The ten best and worst Christmas TV specials

1. The Christmas Lunch Incident, 1996

Best: The Vicar of Dibley

Set in the quaint village of Dibley, this classic Christmas special begins with the vicar, Geraldine Granger (played by Dawn French), telling her “eccentric congregation” that, just like Mary, the Spice Girls “were virgins thrust into the public eye”, said The Guardian.

The nation’s favourite vicar must then grapple with the consequences of her popularity, as four homes have “demanded her as star guest for dinner” and she has foolishly accepted each invitation. Thus, “The Christmas Lunch Incident” – as this episode is christened – begins.

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Of all the Dibley Christmas escapades, this one is perhaps the most “iconic”, said the Radio Times. The “sinfully funny” French shines brightly throughout, particularly during the vicar’s hilarious Brussels sprout competition with councillor David Horton.

2. The One with the Holiday Armadillo, 2000

Best: Friends

The hit US sitcom Friends had its fair share of Christmas specials in its decade-long run but “The One with the Holiday Armadillo” was the first episode to combine both the Jewish and Christian festive holidays.

In this episode, Ross (played by David Schwimmer) tries to teach his son Ben about Chanukah and get him excited about his Jewish roots. To do this, he dresses up in an armadillo suit, introducing himself as Santa’s part-Jewish friend.

Not only is this one of the show’s best Christmas episodes but “it’s also one of the most beloved in TV history”, said Screen Rant. As well as seeing Schwimmer in an armadillo get-up, we get to enjoy Chandler (Matthew Perry) as Santa Claus and Joey (Matt Le Blanc) as Superman. The cacophony of costumes makes for a mad-cap retelling of the story of Chanukah and is a “great success”.

3. Christmas Special, 2008

Best: Gavin and Stacey

This Christmas special “masterpiece” is one that viewers “don’t mind watching again and again”, said HuffPost. The BBC hit Gavin & Stacey had been running for two seasons before its first Christmas special, which saw the families of the two titular characters come together following their heartwarming but mishap-heavy wedding.

In true Gavin & Stacey style, the episode “highlighted all those little Christmas foibles that go on in households up and down the country come 25 December”. Travelling from their Welsh hometown, the Wests set up shop at the Shipmans’ Essex home for the festive period, with the episode delivering a “magical” mix of comedy, catchphrases and character development.

4. The Office Christmas Party, 2003

Best: The Office

The Office’s two-part seasonal special also acts as the grand finale of the offbeat sitcom’s two-series run. This “blissfully satisfying ending” brings Ricky Gervais’s groundbreaking BBC show set in the offices of a Slough paper merchant to a “decisive close”, reported The Guardian, with Tim and Dawn’s will-they-won’t-they relationship finally resolved.

This is a “glorious” final episode, reported The Times back in 2003, when the special first aired. Dawn’s reappearance at the office Christmas party was “a happy ending that was incredibly touching”, while Gervais’s David Brent was seen to mellow and become “almost likeable” as he had been “touched by the hand of the Lord”.

5. A Christmassy Ted, 1996

Best: Father Ted

The best way to spend Jesus’s birthday is with “men of the cloth”, said NME. With “scores being settled” and a “dysfunctional family dynamic”, this Father Ted Christmas episode is a true classic – but one to get stuck into after the kids have gone to bed.

In this “masterclass in situation comedy”, as Stylist described it, Father Ted (Dermot Morgan), Father Dougal (Ardal O’Hanlon) and several other priests get lost in the largest lingerie department in Ireland. To avoid a major scandal, Ted “enacts a military-style escape” – even receiving an award for his efforts. This may be “the least Christmassy of Christmas specials”, added the magazine, but it offers pure “quotable silliness”.

6. Robocracker: A Christmas Story, 2013

Worst: Bad Education

Jack Whitehall’s sitcom, which was set in a school and ran from 2012-2014, divided critics. Described by Variety as being “as scatty as it is scatological”, the show follows a “posh dimwit” history teacher named Alfie, played by Whitehall, as he is “repeatedly schooled by his adoring class of state-school rascals”.

Like previous episodes, the Christmas special, which aired in 2013, relied heavily “on toilet humour and tired, tasteless digs”, said The Telegraph. The story centres around Alfie’s mishaps when organising the Christmas school play, which ends up being an unorthodox “multi-faith mash-up of Robocop and The Nutcracker”.

Although the pupils “provide the odd fresh moment”, added the paper, the script is littered with jokes about ‘the fat kid’, ‘the kid in the wheelchair’ (who is given Twister for Christmas) and the homeless”.

7. A Royal Flush, 1986

Worst: Only Fools and Horses

While this beloved sitcom did feature the iconic Heroes and Villains episode, when the two brothers attend a fancy dress party dressed as Batman and Robin, 1986’s “A Royal Flush” is one of “the worst episodes of the show”, said the Daily Mirror. This Christmas special sees Rodney Trotter (Nicholas Lyndhurst) meet the daughter of a duke, while his big brother Del (David Jason) helps him “make a good impression”.

There are some “funny one-liners” and a couple of “humorous scenes”, said OFAH.net, a site for fans of Only Fools and Horses, but on balance, this episode suffers from “loose characterisation” and feels “rushed”. There’s also no studio audience which, for this show in particular, is “essential in setting and preserving the mood”.

The show’s creator, John Sullivan, famously took issue with the portrayal of Del Boy as a “cruel and nasty bully” in the episode, said the Daily Star, famously ruling that “A Royal Flush” should never be repeated.

8. Previously Unaired Christmas, 2013

Worst: Glee

This Christmas special, the eighth episode of the fifth season of the Marmite-esque US TV show, received criticism at the time of its broadcast for being out-of-sync and featuring plotting like “a pair of ripped fishnets”, said AV Net.

The episode highlighted Glee’s “total disinterest in maintaining character continuity or resolving its story arcs”, said Vulture. That’s not to say that the show about a school choir and a group of misfit students “can’t be fanciful”, but it “has to care about the stories it’s telling us, and it has to provide some sort of grounding core”.

9. Mammy of the People, 2020

Worst: Mrs Brown’s Boys

Despite the fact that Mrs Brown’s Boys had been a “centrepiece of British Christmas TV” for nearly a decade before this episode aired, the 2020 Christmas special felt like an “unrehearsed panto”, said The Guardian.

The episode kicks off with Mrs Brown lamenting about panic buyers as she opens cupboards stacked with loo rolls. It quickly descends into crass humour with “a blizzard of ‘anus horribilis’ jokes”, said The Independent. The half-hearted nod to the classic Christmas film It’s a Wonderful Life which follows reveals just how “unnecessarily weak the writing” is.

The publication awarded the episode one star, with columnist Sean O’Grady describing it as a reminder of “just how gruesome the comedy is”.

10. Christmas specials, 2011

Worst: Absolutely Fabulous

At its height, Ab Fab was “a sharp, observant comedy about the fashion world”, said The Telegraph, but its 2011 offering was no more than an “unfunny piece of slapstick”. While there were “some good jokes about Twitter”, much of the content of these special episodes fell flat.

The show could have “made more of the bleak future facing older women these days”, said the Daily Mail. It would have made sense to see Patsy breaking “both her ankles after succumbing to osteoporosis”, on a waiting list “not for a Hermes Birkin bag, but for a new liver”. But, given the fact that these were Christmas episodes, that would probably have been “too dark”.