December offers a mixture of comfort and confrontation, and this week’s programming fully embraces that. Classic cinema rubs shoulders with dark thrillers, while documentaries probe institutions, scandals, and the weight of history. Three choices stand out as essential: 🌟 Sicario on Sunday, a bracing study in moral corrosion; 🌟 Lucy Worsley Investigates: The Black Death on Wednesday, a grounded journey into catastrophe; and 🌟 The Sting on Thursday, still one of the most elegant pieces of cinematic misdirection ever committed to film. What unites this week’s offerings is their refusal to flatter the viewer — each asks us to look more closely, feel more deeply, and resist the easy answer. As ever, Culture Vulture keeps an alternative eye on the cultural terrain, alert to nuance and alive to the unexpected. Reviews and selections are by Pat Harrington.
SATURDAY 6 DECEMBER 2025
11:55 AM — Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (1951), Channel 5
Alastair Sim’s Scrooge remains one of the most psychologically rich interpretations of Dickens’s classic. Rather than leaning into caricature, Sim approaches the character from the inside out, letting us glimpse the accumulated disappointments and emotional calluses that shape the miser. His performance makes Scrooge’s transformation feel deeply earned — less a sudden revelation than an unfreezing.
This adaptation excels in its careful balance between realism and the supernatural. London is depicted in a way that foregrounds harshness rather than sentiment, emphasising poverty, cold, and workhouses as social facts rather than set dressing. The ghosts fit seamlessly into this world, appearing not as theatrical intruders but manifestations of conscience.
The cinematography gives the film a moody richness, with long shadows, tight interiors, and expressive lighting making Scrooge’s emotional darkness feel literal. These visual choices underline the story’s message: poverty and isolation warp the soul as surely as greed does.
The supporting cast reinforces Dickens’s themes of compassion and community. Characters such as Cratchit and Fred are played not as moral props but as real people, embodying social values Scrooge has forgotten. Their warmth gives the narrative weight.
In the end, this Scrooge endures because it refuses easy cheer. It reminds us that kindness is difficult, transformation painful, and the world still full of those left outside in the cold. It’s a Christmas film that earns its sentiment.
10:00 PM — Hits That Missed at the BBC, BBC Two
This affectionate rummage through the BBC archives highlights the eccentric, the forgotten, and the ambitious near-misses that never quite entered the cultural bloodstream. Rather than mocking these oddities, the programme celebrates them as evidence that creativity is a risk — and innovation often sprouts from experiments that didn’t completely land. It’s a tribute to the BBC’s willingness to try.
11:30 PM — King Richard (2021), BBC Two
King Richard surprises by refusing the conventions of a typical sports biopic. Will Smith anchors the film with a carefully restrained performance that reveals Richard Williams as a man shaped by a world that undervalued both him and his daughters. His obsessive planning is portrayed not as delusion but as a strategy forged by necessity.
The emotional power of the film lies in its family dynamics. Richard’s relationship with Oracene, played superbly by Aunjanue Ellis, is complex: loving, contentious, and grounded in shared ambition. Their arguments reveal the tension between guidance and control, sacrifice and expectation.
The depiction of Compton provides crucial social context. The film recognises that the Williams sisters emerged not from privilege but from a community full of obstacles and resilience. These scenes anchor the narrative in a lived reality.
The tennis sequences are taut and kinetic, but the film is more interested in the emotional stakes behind them. It asks: what does success cost, and who pays that cost?
By the final scenes, it’s clear this isn’t a story about tennis but about intention. Richard’s methods may be flawed, sometimes uncomfortably so, but his belief in his daughters becomes a force powerful enough to alter history.
2:00 AM — The Mask of the Red Death (1964), Film4
Roger Corman delivers one of his most visually lavish and thematically potent Poe adaptations. The Mask of the Red Death seduces the viewer with saturated colours and sumptuous sets, creating an environment where decadence, cruelty, and the supernatural intermingle as naturally as breath.
Vincent Price’s Prince Prospero is unforgettable — a tyrant whose refined manners make his sadism more chilling. Price plays him with a detached amusement, suggesting someone who has grown so accustomed to dominance that morality no longer enters his thoughts.
Corman’s direction uses colour symbolically, turning each room in Prospero’s castle into a stage for psychological theatre. The film becomes a meditation on fear, power, and isolation, reinforced by the rhythmic pacing of the masquerade scenes.
