Mary Berry’s Highland Christmas; The Crown; Bad Education: A Christmas Carol

“There’s something innately Christmassy about Mary Berry. She shares her first name with the mother who gave birth on the day in question, her second with those red things you get on holly sprigs. Then there’s the snowy bob, as pure and immaculate as driven drifts of the white stuff. Hence Mary Berry’s Highland Christmas, in which the patron saint of the rolling pin went north of the border to prep such caber-tossing staples as guacamole and stollen, cheese fondue and bûche du Noël. All, to be fair, were served with a kilted twist. Her tarte tatin became tartan by virtue of a winter veg slaw side. Also on the menu was more indigenous fare. They looked scrumptious if not, as she kept insisting, “deceptively simple”.”
Jasper Rees, Telegraph

“Well, we certainly learnt one thing from Mary Berry’s Highland Christmas: you tell Mary Berry a lame joke at your peril. Andy Murray tried it and Berry’s stony face was a picture. Tumbleweed practically cartwheeled past as she said witheringly, “Okaay,” then changed the subject. “What’s the matter with you?” she told the crew off-camera, who were obviously laughing/cringing. Mike-drop moment for Berry! Much as I love Murray, I always suspected he wouldn’t be a natural joke-teller. The terrible gag that he tells his four children that didn’t impress Berry? “What time does Andy Murray go to bed?” Answer: “Tennish.””
Carol Midgley, The Times

“There’s rather too much cookery being demonstrated in this hour-long special. After a while, it all becomes a bit indigestible – like a stodgy Christmas pudding after roast turkey and all the trimmings. I prefer the more bite-sized half-hour tips and tricks Berry delivers in Mary Makes It Easy. That said, I still like Dame Mary better than Jamie Oliver. She’s less boastful and (as befits someone trained in domestic science) her instructions are so precise that – if you took notes or watched on demand – you could easily recreate her recipes without buying the accompanying cookbook. No weights, temperatures or timings were held back.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“It is lovely. Very soothing. Like shop-bought marzipan, the perfect festive filling. I hope Mary is now safely back in her tissue paper ready to be brought out next year.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“If you’ve missed what you used to think of as The Crown – that elegant, strangely nostalgic (even for things you don’t remember) examination of changing national identity – good news. It’s back! After 54 episodes and 143 awards since its 2017 premiere, and with six episodes to go following a shoddy first part of the final series, creator Peter Morgan has gone back to basics. It’s a joy.”
Francesca Steele, The i

“The final episode is a treat. Let’s just say it is a very poignant, beautifully crafted farewell to Queen Elizabeth II, with a foreshadowing of her funeral and reappearances from Claire Foy and Olivia Colman. It’s charming and I bet it makes you cry. But it feels the right decision to close the curtain on The Crown now. The closer we get to the present, the weaker its dramatic power. It is running out of steam. It had some great moments and some bad ones. But all good things come to an end.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Writer Peter Morgan makes the mistake of writing his characters with too much hindsight. So Harry is zero fun and spends his entire time glowering as if he’s in Game of Thrones, because we now know that he was an unhappy teenager and he’s an even unhappier adult. But wasn’t he also a laugh sometimes? The Queen spends the final episode tearily contemplating her demise, but was she really doing that back in 2005 or does Morgan just need a way to throw forward to her death and make his final scenes seem terribly poignant? So now it’s over. That’s the right decision – Morgan had clearly run out of steam and the Harry and Meghan years would be too much to bear. Netflix has shut down talk of a spin-off. I can think of a reality show that would work, though: The Real Housewives of Bucklebury would be irresistible.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“The series does largely recover from its wobble in the first half of the season, when Princess Diana took over the whole show and led to some wild creative decisions, chief among them “ghost Diana”. The riskiest moment in the new episodes is a dream sequence in which the Queen imagines her reign being ended by the new king, Tony Blair: at the coronation, choristers sing an eerie a cappella version of Things Can Only Get Better.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Set in a school, this Scrooge featured a series of song-and-dance routines, like Grange Hill putting on A Chorus Line. Vicki Pepperdine, dressed as a Christmas tree, played the Ghost of Christmas FOMO (that’s Fear Of Missing Out, a Generation Z preoccupation). Charlie Wernham was Mitchell the gym teacher, pouring a litre of vodka into the eggnog. The script was crammed with one-liners, some of them polished and some of them in need of work. But the writers deserve credit for a lyric that managed to rhyme all the various names of Girls Aloud star Cheryl: ‘You may call me Cole, or you may call me Tweedy, You may call me Cheryl or Miss Fernandez-Versini.’ Bravo!
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Who knows what Charles Dickens would have made of his classic novella incorporating Chesney from Coronation Street as a pantomime horse and Cheryl Cole’s back tattoo. But it was funny and did what Christmas specials should do in my book: be uplifting but not naff.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The script’s jokes come along like hit-or-miss carpet bombs. If one gag about Greggs or upskirting or Instagram’s ban on nipples doesn’t hit its mark, hang on for the cleverer one about crypto and Vimto.”
Jasper Rees, Telegraph