Christmas

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. They were, perhaps, the best dog food adverts ever made, distinguished by the understated scripts Freud insisted on writing himself and the wonderfully hangdog facial expressions of both actors – man and dog. But Freud is worth remembering for much more than dog food, as this ‘Time Shift’ doc makes clear. Some of it is just funny, such as getting drunk on cider at his experimental school in the 1930s. And some is very serious indeed, such as, for instance, when he visited the shit-smeared cells of Republican prisoners on dirty protest in the H blocks while he was the Liberal Party’s spokesman on Northern Ireland. Along the way Freud cooked, gambled, raced horses, opened a restaurant in Soho, served as a liaison officer at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and drank quite a lot. It was by any standards a full life, one given added lustre in its final third by his delightful mastery of Radio 4’s ‘Just a Minute’. Interesting, civilised and funny – plus one of the best poo jokes you will hear this year. Feature continues