(TV previews to the tune of traditional carols. Who says we're not getting into the festive spirit?)
While shepherds watched their flocks by night, one spake - bored as can be - "The sheep are clearly doing nowt - sod them, let's watch TV"
The mountain top was digizone and they were soon set up The Freeview box nigh flashed away and tea? Each had a cup.
In friendly fash the sheepy men started their evening view But soon the arguments began - "Nowt On!" "What else is new?!"
Then, voices raised: "You're taking t'piss, I am not watching that!" "They're clearly not in space - and also Johnny Vaughan's a twat"
"Oy you, don't flick!" "I wanted that!" "Give me the damn remote" Eventually, ere blood was shed, they thought they'd have a vote.
But Ooooh! What's that! Up in the sky a Vulture did appear "See, what you boys could use," she said, "is what I've got right here...
"As happens on most afternoons, to help good folk decide the way to spend their evening - we've top picks from the Guide!"
So happily the sheps did see that what was on was good they snuggled up and settled in and had some Crimble pud.
Bleak House 8.30pm, BBC1 Andrew Davies' masterly adaptation of Dickens' sprawling novel reaches its final episode. Even after so many convoluted plot twists, there are still a few loose ends to tidy up, and these are accordingly tidied up neatly, if not always entirely happily. In particular, the Jarndyce case, Richard's obsession, finally reaches its conclusion. Top marks all round, especially to Denis Lawson for consistently anchoring the series as the near-impossibly saintly Jarndyce, leaving others free to make merry with the Dickensian grotesquery. The year's best Brit drama series.
Jonathan Wright
Manhunters: Wolves Of Gysinge 9pm, BBC2 Set in Sweden in 1820, the magnificent photography of this drama makes for a thoroughly agreeable way of taking in a tale about wolves chewing five-year-old children to death. It concerns two young fangsters saved as cubs by the calamitously well-meaning Catharina Bedoire, who, when let back into the wild, turned on the villagers among whom they grew up, in a lesson about the perils of "tampering with the laws of the wild".
David Stubbs
Peep Show 10pm, C4 Tonight, Mark takes Sophie on a weekend away -- and Jeremy and Super Hans tag along. Now the sad bit: this is the last episode of series three, which, for many, surpassed the boys' previous jaunts as the only comedy truly worth your undivided attention. Come back soon.
Ali Catterall
Hitler's Dream Vacation 8pm, History Channel Fine documentary exploring an inexplicably neglected relic of the Third Reich. On a German Baltic Sea island called Rugen exists an architectural relic as monstrous and absurd as the regime which built it. Called Prora, it was commissioned in the 1930s by an incoming National Socialist government as a vacation camp for German workers -- a Nazi Butlins. The unfinished complex was intended to be five kilometres long, and able to house 20,000 guests. The irony that the mass package holiday was invented by the Nazis will appeal to anyone who has found themselves reflexively whistling the theme to The Great Escape on a guided tour.
Andrew Mueller
BBC4 Sessions: Antony And The Johnsons 9pm, BBC4 The hulking, Chichester-born Antony, with his gentle demeanour and spectacularly eccentric warble, is not to everyone's taste. However, he's the darling of the New York set, with both Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson praising him as a conduit of the pure heartfelt, Boy George duetting with him and a Mercury Music prize bestowed upon him for his album I Am A Bird Now. Here's a chance to decide for yourself whether he is an angel in Bernard Bresslaw shape or the Tiny Tim de nos jours in this live music session recorded at London's St Luke's.
David Stubbs
City Lights (Charles Chaplin , 1931) 10pm, Artsworld One of the tramp's last near-silent outings: Chaplin provided a musical soundtrack and the occasional comic blob of noise. The story of the tramp's love for a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) and his attempts to raise the money for her eye-operation totters perilously close to the sentimental, but it's brilliantly funny too.
Phil Howlett
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Yes, that's right, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here all week ....
And there are just so many carols, aren't there?
*Evil laughter*
