The only way to survive Christmas TV is to avoid anything seasonal and watch Giri/Haji

The key to surviving the next couple of weeks of TV is to avoid like the plague anything that smacks of seasonal viewing. So, no Christmas specials (such as the semi-celebrity, elderly grown-ups version of University Challenge where the questions are even more laboriously PC than on the student edition), no Harry Potter, no adverts featuring tinsel, dragons and patronisingly diverse families making merry. Basically, you want to steer clear of terrestrial TV altogether — but with one exception. You may use BBC iPlayer to download the only decent drama series that slipped through the net: Giri/Haji.

Joe Barton’s blackly comic Anglo-Japanese thriller was by some margin the most original and inspired thing on the BBC all year. But it was a bit unlucky with the reviews. Lots of critics clocked from the first episode — which began with a Tarantinoesque Yakuza massacre in Tokyo — that it was exotic, gory, different, and not a little bonkers.