The 25 best Christmas films and TV you can watch right now
Everything you need to keep your backside rooted to the sofa for the festive season
The 25 best Christmas films and TV you can watch right now
Reserve a place on the sofa and tell the dog to fetch your slippers – it’s time to do some serious telly watching.
We’ve trawled all the major on-demand streaming sites, including Netflix, Amazon, BBC iPlayer, All 4 and Now TV – to bring you the best of this year’s festive entertainment.
Don’t forget, anything listed as being available on Now TV is also available through your box if you’re a Sky customer, so if you haven’t signed up to a streaming service yet, there’s still plenty to keep you entertained here.
Scrooged
Starring Bill Murray as a greedy TV exec who forces his channel’s staff to work over Christmas, the only ghouls the Ghostbusters star encounters in Scrooged are the three festive ghosts who visit in an attempt to make him see the error of his ways. Yes, it’s yet another retelling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but it’s a particularly riotous one, made all the more watchable by its massively ‘80s vibe.
Watch it on: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Now TV
The Snowman
Successfully making children cry since 1982, this is the animated version of Raymond Briggs’ picture book, rather than the 2017 thriller that featured Michael Fassbender playing a detective named Harry Hole (seriously). The short story, about a boy’s magical night spent with a snowman that comes to life in his garden, famously had an intro added featuring David Bowie finding a scarf in an attic – and it’s that version that Channel 4 has chosen here.
Watch it on: All 4
Elf
For the four or five of you that have never seen Elf, Will Ferrell plays Buddy, who was adopted by elves as a baby and raised as one of their own. But his size, among other things, gives him away, and soon enough he’s off to New York to find his real parents. A brilliantly silly slapstick performance from Ferrell, loads of quotable lines and just the right amount of sentimentality make Elf a modern-day Christmas classic.
Watch it on: Amazon Prime
Knowing Me, Knowing Yule
For those unacquainted with Alan Partridge’s earlier TV forays, Knowing Me, Knowing Yule is a special extended Christmas edition of his ill-fated talkshow. Set inside a studio mock-up of the presenter’s Norwich home, the show starts off well enough, but quickly deteriorates as he insults and offends guests, embroils himself in a product placement scandal and threatens to start a fire with an oversized Christmas cracker.
Watch it on: Netflix
Trading Places
Trading Places has all the elements of a good Christmas movie: a festive setting, the underlying fable about money not being important and of course love and family (even if it is the unconventional kind). Oh, and a drunk and depressed, salmon-stealing Santa. A street hustler (Eddie Murphy), arrogant yuppie (Dan Aykroyd) and prostitute (Jamie Lee Curtis) aren’t exactly pillars of good, but compared to its pair of ageing, sinister millionaires, this unusual trio are the film’s heroes.
Watch it on: Now TV
Detectorists Christmas Special
BBC 2’s gentle sitcom about a pair of metal-detecting nerds has quietly won itself a legion of dedicated fans and its 2015 Christmas special makes it easy to see why. Whereas the regular episodes are filmed in the summer, real-life detectorists often prefer to operate in the autumn when there are fewer crops in the way, making this one-off episode both funny and touching, but also more realistic.
Watch it on: BBC iPlayer
Arthur Christmas
Created by the talented folks at Aardman Animations, Arthur Christmas is an animated Christmas spectacular that pops from the screen. It follows the titular Arthur Christmas – unsurprisingly – in his quest to save Christmas after a prezzie goes undelivered. Cue a heart-warming comedy that kids and adults alike will appreciate.
Watch it on: Netflix
It’s a Wonderful Life
Probably the Christmas film that’s most referenced in other Christmas films, whether it’s the kids watching it in French in Home Alone or as the in-flight movie in Turbulence, if you haven’t seen It’s a Wonderful Life the evidence suggests you should. It tells the story of an angel’s attempts to save a suicidal George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) by showing him how different the world would be without him in it. This feelgood fable should be on everybody’s Christmas list.
Watch it on: Amazon Prime, Now TV
Stick Man
Hey Duggee’s Stick Song might have become the world’s most unexpected rave anthem recently but before that there was 2015’s Stick Man – an animated film made by the same people behind The Gruffalo. With a voice cast including Martin Freeman, Rob Brydon and Jennifer Saunders, it follows the titular Stick Man in his quest to get home for Christmas. Watch this and you’ll never look at a bit of old tree the same way again.
Watch it on: BBC iPlayer
Jingle All the Way
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s more family-friendly fare is not exactly well-regarded by film fans, and Jingle All the Way is certainly no Citizen Kane, even within that small and very particular niche. And yet there’s something to be said for its light satire on commercialism – as well as its abundance of holiday-specific cheer – that makes it worth a watch this year.
Available on: Netflix
Bad Santa
He’s not fat, he’s not round, and he definitely isn’t jolly. Billy Bob Thornton’s whiskey-drinking, womanising Santa Claus is made to see the error of his ways by a socially inept boy called Thurman Merman, after years of drug abuse and robberies. Heartwarming and filthy at the same time and therefore probably the ultimate alternative Christmas movie.
Watch it on: Now TV
Inside No. 9: The Devil of Christmas
From members of the team behind The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville, Inside No. 9‘s Christmas special is a brilliant episode in a series that’s full of them. The Devil of Christmas is a superb pastiche of both director’s commentaries and hammy, late ‘70s horror, and, like all episodes of Inside No. 9, it’s a brilliantly written, self-contained story with a twist that’ll make your blood run cold.
