Airdates and times for Christmas, New Year and beyond can be found on our Set Spy page here.
Bad Education
It is time for the Abbey Grove Christmas Play, and with Miss Pickwell no longer around, Mr Fraser decides Alfie (Jack Whitehall) is the obvious replacement to direct this year’s production. But with the class undecided about whether to put on The Nutcracker or Robocop, will Alfie’s decision to write and direct a plot mash up of Robocracker and casting school bully Grayson as co-lead prove successful?
Mitchell decides to do something lovely for Alfie and invite his estranged mother (Frances Barber) to the play, but will Mr Fraser and Mitchell come up with a good enough reason to lure her over from Spain with her new husband Javier (Jake Canuso)?
And will Miss Gulliver manage to persuade Alfie and his class to volunteer at the soup kitchen where Greg McHugh’s Scottish tramp makes quite an impression.
Bluestone 42
Critically-acclaimed BBC Three comedy-drama Bluestone 42 returns with a Christmas special.
It’s Christmas Eve and the team are joined by Nick’s new number two, Corporal Gordon House aka Towerblock (Matthew Lewis), on his first tour of duty. Captain Nick Medhurst (Oliver Chris) is tasked with getting him up to speed, but as Towerblock finished top of his class on the High Threat Course, he thinks he knows it all. He soon finds out things are different in the field, even on Christmas Day. The Taliban don’t stop for Christmas and it’s up to Nick to pull the team together.
The Call Centre
“Happy people celebrate Christmas”. At Swansea’s third largest call centre, CEO Nev Wilshire and his staff are in festive mood.
Tea-lady Hayley is organising the office Christmas party but with a free bar to fund will there be any money left to help transform the local working men’s club into the winter wonderland she has envisioned?
Convinced that happy people sing (and therefore sell), Nev starts a call centre Christmas choir – but after making melodically ambiguous sales agent Kieran the soloist, will their performance bring yuletide harmony to the staff or send them running for the hills?
And with bills to pay and presents to buy, an old face returns to The Call Centre hoping to persuade Nev to give him his job back. But will this Grinch ever learn to love the festive fun?
Snog Marry Avoid
‘Tis the fakest season of them all – it’s Christmas!
POD lands in Essex, where Ellie puckers up with festive be-jewelled lips and tries to get a smooch under the mistletoe.
POD has her lens on two of the worst seasonal fakers and gives them make-unders for Christmas. Verity’s party outfit leaves little to the imagination but insists that “all girls get their baubles out at Christmas”. And addicted-to-fakery Jason is as brown as a Christmas pudding but insists “any attention is good attention”. Mum says: “I just want him to stop!”
