26th December 2025

0900 - BBC2

Ah, Boxing Day, that day when the calendar date truly starts to slip and you enter into that weird grey space between Christmas and when things get back to normal. You can welcome this in with a golden age Hollywood classic and a 70s homage to that style of film.

1045 - BBC1

Stretching out Wallace and Gromit from their home in the short films to a feature length tale was always a bit of a gamble. It was almost expected once Aardman had signed their big deal with Dreamworks and especially after the success of Chicken Run. When it finally arrived it was…good? Its certainly aging well, carrying that mad cap energy of the shorts into the longer run time.

1115 - ITV2

If you want to leave something on in the background all day then you could do worse than some of these films; another Aardman joint, this time one of their purely CG efforts, an entry in the Ice Age series which my eldest swears to me are all brilliant but I don’t believe him. We’ve tracked down Danny DeVito so you can do a proper Matilda comparison before winding down with some Uncle Buck if you really want to

1225 - Channel 4

It's always fun when an established genre evolves into something new; case in point the buddy cop genre which by the end of the 80s was starting to run its course, so why not do a buddy cop film where one of the cops is a dog? Genius! Of course two films like this came out in the same year, K9 being outdone by this film, mainly thanks to that boyish charm of Tom Hanks which was almost nuclear grade in its strength in 1989

1400 - Great TV

After stealing Die Hard you can enjoy Alan Rickman doing the same to another film, despite the best efforts of Kevin Costner in the editing room. Whilst the soundtrack gave us 18 weeks of that song at number one, the film itself is a proper rollicking adventure film full of swords and derring do. Its wild that this is pretty much the same team that gave us Waterworld

1405 - 5 Star

Another good run of films; I always thought Percy Jackson deserved better than it actually got as it was a pretty fun movie. The Shanghais are good late period Jackie Chan vehicles, in that the action is good but you’re not getting anywhere near Jackie’s best. And whilst I’ve not seen Immortals it always seems to crop up in those “hey you know what this film isn’t at all bad” articles that do the rounds every now and then

1405 - ITV3

Two more Carry Ons for you, not quite the cream of the crop although Screaming does tend to get mentioned in the lists of the best films. Doctor is mid tier though it does have a good turn from Frankie Howard

1420 - Legend

You can’t argue with the review there, this really is a splendid swashbuckling adventure.

1510 - BBC2

Some proper traditional bank holiday fare here with two films that are almost legally obliged to be shown when the majority of the country has the day off; Escape is the pick of the two, with its large cast of characters actors giving it plenty. The Italian Job is more of a vehicle, excuse the pun, for Michael Caine and really is a bit of a one trick pony. It’s a great trick to be fair, in the shape of a big massive car chase, but it’s the only one the film has

1520 - BBC1

I am not the biggest Shrek fan at all, and the first Puss in Boots film didn’t exactly do much to change my mind. This one though? This is a banger, mainly thanks to it liberally borrowing the animation style from the Spider-Verse films. Honestly, the battles with Death look properly stunning

1545 - ITV4

Back to back space films although both have a different approach to their somewhat similar stories; both are films about what happens when things go wrong in space but Apollo 13 is very much a real life tale whereas 2001 ladles on sci-fi concepts about human evolution. And then if you find those two films are a bit dry then you can enjoy Wesley Snipes shooting baddies on a plane

1615 - ITV1

More Indy, the this time we’re off to India with some slightly suspect racial profiling that isn’t aging that well. Still, putting that to one side, this is a proper roller coaster ride of a film with some amazing set pieces

1630 - Great Action

Westerns! A good couple here, a pair of John Wayne’s best; even by this point when the Spaghetti Western had revolutionised the genre you could still rely on The Duke to deliver when needed

1720 - BBC1

A brilliant sequel that really is as good as they say it is

2100 - Film4

I do love a Mission: Impossible film; the over the top melodrama, insane set pieces, Tom Cruise’s ongoing attempts to end his life in a spectacular manner captured on film. Following a film as perfect as Fallout was going to be tough and Dead Reckoning doesn’t quite do it. But these films age well, even II, so maybe that will change as the years go on. Speaking of things that age well, Scarface is still a banger with the best montage sequence going

2100 - Legend Xtra

Time to separate some art from the artist; James Woods is indeed an asshole but he did do some good work back in the the day especially in this buddy cop action film with Michael J Fox. They have some great chemistry that powers the film along its fairly generic path

2220 - BBC4

Some more 80s music for your delectation, can imagine this year will be somewhat of a roller coaster; punk has played out, new wave is everywhere, the pop factories are winding up to fill the rest of the decade in audio sludge. Still though, we get that Jagger and Bowie music video for Dancin’ In The Street which is one of the most 80s artefacts you ever will see