A cracking series
Masiej Matuszewski attends the BAFTA preview of Sky One’s latest comedy series of all-star Christmas specials
Last week I visited a preview of Sky One’s new series of Christmas specials, Little Crackers, as hosted by BAFTA. They are a part of a plan by the channel to introduce more original comedy and make Sky One a “warmer, funnier place”, with the series consisting of twelve stand-alone shorts. Showing as a double bill every evening in the weeks leading up to Christmas, they give some of Britain’s best known comedic stars the chance to bring their vision to the nation’s TV screens.
Fans of Stephen Fry will be very pleased by his film, Bunce: A Christmas Tale, which is directed by Peter Cattaneo of Full Monty fame. An autobiographical work about his experiences as an 11 year old at boarding school, it details Fry sneaking out to the local village shop to buy sweets. Fry has stated that he wanted this to represent our desire for “the forbidden”, but in the safe setting of childhood and this is done brilliantly, contrasting the shop’s rich, bright colours and the dull, grey school to emphasise young Fry’s obsession. This short also examines his friendship with the eponymous Bunce, a newly arrived pupil who helps Fry with his escapades and is used to set up a very heart-warming ending. Above all, however, the film is hugely funny, especially with Fry’s measured, almost genteel, manner of speech being mocked relentlessly.
My favourite short is probably Capturing Santa by Chris O’Dowd, best known as Roy from The IT Crowd. It tells the story of young Chris’s hatred of Santa Claus, whose “break-ins” of people’s homes O’Dowd calls “creepy”. His opinion is not helped by never getting the Christmas presents that he wants: his relatively poor parents using two-for-one offers to buy the same gifts for him and his sisters. Capturing Santa sees him engineering a plan to catch Santa using a number of inventive traps set around the fireplace and Christmas tree. While, for a moment, it seems that this might degenerate into a Home Alone rip-off it is saved by its original humour and the exceptional child actors involved.
Not all of the shorts are autobiographical. In his film Car Park Babylon Bill Bailey plays a self-obsessed man on Christmas Eve, avoiding his loved ones to buy himself an expensive new mobile phone in a large shopping centre. Unusual forces, however, conspire to prevent him buying his present or even leaving, presumably as punishment for his selfish behaviour. There are some genuinely eerie moments in this one, especially in the deserted car park, but Bailey does well to balance this out with his gentle brand of humour.
Many Little Crackers episodes showcase Lucy Lumsden’s (Sky One’s Head of Comedy) desire to focus on family and real life situations. She cites Outnumbered, which she commissioned whilst at the BBC, as a source of inspiration for Sky One’s new wave of comedy. Though this works in most cases, some films do seem to be lacking innovation. Dawn French’s Operation Big Hat, about the Queen Mother visiting French’s family when her father was an RAF serviceman, seems too content to simply tell the story. The archive footage of the real life event is interesting and the film itself is quite pleasant, but it loses out on a sense of purpose and, in some places, humour. Throwing in a subplot about the young Dawn being afraid of the old Queen Mother after having been just read the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves does provide a few good laughs, but not enough to equal the best shorts. Kathy Burke’s piece about her meeting her favourite band, The Clash, suffers similar problems.
There is, however, a lot to enjoy in Little Crackers. Other famous names to produce films include Julia Davis, Victoria Wood, Catherine Tate and David Baddiel. Meera Syal’s short, which draws on some of her own experiences to create a fictional story of an Indian girl who lives in England but whose parents don’t celebrate Christmas, will be the first ever British-scripted program to appear in 3D on television – an impressively ambitious leap.
The almost surreal feeling of seeing so many of the shorts’ creators appearing alongside child actors portraying their younger selves is also very enjoyable – the best examples probably being Stephen Fry appearing as his school headmaster, Catherine Tate as her own mother, or Dawn French as the Queen Mother. Even the slower of these films are highly watchable. In addition to the humour and nostalgia, the series draws further strength from its variety. There is something here for everyone and I guarantee that you’ll stay riveted until the very end of the last episode. I heartily recommend that you watch Little Crackers over Christmas and keep an eye out for more of Sky One’s promising new comedic output.