Now is the season of bad TV.

(That is perhaps unfair I suppose- bad TV may well be open-season!)

But pretty soon the airwaves will be full of those dreadful ‘Christmas Special’ programmesl. I hate that saccharine, mawkish way that the media folk make TV-about- TV. A slice of self referencing that assumes that the whole world is contained within our viewing tubes…

And of course, Jesus will not be mentioned in any of this. There will be all the other cliches- snowmen, santa’s, robins and sleighbells. There will be dancers in red fish net stockings, and the occasional oblique reference to ‘Goodwill to all men’.

But lest this descend even further into rant central, let me make a slight confession. I am a sucker for a certain kind of sentimental Christmas film.

Not the blockbuster kind- the ones that are made for the mass market. I avoid them like the plague ( and I suspect they would give me a nasty rash!) Rather, those American B movies, made somewhere in the snowy midwest, with a family (or an orphan, or a single mother…) in crisis, then goes through a trial, only to be redeemed about 5 mins before the end, which gives time for them to gather around a fireside and sing Carols.

Curiously, John Denver is in a lot of them…

They make me cry. In a good way.

I think I like them because they are an antidote to some of the Christmas madness, and have at heart something simple and wholesome- if totally manufactured.

One film that is almost guaranteed to start the waterworks is this one;

This film takes the story of a man who abandoned his family, but 25 years later, after a life as a tramp, decides he has to see his son again before he dies. Cue cute grandson, trim loving daughter in law, and bitter, but essentially good son, who when he realises who the odd-job man really is, kicks him out. But of course, it does not end there.

You know where it is heading don’t you? Back to that fireside and the singing of carols…

Lovely.

But recently I came across the ultimate antidote to those Christmas blockbusters I mentioned earlier- you know the type, Miracle on elf street, or one in which Rudolf learns to fly after accidentally crashing Santa’s sleigh into the toy workshop…

I have confessed before to a love of the Coen Brothers films. Almost every one is brilliant. When I realised that they had made a Christmas film then I had to see it

This film is extremely funny, but it also takes the genre, and subverts it wonderfully. Here is a drunk, a thief, a womaniser and a gambler (played brilliantly by Billy Bob Thornton) who somehow makes us all root for him. it is full of profane one liners, and slap stick humour.

There is a kid in there- but cute he ain’t, and although it has a happy-ish ending, it is a Coen brothers happy ending, so it leaves you chuckling…

If you share a house with anyone who might wish to fill Christmas with Strictly-come-dancing-x-factor-big-brother-I-am-so-not-a-celebrity-but-I-do-try-so-hard kind of programmes, take some time out.

Get yourself one of these DVD’s.

And if you think they are rubbish, well there is always the Coronation Street pantomime special. Probably.