BOXING DAY
The ABC Murders (9pm, BBC One)
The Midnight Gang (7.30pm, BBC One)
The Morecambe & Wise Show: The Lost Tapes (7.50pm, BBC Two)
You (Netflix)
There was a lot of comment when the BBC announced it would be breaking with its tradition of 12 years and not broadcasting a festive Doctor Who on Christmas Day this year, setting the Tardis to materialise on New Year’s Day instead. But maybe it’s just an admission of the realpolitik of Christmas Day television: nobody has time to watch anything, so why bother attempting to put anything decent on?
Instead, the BBC has chosen Boxing Day for its most eye-catching splash this week, led by its new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot story, The ABC Murders, starring John Malkovich as the Belgian detective.
Written once more by Sarah Phelps, the three-part series (continuing Thursday and Friday) continues a more recent BBC tradition of offering a Christie for Christmas. Phelps set the ball rolling with 2016’s And Then There Were None, and intended to follow up last year with Ordeal By Innocence – although its transmission was eventually delayed until spring, after allegations against a cast member necessitated extensive reshooting.
Phelps has a taste for drawing the darkness out of Christie, which served the moody And Then There Were None well, but gets in the way here. The sombre mood works best in the opening episode. The ABC Murders is early-mid-period Poirot, but Phelps, making many changes, has opted to turn it into a late, wintry tale. Set in 1933, we find the famous detective an ageing and forgotten man, reduced to hosting murder-mystery weekends. His famous beard has turned white, and he dyes his whiskers, not particularly well.
He rouses himself when he begins receiving troubling letters from an admirer who signs off “ABC” and threatens impending murder, teasing Poirot with clues. Soon, a first killing has occurred. More will follow. The game is afoot, but Poirot faces a lonely chase. The comrades he used to know at Scotland Yard have gone, and the new breed, led by Inspector Crome (Rupert Grint), are resentful of this meddling foreigner.
Phelps sets all this against the insidious stirring of British fascism during the 1930s, and gets a sinister balance between picture-postcard period detailing, all tearooms and steam trains, and a grim, shabby underbelly. But she lards more portentous doom on the story than it can support. The tricks and twists of Christie’s plot mechanics become gummed up in gloom as Phelps labours to give Poirot an origin story mired in misery, and by the time the killer gives an overstuffed closing monologue, life has all but drained away. Still, Malkovich is excellent as a weary but watchful Poirot.
Another recent TV tradition is the inevitable appearance of a new David Walliams adaptation, invariably featuring Walliams himself. This year, it’s The Midnight Gang, following the nocturnal adventures of Tom (Oliver Zetterstrom) and the pals he makes on the children’s ward, after he winds up in hospital following a run-in with a cricket ball. More genuinely heartwarming is the return of the most blessed ghosts of Christmas past, with The Morecambe And Wise Show: The Lost Tapes – two rediscovered episodes of Eric and Ernie’s 1960s BBC series, unseen for five decades. These were thought forever lost, until a find in Sierra Leone. Miracles still happen.
Meanwhile, if all you really want for Boxing Day is a trashy but compelling psycho-thriller about a creepy stalker-murderer, Netflix has you covered with You. The 10-part series focuses on New York bookshop clerk Joe (Penn Badgley), who in turn fixates on a customer, Guinevere (Elizabeth Lail). Insinuating himself into her life, he winds up getting both more and less than he bargained for.
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