OK, your choice is this. You can spend tomorrow evening like so:
- Up to three hours of you/your partner/your best mate deciding what to wear - Up to an hour-and-a-half deciding which lame house party to go to, having realised at the last moment that any pub/club/binge-drinking den worth its salt sold out of tickets last month - Several hours of standing round not really knowing or liking many people in the vicinity, but determined to a) get as drunk as possible and b) have the best night of the year so far, if not of your life so far, as society demands this night should be - Throwing up/watching someone else throw up. On your shoes - Wandering the streets, wondering where all the taxis have gone, wishing you were still of the age where you could call your dad and have him pick you up, and deperate for the loo but too polite to go in the street - Dreading the fact that, even if you drink all the water in the world, you will still spend all Sunday inexplicably hungover
Or you can spend tomorrow like this: - Nice food - Sofa - Glass of wine and/or beer and/or non-alcoholic beverage - Telly
Completely up to you, of course, but just in case this has influenced you in any way, shape or form, here are the Guide's top picks for tomorrow night (and tonight, actually). Yes, yes, it all looks a bit like list shows and bagpipes, but believe me, there's so, so much more ...
Friday night (New Year's Eve Eve?)
Christine's Garden 8pm, BBC2 Christine Walkden is a horticulturalist with a heart. Her modest garden in Essex is nothing spectacular, but her passion for it is. Christine is old school all the way — a Lancashire lass who prunes the neighbour's tree for a cup of tea and a macaroon. Make no mistakes, this is the pure antidote to yoof programming — forget snail mail and slow food, this is terminal television. Blink all you like, you won't miss much.
Clare Birchall
Return Of The Goodies 9pm, BBC2 It's been a quarter of a century since Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden last graced our screens as those oddballs, the Goodies. The original idea for the show was slight — an agency of three blokes, who do anything, any time — but the carnivalesque genius meant that the real life cartoon was an instant hit. A truly special Christmas special.
Clare Birchall
The Magic Of Jesus 9pm, C4 It's a well-known theological fact that Our Lord Jesus Christ was the David Blaine of his day, producing ready meals for 5,000 like a rabbit (or, in this case, a fish) out of a hat, walking on water and converting ordinary tap water into gallons of very acceptable domestic plonk. Here, Dirty Tricks magicians Barry and Stuart use Jesus's repertoire as the basis for some tricks of their own. Burn the sorcerous blasphemers!
David Stubbs
Churchill: The Hollywood Years (Peter Richardson, 2004) 10pm, Sky Movies 1 Comic Strip member Richardson has walked this path to far better effect with his "Hollywoodised" versions of the miners' strike and the GLC. Here, as a response to the mostly fact-free wartime movies U-571, Pearl Harbor and Enigma, he turns Winston Churchill into a cigar-chewing action hero played by Christian Slater. This is incredibly broad and crude. Performers such as Vic and Bob, Miranda Richardson and Mackenzie Crook are wasted here. While others, like Rik Mayall and Harry Enfield, are allowed to make the most of their diminishing talents.
Phelim O'Neill
Nighty Night 10.30pm, BBC3 The entire second series replayed for your pleasure/pain. Jill's demented antics in series one are nothing compared to the depravity she gets up to in series two. The soft rock and hairstyles are bad enough without the gratuitous filth. You almost want to breathe through your mouth during some scenes, in case you catch a whiff. But does Julia Davis get away with it? The first six episodes were so unquestionably brilliant that these six never quite lived up to them. Not as good as six Peep Shows but better than six Little Britains.
Julia Raeside
Nowhere In Africa (Caroline Link, 2001) 10.30pm, BBC4 Based on Stephanie Zweig's autobiography, Caroline Link's acclaimed epic tells the story of a 1930s German Jewish family who flee their increasingly deranged homeland for Africa. The three members of the family react differently to their relocation to Kenya: the father shrugs off his law career to become a caretaker, the mother resents every aspect of their utterly alien new life, and the daughter embraces and adapts with a five-year-old's good-hearted curiosity. Things change, as things in relationships do, and the isolation of these characters encourages the full bloom of an intelligent examination of how and why that happens.
Andrwe Mueller
New Year's Eve
AFI's 100 Years — 100 Movie Quotes 9pm, C4 Nothing, it appears, is too corny for some Hollywood actors, and this time Pierce Brosnan punches through the cheese wall to host this draggy celebration of movie quotes. "So pour yourself a martini… you know how I like it!" Fills a post-Christmas pit, but the overall effect is like having your screening constantly interrupted by the likes of Billy Crystal and Patrick Swayze talking over your shoulder. Especially Patrick Swayze. "You talkin' to me?" Yes. Shut up, mate.
Ali Catterall
Jools's Annual Hootenanny 11pm, BBC2 It says something about just how profoundly depressing an experience New Year's Eve is that one almost looks forward to Jools Holland's annual Hootenanny, if only because it marks the conclusion of the dismal exercise in compulsory enthusiasm that is December 31. This year, Jools will be shuffling between various stages containing a typical mixture of the half decent, the wholly dull and the authentically black. The lineup includes Goldfrapp, Kaiser Chiefs, New Orleans "Queen Of Soul" Irma Thomas and that piece of cockney rhyming slang on legs, James Blunt. Be warned, there will also be bagpipes.
David Stubbs
After The Sunset (Brett Ratner, 2004) 8pm, Sky Movies 2 Far from mould-breaking, but nonetheless hugely enjoyable crime caper enlivened by a twinklingly witty script and sterling deadpan turns from the leads. Pierce Brosnan plays a restlessly retired international jewel thief, living the straight life in the Caribbean at the compelling insistence of former accomplice and missus Salma Hayek. However, he is irresistibly tempted from his enviable idyll by the possibility of one last big score — a priceless diamond exhibited on a passing cruise ship — and this time he has Woody Harrelson's ambitious but winningly wry FBI agent running interference. Great fun.
Andrew Mueller
New Year's Eve Films From 8pm, various channels For some reason, the world of satellite TV seems to go out of its way to ignore New Year's Eve; probably just as well if you're not braving freezing streets full of snogging strangers and the annual taxi vacuum. FilmFour's partying like it's 1969 with Jimi, Joan and Sly in Woodstock: Three Days Of Peace And Music (8pm); FX chops things up with Reservoir Dogs (12midnight); ITV2 keeps things on a downer with Leaving Las Vegas (10.55pm); LivingTV's gets raving, US-style with Go (1am).
Richard Vine
Mad Bad And Dangerous To Know 10pm, Extreme Sports The Jackass and Dirty Sanchez crews were still in nappies when the chinless wonders of The Oxford Dangerous Sports Club eagerly opened up a new vein of world-conquering eccentricity, including inventing bungee-jumping and being fired off mountains. "I think it's very healthy," opined Monty Python's Graham Chapman who, as a club member, piloted an operating theatre down a Swiss ski slope. Perhaps most winningly, this exceptionally entertaining history confirms that the club's members proudly adhered to its cardinal creed: "One must always dress with style, be brave, and a little mad."
Joss Hutton
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So as long as you like Pierce Brosnan and the magic of the pipes (bag) - and who doesn't? Then it's a happy happy new year all round.
