1802: Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to one and all! I hope you had a thoroughly pleasant and restful day — or, depending on your timezone, are still currently having a thoroughly pleasant and restful day. Andie and I spend ours over at her mother’s house, and it was a fairly traditional family Christmas all round — get up late (I must confess that this wouldn’t fly in my parents’ house, since my mother insists we all get up early to open presents; out of all of us, she has always been the one who has actually managed to hold on to Christmas enthusiasm), eat food, eat more food, open presents, sit back and ponder how much food has been eaten, maybe pick at a bit more food (particularly that which has been acquired as a present, such as those boxes of chocolates and Danish butter cookies that you only ever seem to see around Christmas time) and then gradually sink in to perusing your presents in more detail, perhaps accompanied by some appropriately rubbish Christmas TV.

Neither Andie nor I watch much TV generally these days: we typically watch the things we want to watch at our own pace via on-demand services. As such, it was actually a semi-interesting experience to catch some real-time TV, and watch some of the sort of things that we’d probably never choose to watch deliberately.

First up was Professor Branestawm, a name which I recognised from my youth, but which I couldn’t remember a whole lot about. If I remember correctly, the character was the star of a series of children’s books, but the actual content of them hadn’t stuck in my mind all that much. As I watched the new BBC adaptation, starring Harry Hill in the title role (and incorporating numerous other respected names like Charlie Higson, David Mitchell and numerous others), it came back to me, though; they were some enjoyably silly and distinctively British stories that retain their “children’s story” feel even to this day (though inevitably, someone had to go and find the “social outsider” angle of the wacky professor problematic, joyless arses that modern entertainment journos are). The adaptation itself was a lot of fun: the cast was excellent, Hill played the title role with aplomb, and the whole thing didn’t outstay its welcome, in fact arguably being over a little too quickly if anything.

Next up, today we caught an animated movie called Gnomeo and Juliet. It will probably not surprise you to discover that this was a retelling of Romeo and Juliet through the eyes of some garden gnomes, with the dispute between the Montagues and Capulets replaced by a bitter feud between the red- and blue-hatted gnomes in the gardens of two neighbours who disliked one another very much. It was an enjoyably silly affair with some nice animation and an excellent voice cast — including the masterful casting of Jason Statham as Tybalt — though I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t have the guts to go through with the full tragic ending. At least it was lampshaded by a pleasingly witty statue of William Shakespeare, voiced wonderfully by the inimitable Patrick Stewart. And I guess you can’t really have what is clearly a children’s film ending with suicide. Probably a bad message to send to the young ‘uns and all that.

Finally, we watched the Doctor Who Christmas special today. I haven’t watched Doctor Who for ages; I got into it a little bit in the Christopher Ecclestone/David Tennant years and watched a few of the Matt Smith episodes — primarily for the vision of loveliness that is Karen Gillan, I must admit — but I haven’t been following it closely for several years now, and haven’t seen any of the Peter Capaldi episodes to date.

The episode in question was an enjoyable affair, albeit somewhat convoluted and totally ripping off Inception with the whole “dream within a dream” deal. It stood quite nicely by itself — I didn’t feel like I needed to know much of the background about the characters, so even not having seen any Capaldi episodes I was able to feel like I could enjoy it on its own merits. I’m not sure it particularly made me want to jump on board the Doctor Who hype train — Capaldi’s script in particular was a bit flat and uninteresting, with little of the Doctor’s usual personality about it, and the tension between him and the female assistant character was entirely too predictable — but I don’t feel like it wasted an hour of my life or anything; it was decent enough Christmas evening television and an appropriate enough accompaniment to biscuits and prawn rings.

Anyway. That’s that. I hope you all had a suitably acceptable haul of presents to enjoy — I got a copy of the board game Betrayal at the House on the Hill, which I’m extremely excited to give a go soon, along with a bunch of other nice goodies.

And lots of food. I think we’re good for snacks for the next six months or so.

Anyway. On that note, a merry Christmas to you, and to all a good night, or something.