First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 19th 2023

Now that the dust has settled, and the year is rapidly hurtling towards the Easter holidays, it seems like there is no better time for us to calmly sit down and have a bit of a chat about the most recent festive season.

We’re nothing if not topical here on VISION ON SOUND.

No, really… Bear with me on this…

Because, sometimes, right around the time of broadcast, it’s rather difficult to fully appreciate the festive season for what it is. We get hung up on certain programmes as if they’re genuinely the BEST THING EVER, but then find that, after a few weeks bitter reflection, we find that the programmes that briefly seemed so very special and shiny and new, might not have turned out to feel all that memorable after all.

So, was CHRISTMAS 2022 a bit of a classic of iconic television moments, or merely another step on the inexorable journey from the giddy heights of days when CHRISTMAS TELLY felt like the hottest ticket in town down some slippery slope towards just being as “ho-hum” and monotonous as some people tend to suggest? Is the inevitable demise of linear television, and entire families gathering together to watch unforgettable programmes truly on the cards?

I’m not certain we manage to get to the resolution of that during the next hour, but WARREN CUMMINGS and I did get together at the end of January to have a bit of a chat about what we found worth watching on the main channels in late December last year, and whether any of it felt truly memorable or special.

Our viewing choices were surprisingly similar, so we talked a little bit about shows as diverse as MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING, GHOSTS, DETECTORISTS, INSIDE NUMBER NINE, Christmas Ghost Stories, crime dramas, and certain other things which at least manage to draw out one or two opinions on the state of current television programming, which I hope you’ll find as entertaining to listen to as we did in recording them.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.