Christmas and New Year TV programming always offers a feast of entertainment celebrating the countryside. It's a time of family gatherings, with shows to please even the smallest customers and most elderly relatives.
Once you've finished your winter stomp, sit back and relax this festive season with our guide to the best TV and radio airing over Christmas 2023. From the chocolate wizardry of Willy Wonka and Mary Berry to the ghostly going-ons at Button House and Baskerville Hall, there's something to tempt everyone.
We will continue to update this page as transmission dates and times are released.
Best TV and film to watch over Christmas 2023
Wonka
Cinemas nationwide, 8 December
Roald Dahl's maverick chocolate-maker Willy Wonka is world famous - but he leapt on to the pages of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fully formed. This hotly anticipated film, starring the charming Timothée Chalomet, tells the origin story of the eccentric chocolatier and how he perfects his craft in the face of ruthless obstruction from the chocolate cartel. Also starring Huge Grant and Rowan Atkinson, the film promises buckets of Christmas magic. You may recognise several landscapes, with many sections of the film shot in Britain - find out where Wonka was filmed here.
The Famous Five
CBBC, 9 December, 5.25pm
Enid Blyton's classic adventure stories are brought to life this Christmas, as Julian, George, Anne, Dick and Timmy the dog encounter mysteries and mayhem in the countryside. Set in the 1940s, these action-packed stories have long captured children's imaginations, and the BBC has adapted three for screen, filming in Cornwall, Gloucester and South Wales. In the first episode, The Curse of Kirrin Island, a body washes up on shore, and the intrepid cousins' investigations lead them to an uninhabited island.
Mary Berry’s Highland Christmas
BBC One, 13 December, 9pm
In honour of the country in which her mother was raised, Mary returns to her Scottish roots in this festive special. The seasoned chef whips up a Cranachan wreath, a cheese fondue and Mary’s Buche de Noel – a classic yule log flavoured with chestnut, coffee and chocolate. She also visits a ceilidh, goes Christmas carolling – and plays Mrs Christmas with a spot of reindeer-herding in the Cairngorms.
"Christmas in Scotland is the biggest treat, my mother and her family were Scottish so it is a special place for me," says Mary. "The festive holidays are all about sharing special times with friends and family and so what better way than cooking some of my favourite dishes with a traditional Scottish twist."
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Netflix, December 15
This long-awaited sequel follows our chicken heroes now that they have flown the coop - and set up an island sanctuary. Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) have become parents to their chick Molly (Bella Ramsey), and life should be peaceful. But things are taking a strange turn over the water, and when adventurous Molly makes a break for the mainland, the flock may need to fight another day… Imelda Staunton, Jane Horrocks, Romesh Ranganathan, Nick Mohammed and Miranda Richardson all lend their voices to the feathery characters.
All Creatures Great and Small Christmas Special
Channel 5, 21 December, 9pm
Filmed in and around Grassington, this much-loved, Yorkshire Dales-set drama returns for another heartwarming Christmas special. It is 1940 and James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) is away, training with the RAF, after being called up to serve, while heavily pregnant Helen (Rachel Shenton) is at home in Darrowby, preparing for the arrival of their first child. The village is also getting ready - for festive celebrations, albeit with bickering over who will take the part of Father Christmas, Siegfried (Sam West) or Carmody (James Anthony-Rose).
Also look out for a worlds-colliding special, in The Yorkshire Vet Meets All Creatures Great and Small. James Herriot's real-life apprentice Peter Wright and Shona Searson will enter the fictional frames of Darrowby, while Sam West and Anna Madeley (Mrs Hall) will visit the real-life sites featured in The Yorkshire Vet.
The Winter King
ITV, from 21 December
This is the season for myths and legends, so little can beat the thrill of watching a young Arthur swashbuckle his way around a breathtaking and brutal medieval landscape. In this drama, set in fifth-century Britain, Merlin summons Arthur Pendragon back from exile to fight for his country. Also starring Eddie Marsan as King Uther Pendragon, the series is based on Bernard Cornwall's Warlord Chronicles and was filmed in Wales and the West Country.
Countryfile: A Cumbrian Christmas
BBC One, Christmas Eve, 24 December, 6pm
For this year’s Countryfile Christmas, the show is in the Cumbrian fells, near Appleby, with shepherdess Katie and her family on their 250-acre upland farm. With livestock to keep warm, and sheep to shift, winter is a busy time. Countryfile presenter Sammi heads into the fields with Katie to see the Herdwick sheep and persuade them to star in the annual Christmas card, while Joe rolls up his sleeves to help out in kitchen, brewing mulled cider, baking apple crumble and making delicious chutney from apples gathered from the farm's orchard. Over in North Warwickshire, Adam helps to decorate a tractor with schoolchildren, and joins a procession of 70 tractors on the Sheepy Christmas Tractor Run.
