Dr Who
Best Christmas TV 2009
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By Time Out editors
Updated: Wed Dec 16 2009 -
When you're not out enjoying the many delights of London over the festive period, you'll no doubt want to spend some quality time in front of the telly. Here are our picks of the best TV for Christmas 2009 – including kids' shows, films, comedy and 'Doctor Who'
Dec 17-23 | Xmas Eve | Xmas Day | Boxing Day | Dec 27-30
December 17-23
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Gone Baby Gone
Thu Dec 17, 8.05-10pm, Sky Movies Indie
With their tribal loyalties and unkillable grudges, the cops, hoods, and hard-eyed women of South Boston have become the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy at the movies... Read more
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A Child's Christmases in Wales
Thu Dec 17, 10-11pm, BBC4
Never mind ‘My Family’: this one-off captures the ups and downs of family Christmases with humour, intelligence and charm. Loosely inspired by Dylan Thomas’s poetic recollections of the festivities of his youth, it’s theatrical in feel but none the worse for it. Read more
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The Long Day Closes
Film
Thu Dec 17, 2.05-3.50am, Film4
Like Distant Voices, Still Lives, Davies' final autobiographical film rings wholly true, due to the richness and the rightness of the allusions he makes through sets, costumes, dialogue, music, radio and cinema itself. Read more
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Heston's Christmas Feast
Fri Dec 18, 9-10.05pm, C4
Heston’s goal is to create ‘the most extraordinary Christmas feast ever eaten.’ As with many Christmas cookery shows, a sense of déjà vu is unavoidable but at least with the saviour of Little Chef you’re guaranteed something jaw-dropping. Read more
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Donkey Punch
Fri Dec 18, 11.40pm-1.35am, C4
This bloody, waterborne horror doesn’t exactly scream with originality, but the filmmakers make up for it with a strong atmosphere of sex and violence. Read more
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Dances with Wolves
Film
Sat Dec 19, 4.30-7.20pm, BBC2
At three hours long, and with a largely Indian cast delivering (subtitled) Lakota dialogue, Costner's debut as a director is a genuinely, impressively epic Western. Read more
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Take That: The Circus Live
Sat Dec 18, 6.30-8pm, ITV1
The country's most beloved man band really stepped up their game with this year's Circus Tour. The band's jaw-dropping stage show includes a mechanical elephant, trapeze artists, acrobats and Take That harmonising while playing instruments. Read more
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The First Movie
Sat Dec 19, 8.25-10pm, More4
A refreshing, unusual take on the war-zone documentary, Mark Cousins’ personal film deliberately cuts out all geographical context and focuses on the children of the village of Goptapa... Read more
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Breaking Bad
Sat Dec 19, 11pm-1am, Five USA
It’s back to magnificent form for this drama about a downtrodden chemistry teacher with terminal cancer, who starts manufacturing crystal meth to provide for his family. This double bill picks up where we left off, with Walt and Jesse selling meth to Tuco in a car scrapping yard. Read more
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Russian Ark
Film
Sat Dec 19, 11.30pm-1am, BBC4
Despite the almost inevitable longueurs, not to mention mumbling melancholy offscreen comments that sometimes verge on the self-parodic, this is certainly a superior Sokurov feature, and not only for its extraordinarily virtuoso mise-en-scène... Read more
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Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
Dec 20, 11.30am, BBC2
A treat from Hollywood's most unlikely Midas: an original fairy tale, from a story and characters created by Tim Burton, adapted by Michael McDowell and told in stop-motion animation with a lively score by Danny Elfman. Read more
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Gangs of New York
Film
Mon Dec 21, 10.45pm-1.55am, Film4
Cinephiles will find echoes of 'The Wild Bunch', 'Heaven's Gate', Leone and Visconti in the mix, yet Scorsese has modulated the nervy syntax to fashion what is meant to be his most accessible movie - the percussive rock score and wan romantic clinches between DiCaprio and Diaz are firmly in the blockbuster idiom. Read more
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10 Minute Tales: Deep and Crisp and Even
Mon Dec 21, 10-10.10pm, Sky1
The omens are promising for series of stand-alone, silent, festive shorts, with each boasting genuine talent (Bill Nighy, Peter Capaldi, um, Ross Kemp) and behind (Neil Gaiman, Roy Williams, Tony Grisoni). Read more
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Merry Christmas
Tue Dec 22, 1.25-3.15pm, BBC2
The truce that broke out across the western front over Christmas 1914 provides such obviously uplifting subject matter for a seasonal movie it’s a wonder no one’s done it before. Read more
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Oliver Postgate: A Life in Small Films
Tue Dec 22, 8-9pm, BBC4
Surely there is no word in the English language that more immediately and effectively evokes the magic of childhood than ‘Bagpuss’ – but why? Was it narrator (and co-creator) Oliver Postgate’s warm and welcoming tones? Or the sheer otherness of the worlds he created? Read more
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Clement Freud: In His Own Words
Tue Dec 22, 9-10pm, BBC4
If, like this reviewer, you are over 40, then your main memory of the now sadly deceased Freud is probably his participation in the Chunky dog food adverts with ‘Henry’ in the 1960s and 1970s... Read more
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Charlie Brooker's Screen-wipe Review of 2009
Tue Dec 22, 10.30-11.30pm, BBC4
What with the addition of 'Newswipe' and 'Gameswipe' to Charlie Brooker's 'wipe' stable, 2009 feels like the year that Wet Wipes are the only wipe he didn't produce... Read more
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Imagine... Scrabble
Tue Dec 22, 10.45-11.40pm, BBC1
Alan Yentob enters the peculiar world of competitive Scrabble, where words are mere abstractions and speaking English as a second language might even be an advantage. Read more
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Art of Russia
Art
Wed Dec 23, 9-10pm, BBC4
A fascinating conclusion to the three-part documentary series, this sees Andrew Graham-Dixon exploring the impact of communism on Russian art. Beginning with the post-revolution work of the constructivists, he visits an archive where he's astonished to discover famous Rodchenko posters slung casually into a drawer. His excitement is humorously contrasted with the 'inscrutable' nature of the nonplussed archivist, but, true to form, the presenter refuses to be subdued. Next stop is the Moscow... Read more
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Ballet Boyz: The Rite of Spring
Wed Dec 23, 10-11pm, BBC3
Two choreographers assemble an elite ballet team from a ragtag of pole dancers, street dancers – no previews available, but hopefully it's a bit like the beginning to a 1980s Hollywood sports film. Read more
Dec 17-23 | Xmas Eve | Xmas Day | Boxing Day | Dec 27-30
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