Christmas movies and TV specials on Netflix, Disney+ and the BBC – including a hip hop-flavoured ballet classic
- Ghostly apparitions haunt Death in Paradise in its Christmas special, while an inn owner butts heads with a corporate man in Christmas Time is Here on Netflix
- New York becomes the setting for Disney+ show The Hip Hop Nutcracker, which remixes rap music in Tchaikovsky’s classic seasonal ballet production
’Tis the season for festive television – which means a ghost story, even if the setting for this year’s Death in Paradise: Christmas Special (BBC First) is not exactly Dickensian-traditional.
As temperatures tumble in many places, over in the balmy Caribbean gormless, yet occasionally inspired, Detective Inspector Neville Parker (Ralf Little) leads Saint Marie’s finest on a cold case that coincidentally haunts Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington).
The victim’s brother, to whom, decades earlier, Patterson made an unfulfilled promise to solve the case, is being plagued by terrifying apparitions and voices seemingly from beyond.
And the horror descends again when a visiting true-crime podcaster, trying to crack the same case, is murdered – to the tune of ghostly voices captured on her digital recorder. Given its phenomenal murder rate, can any other island Eden ever have been so cursed?
Filmed in Canada, Christmas Time is Here features Rukiya Bernard as Nia, who has been talked – reluctantly, by her retirement-bound father – into selling the family business, the Pine Valley Inn.
Making the scenario particularly awkward for her is that she is the inn’s property agent and is determined not to sell out to a faceless corporation.
Representing said faceless corporation is Dewshane Williams, as Julian, who naturally falls for Nia and finds himself compromised when trying to seal the deal.
Making the scenario particularly awkward for him is unsympathetic boss Robyn (Neeru Bajwa), the archetypal romantic-comedy “villain”, whose preferred Christmas lights are flashing dollar signs.
Also from Canada is festive stablemate A Kindhearted Christmas, in which Jamie Monroe (played by Jennie Garth) keeps her small-town fellow citizens guessing as to the identity of their secret Santa, who feeds and clothes the needy, leaves gifts on doorsteps and ensures there is a Christmas tree in the town square.
We know it is her, some of her friends find out it is her, but tardy on the uptake and slow to spot the story is morning-television anchorman Scott Morris (Cameron Mathison).
Scott has been Jamie’s television crush for years, so when he turns up to try to solve the great secret Santa mystery, she is torn between blurting out the truth and giving him the scoop, and remaining her hometown’s behind-the-scenes benefactor.
Cosy and compassionate, A Kindhearted Christmas is a cockle-warming concoction that never stints on the (maple) syrup.
Combining ballet with hip hop moves was presumably something Tchaikovsky never countenanced. Yet the enthusiasm of Run-DMC’s Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons, as the narrator, plus the dream-state gumption of Maria-Clara (played by Caché Melvin), when warring with the rodent gang gives the production, well, street cred.
Look out too, via a cameo appearance, for the stamp of approval delivered by one of the biggest names in ballet of any era.
Nevertheless, The Hip Hop Nutcracker still pulses with enough radical reinvention to traumatise the purists. Orchestral refrains remain identifiable, if remixed, with added turntable scratching; scene-stealing magician Drosselmeyer (Comfort Fedoke) is now Maria-Clara’s godmother; and the bopping Snowflakes wear bucket hats and training shoes while performing their best English footballer Peter Crouch “Robot” dance move.
Ultimately, this is an infectious spectacular with West Side Story, Thriller and La La Land characteristics. Nuts to the naysayers.
