Christmas in black and white

Got my mits on the telly listings for Christmas. Been looking forward to seeing what they've put between Popstars - The Rivals episodes.

I love vegging out in front of old black and white movies at Christmas, preferably with a load of bad food and a couple of bottles of vino tinto.

So finally getting hold of the big list and looking for the Bette Davis classics, the Joan Crawford melodramas, The Cary Grant screwballs, the Robert Mitchum Noirs...er

Ah.

It's A Wonderful Life, White Christmas and Miracle on 34th Street. Oh. And Greer Garson in Mrs Miniver and some dodgy John Wayne. Channel 5 is showing bits of Casablanca in between holiday ads.

And that's about it.

The rest is all the stuff you've seen all year, but longer and with a Christmas tree in the corner, or it's something you already rented from Monty Video or Blockbuster, or it's an extended Reality TV show about the making of a reality TV show.

Whoopie doo.

This is a bit of a TV crisis now I think about it. Good black'n'whites are what Christmas telly is all about. The schedulers don't have to bung em on at peak time. Ten in the morning'll do. Because it's a cultural nightmare just waiting to happen - a generation growing up not knowing that films were'nt always vacuous action flicks and famous actresses weren't always anorexic kleptomaniacs.

Christmas was always the time that you caught up on the film classics. They would pick out a famous icon - Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Jimmy Cagney and show about five of their best (a difficult choice in all cases) and you could nurse your hangover watching some classic like Platinum Blonde, Grand Hotel or Angels With Dirty Faces. Really classy, funny, sexy movies full of character and style.

Style these days equates to a Ben Damon / Matt Afflick one-liner or a well placed Reece Witherspoon "Whaddever..." but there was a time when a film star really had a line to deliver.

Christmas telly needs a bit of REAL sexual chemistry - and it doesn't come in full color.

Blogga.