Find out where Countryfile is visiting this week and what time it is on BBC1.
Inside Classical: the Hound of the Baskervilles
BBC Four, Christmas Eve, 24 December, 8.30pm
Mark Gatiss turns his talents to performance, in a reading of Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, at the Barbican. Gatiss takes the role of the great detective, while Sanjeev Bhaskar co-stars as Dr Watson as the duo travel from the comfort of 222b Baker Street to the dark, desolate moors of the Baskerville Hall estate, on the trail of “a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon”. Stripped of theatrical sets or props, the performance relies on the drama of the story and the transportive power of the new musical score by Neil Brand, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot 249
BBC Two, Christmas Eve, 24 December, 10pm
Continuing the supernatural theme, Mark Gatiss’ now-traditional Christmas ghost story this time adapts Arthur Conan Doyle’s gothic horror about Oxford students being terrorised by an undead being. Set in 1881, the tale stars Kit Harrington and Freddie Fox as athlete Abercrombie Smith and Egyptology obsessive Edward Bellingham respectively. The latter keeps an ancient mummy in his room, which he calls Lot 249 after the name of the auction case, and conducts disturbing experiments. What could possibly go wrong?
Beyond Paradise Christmas Special
BBC One, Christmas Eve, 24 December, 9pm
Why is Shipton Abbott suffering a series of weird robberies? Humphrey Goodman and his police colleagues are on the case, and what they eventually discover has a poignant bearing on the meaning of Christmas. Meanwhile, the village is getting ready for festivities, although Esther's daughter Zoe is less than impressed at having to work in Santa's Grotto.
Tabby McTat
BBC One, Christmas Day, 25 December, 2.35pm
Julia Donaldson’s stories delight children the world over, and this is the latest animation of her work by Magic Light Pictures, following their beautiful adaptations of The Snail and the Whale, The Gruffalo, and last year’s The Smeds and the Smoos, among others. Tabby McTat follows the adventures of a musical cat, voiced by Sopé Dirisu and his busking owner (Rob Brydon).
Ghosts Christmas Special
BBC One, Christmas Day, 25 December, 7.45pm
Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike Cooper (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) are again muddling through the season with the ghostly residents of Button House. Mike’s mum Betty is staying and her idea of help isn't going down well with anyone, living or dead. In the meantime, the ghosts try to get Robin into the festive spirit with decoration and song, but it's proving hard to produce that classic ‘Christmassy’ feeling. This is the final episode of a hugely popular sitcom, and it's sure to be a fond farewell.
Vera: the Rising Tide
ITV, Boxing Day, 26 December, 8pm
A brand-new episode featuring the curmudgeonly DCI Vera Stanhope is a Christmas gift in its own right. The series is loved as much for Vera’s exasperated demeanour as it is for the stunning shots of the Northumberland landscape. In The Rising Tide, Vera has no chance to celebrate Christmas as she must instead investigate the death of man on Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, following his reunion with old friends. Brenda Blethyn has played Vera for 13 series and she continues to deliver a powerhouse performance as the cantankerous-yet-compassionate copper.
Murder Is Easy
BBC One, 27 December, 9pm
Nothing says Christmas like an Agatha Christie murder mystery featuring an all-star cast. This year, the Christie tale is Murder Is Easy, starring David Jonsson as a retired police officer Luke Fitzwilliam. During a chance meeting on a train with the mysterious Miss Pinkerton (Penelope Wilton), he is alerted to a series of suspicious deaths in the sleepy English village of Wynchwood Under Lyme. Miss Pinkerton's own sudden demise convinces him to investigate. Fresh from departing Shetland, Douglas Henshall also appears in this drama, which was filmed in Scotland. Expect period charm, curious characters and quirky country life.
Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing
BBC Two, 29 December, 9pm
Scotland is clearly the place to be this Christmas. Just as Mary Berry is heading to the Highlands for her seasonal special, Paul and Bob are in Scotland to toast Hogmanay and sample the salmon fishing in this hour-long festive show. After a steam train jaunt overlooking the River Dee, the duo try their luck along the Tay and Ericht, before celebrating the year ahead with friends and special guests. Paul and Bob will then be back in 2024 for their seventh season - a bumper eight-episode series, in which they travel to Wales, the Scottish Borders and Wiltshire. Merry Christmas, everybody.
Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster
BBC One, New Year's Day, 1 January, 8pm
David Attenborough and an ancient sea monster - what's not to love? A giant skull has been found on the cliffs of Dorset, so Attenborough and two intrepid fossil hunters set out to excavate the bone, and to unravel its mysteries with a crack team of scientists and palaeontologists. This appears to be the skull of a pliosaur, which roamed the oceans 150 million years ago. At a whopping 12 metres long with formidable strength, could it be a new species?
