Good news: the lovely Robshaw family are back. Remember? They did Back in Time for Dinner, suffering beef dripping, powdered egg and Giles Coren, all of which they somehow stomached with good humour. Top time-travel companions. Now they’re doing Back in Time for Christmas (BBC2), which, for mum Rochelle, isn’t going to be easy. “Christmas makes me feel pretty stressed out,” she moans. “I want to like it, but the best bit of Christmas is when it’s all over.”
With you there, Rochelle, apart from the wanting to like it part. Really, if you think about it, what started as a Christian feast has turned into a celebration of the seven deadly sins. All of them, except perhaps lust, unless you’ve got a hot cousin. Perhaps it was better in the 1940s, which is where the Robshaws are first going. Bad news, though: there’s this war going on, so it’s not the cheeriest time to start with. Then Giles shows up, bearing fir cones. The Luftwaffe and Coren, with bombs and bloody fir cones – imagine. (I don’t really hate Giles, I’m jealous of him, because he does something like what I do, only more successfully, and he’s hotter. See, simultaneous envy and lust already – it’s that time of year).
Dad Brandon and son Fred make a wooden Christmas tree. It’s rubbish, but they seem to enjoy doing it, spending quality father-and-son time. It’s too late for that one in my house, but I’m thinking next year. Plus, it will save £25, which we can donate to a horse sanctuary to save an actual pony.
Rochelle and the girls, Ros and Miranda, are in the kitchen, obviously, preparing a rations Christmas dinner – stuffing a cow’s heart with breadcrumbs, making the pudding out of carrot and potato. I approve of the presents (homemade spinning top) and the entertainment (cards and a sing-song, with Lionel Blair, down the bomb shelter). But the carrot pudding with salty sauce isn’t really working for me; maybe a teeny bit more sin is needed.
To the 1950s, then, and there’s a real tree (well, a branch), plus Spam and pineapple chunks – olives, even. Cheerier interior decor, too. They have to go to church, which Fred finds a chore, but then lunch is ham, which I’d rather have than turkey any day, including Christmas, even if it does come with tinned peaches. It gets better still after lunch. While the girls stay at home to wash up and watch the Queen’s speech (“Hippy Christmas”) the boys go the football. Yes, football, on Christmas Day! It is, as Brandon says, unimprovable. Well, maybe if Giles hadn’t come along too … Stop it!
I think that really was Peak Christmas, the 1950s. Because look at it in the 1960s. The sofa, and the dresses, might be pretty cool, but the artificial tree has led to artificial feelings and emotions, says Rochelle. She’s beginning to feel stressed and anxious. The presents have piled up, but that’s leading to fighting – more war, even. Fred has a Johnny Seven OMA (one-man army), a complete weapons-system toy, which Brandon always wanted as a boy but never got. You can see the envy in his eyes. And now they are kind of playing together, but Brandon’s taken the rocket launcher for himself, leaving his son with just the pistol. He doesn’t stand a chance. Rochelle, meanwhile, is trying hard not to look upset about being given a Hoover, though I imagine she’ll soon run out for a weep and maybe a Mother’s Little Helper.
See? It’s already beginning to get ugly. And that’s still half a century before the disgusting celebration of gluttony and greed we’re at today. When you finished crying, Rochelle, and maybe had a fag, can you take your present to the present to suck up the moral vacuum of Christmas today?
Our Guy in Latvia (Channel 4) is basically Who Does Guy Martin Think He Is? The sideburned squeaky mechanic/motorcyclist/reluctant TV personality is off to the Baltic to find out a bit more about his Latvian grandad, Walter. Or Voldemars, as he was before he turned up in Hull after the second world war, a 27-year-old looking to start a new life.
Guy is not, he would admit, one to talk much about his feelings. No tears here, then, while wandering around the derelict church Grandad used to go to or meeting long-lost cousins. The connection is obvious, though – with a grandad he was obviously very close to (in a blokey, garden-sheddy, not-much-talking kind of way), and a new bond with a country he feels is a part of him.
