CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Miriam’s as complete of Yuletide cheer as a personal debt collector with toothache

Miriam’s Dickensian Christmas

Rating: ** 

I Despise Suzie As well

Score: ****

There is no shortage of tinselly presenters on festive telly turning into Dermot O’Fairy-Lights, Holly Christmastree and Eggnogg Wallace.

You could consider, who better than Miriam Margolyes, Professor Brussels Sprout herself, from the Harry Potter videos, to current a Dickensian Christmas (C4)?

Pretty much any one, is the answer to that. Miriam is about as whole of Yuletide pleasure as a debt collector with toothache. She stomped all over the gift division at Fortnum & Mason’s, sneering at the costs, then moaned about the menu in a Victorian kitchen area and ended up in her own home, refusing to prepare dinner the Xmas supper.

She could have donned a silly seasonal jumper and looked like a Christmas pudding, but not a likelihood. She did not even mention the Sprout relationship.

You could possibly believe, who superior than Miriam Margolyes, Professor Brussels Sprout herself, from the Harry Potter films, to present a Dickensian Xmas (C4)? Nearly any one, is the remedy to that

Miriam grew up in a Jewish household in which her father refused to have a Xmas tree, and this a single-off little bit of routine stuffing was intended to chart her conversion from curmudgeonly Scrooge to chortling Pickwick. The producers created the miscalculation of assuming that, due to the fact she seems like a sweet very little outdated girl, she must be a darling at heart.

She was on best behaviour listed here, minding her language and her wind. But she’ll under no circumstances be cuddly or benevolent. She’s as Christmassy as a mousetrap at the base of your stocking.

Her only concession to the holiday temper was a fondness for Dickens, and even then she desired the campaigning, political elements of his novels to the bonhomie and superior cheer. In some way, she was able to seize on his opposition to sending six-year-olds down coal mines and to prosper this as a virtue-signalling product.

Like football pundit Gary Neville, Miriam appears to consider that her disapproval of boy or girl slavery will make her morally outstanding to the relaxation of us. In fact, she disapproves of all the things. ‘What irritates me about Christmas is the hypocrisy,’ she grumbled, ‘people acquiring provides for people today they really do not like with funds they don’t have.’

Making up a head of steam, like an overboiled pud, she continued: ‘Need it be so expensive? It feels like we are pressured to shell out a lot more then we can afford in an obscene paying out extravaganza.’

Billie Piper is each heroine and grotesque in I Dislike Suzie As well (Sky Atlantic), her comedy-drama about an actress on the skids and confused by a toxic divorce

Then she gathered a group of little ones to play with paper dolls in a Victorian toy theatre, snarling and bellowing at them when they didn’t examine their strains accurately initial time. Dickens could have made a hilarious character out of Miriam Margolyes. But she would have been a person of his gallery of grotesques, decidedly not a heroine.

Billie Piper is both heroine and grotesque in I Detest Suzie Way too (Sky Atlantic), her comedy-drama about an actress on the skids and overwhelmed by a poisonous divorce. Skirting shut to autobiography, she performs a twice-married previous pop star whose fame peaked when she starred in a sci-fi serial.

Suzie repeatedly wins our sympathy, then squanders it with reckless, self-destructive outbursts all through consume and drug binges. There are parallels with Sheridan Smith’s Rosie Malloy Provides Up Every thing, but this display is much more bitter and vicious.

It is also as well intent on skewering the shallow, manipulative entire world of leisure. Lots of people, these types of as the self-pitying soccer celeb (Blake Harrison) or brutal showbiz agent (Anastasia Hille), are stereotypes.

The ship-up of actuality exhibits these types of as The Masked Dancer, with Billie undertaking a manic mime regime like David Bowie on LSD, is an prolonged in-joke.

Author Lucy Prebble is greatest on the war between Suzie and her ex, fighting for custody of their disabled son. People scenes are exceptional.

Waggy tails of the night: On a frozen lake, on his Alaskan Journey (C4), George Clarke tried out sledding with canines — just as Gordon Buchanan did on BBC at the weekend. Clever chaps! Whilst the relaxation of us fume more than rail and bus strikes, they’ve obtained transportation.