Beneath the Gothic grandeur lies a sharp political allegory. Prospero’s fortress of privilege cannot shield him from the suffering he ignores. Corman’s ending, where the Red Death appears not as a villain but an equaliser, feels inevitable and strangely righteous.
It’s a film that invites both indulgence and reflection — lush, eerie, and alive with moral weight.
SUNDAY 7 DECEMBER 2025
11:55 AM — It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), ITV3
Frank Capra’s masterpiece remains so potent because it understands despair intimately. James Stewart’s George Bailey is the quintessential man worn down by obligations he never chose yet shoulders nevertheless. The film’s brilliance lies in revealing how quietly a person can lose hope — and how profoundly their absence would reshape others’ lives.
The visit to Pottersville — a dystopian mirror of Bedford Falls — is a daring sequence that exposes how greed erodes community. This isn’t a fantasy diversion but a critique of a certain kind of America.
Donna Reed’s Mary grounds the emotional arc. She brings intelligence and steel to a role often misconstrued as merely supportive. Her presence reminds George (and us) that love is a force shaped by commitment, not sentiment.
The angel Clarence’s intervention could have been syrupy, but the film uses it to underline the interconnectedness of human actions. George’s worth is measured not in grand gestures but small ones.
It remains a profoundly moving film not because it asserts life is wonderful — but because it argues persuasively that every life impacts others in ways unseen.
7:05 PM — High Noon (1952), 5Action
High Noon unfolds with the tension of a ticking time-bomb. Gary Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane spends the film searching not for justice but for solidarity — and finds none. The story exposes how communities justify cowardice through polite excuses.
Grace Kelly’s Amy provides moral complexity, wrestling between pacifism and loyalty. Her dilemma reframes the film’s meditation on responsibility.
The lack of musical flourish and sparse editing contribute to a sense of inevitability. This isn’t a heroic showdown but a tragic reckoning with abandonment.
In its final scene, when Kane throws his badge into the dust, the film crystallises its critique: a society that refuses to support its defenders deserves neither protection nor pride.
It’s a Western stripped to bare essentials, and all the stronger for it.
8:30 PM — Sammy Davis Jr. at the BBC, BBC Four
9:30 PM — An Evening with Sammy Davis Jr., BBC Four
These two archive programmes reveal Sammy Davis Jr. as a performer of astonishing versatility — vocalist, dancer, mimic, and charismatic storyteller. What emerges is not simply showmanship but mastery: a rare combination of precision and spontaneity. The BBC footage preserves Davis at his magnetic peak.
10:00 PM — Sicario (2015), BBC Two 🌟
Few modern thrillers rival Sicario for intensity. Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, idealistic yet increasingly disillusioned, becomes the audience’s moral compass in a world where legality and necessity diverge sharply. Her disorientation is the viewer’s.
Benicio Del Toro’s Alejandro is the film’s gravitational pull — quiet, wounded, and terrifying. His presence suggests a personal vendetta elevated to geopolitical scale.
Roger Deakins’ cinematography transforms the desert into an arena of moral ambiguity. The night-vision tunnel sequence is legendary: a descent into darkness both literal and ideological.
Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score pulses like an approaching storm, building dread even in moments of stillness.
Sicario offers no comfort. It leaves the viewer unsettled, pondering the cost of security and the ethics of vengeance.
11:55 PM — A Christmas Carol (2018), BBC Two
This adaptation takes Dickens into darker territory, exploring Scrooge not as a comic miser but a man shaped by trauma. The ghostly encounters function as psychological interventions rather than narrative devices.
The film’s atmosphere is thick with fog, shadows, and winter chill, giving Victorian London an oppressive weight that mirrors Scrooge’s emotional burden.
The reimagined Ghost of Christmas Past adds edge and complexity, turning memory into confrontation.
Performances across the board ground the film, preventing its grimmer tone from feeling gratuitous.
It’s not a cosy version — but it is a compelling one, offering emotional depth instead of holiday gloss.
MONDAY 8 DECEMBER 2025
9:00 PM — Civilizations: Rise and Fall — Aztecs, BBC Two
This episode blends sweeping visual history with accessible scholarship, giving viewers a multilayered understanding of Aztec civilisation. It avoids sensationalised portrayals, instead exploring their achievements, beliefs, and cultural intricacies. A thoughtful and enlightening hour.