Watch it on: BBC iPlayer
Love Actually
To some people, the thought of watching Love Actually is more likely to make them sick than overindulging on Christmas day. But to many, many others it’s an important festive ritual. While there are plenty of issues with it, not least the bloke who declares his love for his mate’s wife through the medium of cue cards on her doorstep like some kind of massive weirdo, you just have to treat Love Actually like the fantasy it is.
Watch it on: Netflix, Now TV
Cunk on Christmas
The spectacular yet often somehow quite profound idiocy of Philomena Cunk made Diane Morgan’s character the breakout star of Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe, so it was no surprise when she went on to front her own shows. This festive special from 2016 has Cunk investigating the origins of Christmas and the traditions that surround it, with her Ali G-esque interviews and bizarre observations providing plenty of post-pudding laughs.
Watch it on: BBC iPlayer
Edward Scissorhands
Most of Tim Burton’s movies are better suited to watching at Halloween but 1990’s Edward Scissorhands, the first film the mad-haired director had also written and produced, has a distinctly festive theme at its core: a white Christmas. For some reason, though, replacing your fingers with razor-sharp blades hasn’t been adopted as a new yuletide tradition. Strange.
Watch it on: Now TV
Gremlins
Like Batman Returns, Lethal Weapon and John McClane’s first encounter with the Gruber family, Gremlins qualifies as a Christmas film due to its setting rather than because it’s full-on festive. That said, Gizmo, the small furry creature that mustn’t get wet, be fed after midnight or exposed to bright lights, is given as a Christmas gift at the start of what is essentially a remake of It’s A Wonderful Life and plenty of tinsel-draped chaos follows. Yippee ki yay, mogwai lovers.
Watch it on: Amazon Prime
Louis Theroux’s Weird Christmas
Everyone’s favourite documentary maker revisits some of his old interviewees in this Christmas special from 1998. Rather than the celebrity subjects that he became famous for meeting in the early 2000s, this one-hour reunion show brings together a pornstar, a man with a message from another galaxy, a wannabe country singer who lived in a hole, and a preacher who plans to save New York from the devil. Just your standard family Christmas, then.
Watch it on: BBC iPlayer
Black Mirror: White Christmas (S2E4)
In a departure from Black Mirror’s regular episodes, this 2014 seasonal special consists of three separate tales, all weaving together to form an overall uber-story starring Rafe Spall and Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm. it takes aim at augmented reality (and its potential uses for pick-up artists), smart home gadgets, digital copies of human consciousness and the ability to "block" people in real life. Merry Christmas, tech fans!
Watch it on: Netflix
Home Alone 2: Lost In New York
Despite a now infamous appearance from America’s moron-in-chief, Home Alone 2 manages to repeat most of the successes of the first film, mainly by literally just repeating them. The Wet Bandits are back on the scene and Kevin is up to his old tricks but everything’s stepped up a notch this time, particularly the violence, which at times actually borders on the unpleasant. Still, there’s a happy ending, and that’s all that matters, right?
Watch it on: Now TV
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
The third of the original National Lampoon films was this – the tried-and-tested “on ice” formula. Chevy Chase once again leads the Griswold clan in a bungling family adventure, themed as the title suggested – think obnoxious relatives, faulty Christmas lights and, er, SWAT teams. “Yule crack up!” promised the posters. And yes, third time around Chase and co are still more than capable of raising a chuckle.
Watch it on: Amazon Prime
Hector
Man travels home for his traditional Christmas celebration isn’t a unique story by any stretch. But when that man is Hector, a homeless Glaswegian played by Peter Mullan, and the journey is to a London shelter he stays in every year, the cliches in this Ken Loach-style movie can be forgiven, particularly when the performances are this good and the atmosphere is so well created.
Watch it on: Netflix
Children of Men
There isn’t a Christmas tree, jolly Kris Kringle or loop of tinsel in sight, but director Alfonso Cuaron’s dystopian sci-fi nonetheless has a festive theme. As Clive Owen’s Theo – get the religious reference? – struggles to protect a young pregnant mother bearing the first child to be conceived in 20 years, there are clear echoes of the Nativity story, while the world it depicts is close enough to ours to recognisable but different enough to be chilling.
Watch it on: Now TV
The Office Christmas Special (UK)
This final two-part tranche of The Office, originally screened a year after the end of the second series, revisited beloved characters (and yes, it’s possible to love David Brent and Gareth Keenan) and gave a satisfying and appropriately funny send-off to one of the finest UK sitcoms of the last 20 years.
Watch it on: Netflix
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Christmas wouldn’t be complete without the traditional sibling argument, the customary crestfallen gift-face or the comparatively painless Steve Martin movie. Martin hitches a ride home for Thanksgiving (yes, we know that’s not the same as Christmas) with a nauseating slob of a shower-ring salesman, played by the late, great John Candy. After a couple of hours of slapstick, gross-out jokes and, finally, some seasonally-appropriate heart-warming resolution, you might realise you could have had it worse with your own family.
Watch it on: Now TV
The Night Before
Following the debauched antics of three old friends on their final festive night out, The Night Before might as well be called The Christmas Hangover, such are its similarities to the wildly successful men-get-drunk-and-do-stupid-things series. As watchable as the three leads are, this yuletide take on the trope lacks the unstoppable energy and sharpness of The Hangover movies, but if outrageous behaviour and swearing are your thing, you’ll probably find a lot to laugh at here. The Snowman, it ain’t.
Watch it on: Netflix
