens's novel as a fable of rebirth and renewal. Together with Sarah Phelps, the screenwriter, he has created a world in which characters are forever seeking to transform themselves – or each other. A spookily young Miss Havisham (Gillian Anderson), still cocooned in her tatty wedding dress,...

Time Out NY Lounge will present Jackie Hoffman's A Chanukah Charol, her new holiday-themed, pseudo-autobiographical, one-woman show inspired by Patrick Stewart's A Christmas Carol. Michael Schiralli will direct. Performances will be Sunday December 11th, Sunday December 18th, Monday January 2nd all at 730pm at New World Stages 340 West 50th Street between Eighth amp Ninth Avenues.BroadwayWorld was there for an open rehearsal for the show, and you can check out photos of Hoffman in action below...

Welcome to Back Stage's exclusive guide to this year's Screen Actors Guild Award nominees in television. Here, you will find a write-up of every nominee for SAG Awards in 2011. Be sure to look for continued coverage of the awards race at our awards blog, "Behind the Scenes." The 17th annual SAG Awards will be broadcast live Sunday, January 30, on TNT Outstanding Performance By A Male Actor In A Television Movie Or Miniseriesjohn Goodman"You Don't Know Jack""You Don't Know Jack" begins with Dr. Jack Kevorkian's fellow physician and longtime friend Neil Nicol moving into Kevorkian's garage after having been thrown out by his wife. In a very short appearance, Mrs. Nicol drives up, throws a garbage bag of forgotten personal effects at her husband, aggressively tells him off about it, and leaves after saying "Hello, Jack." It's all an attempt to make what is basically the leading...

I was rather skeptical when it was announced that Matt Smith was taking over the role of Doctor Who for the new incarnation's fifth season, but I was pleasantly surprised by his abilities from the very first episode. Each new Doctor faces a massive challenge stepping into a role that has been around since the early 1960s, and is moreover a cultural icon in a sense that nearly reinvents the term, but Smith had the further hurdle of following David Tennant, and he had reinvigorated the franchise to a degree that many might have thought impossible.

The first episode of the season is among the best efforts of the new foray into the Doctor Who series (yes, it's hard to make sense of this being the fifth season of Doctor Who), with the new Doctor meeting his new companion, but as a young girl. Not only a solid story on its own,...

Walt Disney Studios has released new images from a few of their upcoming movies:

Mars Needs Moms, the sci-fi animated comedy which features the voices of Seth Green, Dan Fogler, Elisabeth Harnois, Mindy Sterling, Kevin Cahoon, and Joan Cusack Gnomeo and Juliet, the Shakespeare retelling which features the music of Elton John and the voices of James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Jason Statham, Patrick Stewart, Julie Walters, and Ozzy Osbourne. African Cats, a documentary from the Disneynature line about two cat families in East Africa, directed by Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill

Hit the jump to check out the images and official synopses for each.

Mars Needs Moms

I’m not sure how this compares to the illustrations from Berkeley Breathed’s picture book, which serves as the basis of the film. But I really like the creature design. That kind of tactile detail still amazes me, in terms...

At 8, CBS has A Home For The Holidays with Faith Hill. TNT has the Patrick Stewart A Christmas Carol at 8. TCM has To Have and Have Not at 8, then The Big Sleep. Lifetime Movie Network has Comfort and Joy at 8, followed by Recipe For a Perfect Christmas. At 9, PBS has a new Great Performances. A&E has a new Dog The Bounty Hunter at 9, followed by a new Steven Seagal: Lawman. Also at 9: Showtime has a new Inside The NFL. At 10, NBC has a new Jay Leno Show. Tlc has the premiere of Accidental Fortune at 10. Bravo has a new Launch My Line at 10. At 10:30, TBS has a new Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns.

Check your local TV listings for more.

After the jump, the late night talk shows.

Continue reading What's On Tonight: Faith Hill, Great Performances, Meet The Browns

 

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