9:00 PM — Matthew Perry and the Ketamine Queen, BBC Three
A sobering look at the intersections of addiction, celebrity vulnerability, and predatory opportunism. The programme avoids sensationalism, focusing instead on emotional truth and systemic failings that allowed exploitation to thrive around a beloved figure.
9:00 PM — The Secret Life of Mona Lisa, BBC Four
This documentary peels back the layers of myth surrounding the world’s most recognisable painting. Combining scientific analysis with cultural storytelling, it reveals how the Mona Lisa became less an artwork than an icon — and what that transformation says about us.
9:00 PM — Troy Story, Sky History
A lively mix of archaeology, mythology, and investigative curiosity. The programme brings enthusiasm without sacrificing seriousness, making the ancient world feel immediate and surprisingly humorous.
11:00 PM — Psycho (1960), BBC Two
Hitchcock’s Psycho remains a landmark in cinematic tension. Anthony Perkins delivers a masterclass in controlled fragility, portraying Norman Bates as both sympathetic and terrifying. Janet Leigh’s early storyline deepens the film’s shock when Hitchcock abruptly shifts narrative perspective.
Bernard Herrmann’s score, especially the stabbing strings of the shower scene, is inseparable from the film’s identity — a musical expression of fear.
The Bates Motel is a triumph of set design: ordinary enough to be real, eerie enough to unsettle.
The film’s examination of guilt, repression, and identity cycles remains fresh more than sixty years on.
Few thrillers have matched its structural audacity or psychological precision.
TUESDAY 9 DECEMBER 2025
12:00 AM — Licorice Pizza (2021), BBC Three
Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is a sunlit drift through 1970s youthful confusion. Alana Haim delivers a performance of startling naturalism, oscillating between adulthood and adolescence in ways that feel emotionally honest.
The episodic structure mirrors memory — fragmented, vivid, and impulsive. Scenes unfold like sketches rather than plot points.
The supporting cast adds eccentricity without overwhelming the central relationship, giving the film its shaggy charm.
Its nostalgic glow avoids sentimentality, offering affection laced with realism.
It’s a film best experienced rather than analysed — a mood, a time, a feeling of possibility.
WEDNESDAY 10 DECEMBER 2025
1:45 PM — Funny Face (1957), BBC Two
A confection of fashion, philosophy, and romance, Funny Face enchants with Audrey Hepburn’s luminous presence. Her character’s journey from bookshop clerk to Parisian model is played with wit and intelligence.
The Paris settings, captured in lush Technicolor, turn the city into an imaginative playground.
Fred Astaire brings effortless elegance, offsetting the age gap through warmth and charm.
The satire of the fashion world is affectionate rather than biting, adding humour without cynicism.
It endures because it captures the fantasy of reinvention with sincerity and flair.
9:00 PM — Lucy Worsley Investigates: The Black Death, BBC Two 🌟
Worsley brings clarity and compassion to a subject often sensationalised. By centring human stories alongside scientific insight, she reveals how the pandemic reshaped medieval society. Her approach makes a distant catastrophe feel hauntingly relevant.
9:00 PM — See No Evil (1/2), Channel 4
A devastating investigation into the John Smyth abuse scandal. Survivor testimonies are handled with dignity, while institutional failures are examined with unflinching precision. Essential, uncomfortable viewing.
2:05 AM — Memoria (2021), Channel 4
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s meditative film invites viewers into a dreamlike exploration of memory and sound. Tilda Swinton’s restrained performance gives the narrative a fragile centre.
The pacing is slow by design, encouraging reflection rather than reaction.
The sound design becomes a narrative force, blurring internal and external realities.
The Colombian landscapes hold a quiet mystery, treated as repositories of forgotten histories.
It’s a film that refuses traditional storytelling but rewards those willing to surrender to its calm, immersive rhythm.
THURSDAY 11 DECEMBER 2025
1:00 PM — The Sting (1973), Legend 🌟
The Sting remains one of cinema’s most satisfying puzzles. Robert Redford and Paul Newman deliver performances of effortless charisma, their chemistry fuelling the story’s intricate deceptions.
Marvin Hamlisch’s ragtime score gives the film a jaunty irreverence, perfectly contrasting with the criminal stakes.
George Roy Hill’s direction keeps the narrative brisk but never rushed, inviting the viewer to enjoy being fooled.
