The IT Crowd Night

Of course, every night is ‘IT Crowd’ night somewhere on the C4 network. Like ‘Father Ted’, it’s become one of those endlessly repeated classics that feels dangerous to even dip into for fear of finding yourself still transfixed a couple of hours later.

So what is Graham Linehan’s secret? No real clues from ‘The IT Crowd Manual’, the doc which, at 10pm, forms the centrepiece of this celebration. What he’s done seems simple: in both ‘Father Ted’ and ‘The IT Crowd’, the classic sitcom formula (a hermetically-sealed world, characters who never learn lessons) is equipped it with self-awareness and real warmth. Oh, and the perfomances are magnificent – Richard Ayoade, Chris O’Dowd, Katherine Parkinson and Matt Berry are all charmingly present and correct and all seem rightly proud to have been involved in such an adored show.

If you tune in an hour before the doc, you’ll get another chance to catch the hour-long special that closed the series earlier this year; from 11.05pm, we’ll be finding out which episodes the show’s fans and creator hold dearest. A Christmas Eve treat.