Leavisites should stay away: Sky’s Bad Tidings reviewed

Reviewing Sky’s The Heist before Christmas last year, I suggested that all feature-length festive television dramas begin with credits announcing a starry cast and end with a redeemed protagonist gazing up at some suddenly falling snow. Reviewing Sky’s Bad Tidings this year, I can rather smugly report that there’s no need to revise my theory.

But just in case that isn’t enough television tradition to be going on with, here we also get that other Yuletide stand-by: the characters’ plans for the big day go hideously wrong, yet they still end up having the Best Christmas Ever.

The two main stars are Lee Mack and the man with a serious claim to be the breakout celebrity of 2024. As I write, Liverpudlian comedian Chris McCausland has a fair chance of being the first blind winner of Strictly Come Dancing – and even if he doesn’t manage that, his sharp but good-natured gags have already made him one of its most popular contestants ever. Now he ends the year with two more strings to his bow. Not only did he co-write Bad Tidings with Laurence Rickard and Martha Howe-Douglas from Ghosts, but he also turns in a solid acting performance.

Admittedly, his role as Scott – a blind, wise-cracking Scouser – can’t have been much of a stretch. Less comfortable is Mack, whose essential geniality makes an awkward fit for Scott’s weirdly hostile neighbour Neil. Mack does his best to glower, shout and accompany the word ‘unbelievable’ with furious tuts. Nevertheless, Neil comes across less like a bad-tempered old git than a bloke doing an impersonation of one – and for no obvious reason beyond the drama’s need to set up somebody for later snowy redemption.

In short (and in yet another nod to Christmas convention), Scott and Neil aren’t merely neighbours but feuding ones – albeit with Neil doing most of the feuding.