The supporting cast adds depth, grounding the glamour with grit and humour.
It’s a film that celebrates storytelling itself — clever, playful, and surprisingly warm.
9:00 PM — Play for Today: Special Measures, Channel 5
A sharp, socially engaged drama that channels the spirit of the classic Play for Today era. It balances character study with systemic critique, refusing easy answers and giving viewers plenty to ponder.
9:00 PM — Psycho: The Story of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 Horror Film, Talking Pictures / BBC Four
A thoughtful documentary that contextualises Psycho’s impact, examining Hitchcock’s creative methods and the film’s cultural aftershocks. A perfect warm-up for the feature that follows.
9:40 PM — Psycho (1960), Talking Pictures / BBC Four
Paired with the documentary, the film’s brilliance becomes even more apparent. Its shocks still land, and its atmosphere remains chilling. Viewing them back-to-back deepens appreciation.
9:00 PM — Boston Strangler (2023), Film4
A tense, atmospheric retelling that centres the overlooked journalists who broke the case. Keira Knightley gives a restrained yet powerful performance.
The subdued colour palette evokes a gritty 1970s procedural, emphasising realism over dramatics.
It resists sensationalising violence, instead focusing on institutional indifference.
The pacing is deliberate, mirroring the slow grind of investigative journalism.
By reframing the narrative around the women who uncovered the truth, the film delivers a much-needed corrective to history.
FRIDAY 12 DECEMBER 2025
3:35 PM — Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), BBC Two
Norman Jewison’s bold rock-opera adaptation balances spectacle with spiritual inquiry. Ted Neeley’s delicate performance contrasts beautifully with Carl Anderson’s electrifying Judas.
The desert landscape adds visual grandeur, underscoring the story’s mythic qualities.
The choreography and musical performances push the boundaries of the genre, offering an interpretation both reverent and rebellious.
Themes of betrayal, idealism, and political tension resonate strongly today.
It remains a daring, divisive, but undeniably powerful cinematic experience.
6:45 PM — Her Name Was Grace Kelly, PBS America
An elegant portrait of an icon navigating fame, duty, and reinvention. By moving past tabloid narratives, the documentary reveals the intelligence and determination beneath her public image. Thoughtful and beautifully paced.
9:00 PM — Pulp Fiction (1994), Great! Action
A cultural watershed, Pulp Fiction revolutionised storytelling with its nonlinear structure and unforgettable dialogue. Tarantino’s screenplay blends violence, philosophy, and dark humour in ways that feel both playful and profound.
The performances — Jackson, Travolta, Thurman — are indelible, each scene a small masterclass.
Its soundtrack reshaped how music can define cinematic mood.
Beneath its stylised surface lies a film obsessed with second chances and moral choices.
Three decades on, its influence remains everywhere, yet no imitation has matched its spirit.
11:00 PM — Get Carter (1971), BBC Two
Get Carter stands as one of Britain’s greatest crime films, defined by Michael Caine’s cold, exacting performance. He plays Jack Carter as a man shaped by environments as harsh as the decisions he makes.
Newcastle’s industrial landscape becomes an extension of Carter’s psyche — bleak, unforgiving, and stripped of illusion.
Violence is portrayed without glamour: quick, dull, transactional. Hodges’ realism undercuts any notion of redemption.
The film hints at emotional fractures beneath Carter’s brutality, giving the story a melancholic undertone.
Its ending is unforgettable: stark, inevitable, and utterly truthful to the world the film has built.
STREAMING CHOICES
Channel 4 Streaming — The Spanish Princess (Series 1 & 2)
A richly textured Tudor drama following Catherine of Aragon’s political and emotional journey. It blends romantic intrigue with historical nuance, creating a compelling portrait of a queen navigating power and vulnerability.
Channel 4 Streaming — The White Princess (All 8 Episodes)
A tense continuation of the York–Tudor story, exploring the uneasy marriage between Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Sharp writing and layered performances make it gripping historical drama.
Prime Video — Confessions of a Female Serial Killer (7 December)
A psychological documentary that challenges assumptions about gender and crime. Instead of sensationalism, it pursues complexity, examining background, motive, and institutional response.
Apple TV — F1: The Movie (12 December)
A high-energy, visually striking portrait of Formula 1, balancing technical insight with human rivalry. A must-watch for fans of engineering, competition, and controlled chaos.
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