‘If everyone else thinks Scott’s a nice, normal, easy-to-get-on-with bloke except you – what does that tell you?” says Neil’s exasperated wife, Laura. “That he’s winning,” snarls Neil. Such is the setup for this year’s Sky Christmas film, Bad Tidings.
Scott, a blind man (played by the comedian Chris McCausland, who is also blind), is a recent arrival on the close who has quickly made friends with all the neighbours. Except Neil, who sees through his congenial act and just knows that the festive lights still up on Scott’s house (we open in March and move swiftly on to August with no change in domestic illuminations), despite Neil’s repeated requests to take them down as they shine into his bedroom, is an act of war. He knows Scott is laughing at him just as surely as he knows Scott keeps nicking his recycling bin. Neil is played by Lee Mack, giving great value as a kid’n’Christmas-appropriate version of his character “Lee” from Not Going Out.
Now it’s Christmas again and Neil’s obsession with his relentlessly cheery neighbour has only grown. “Dad’s had a tricky year,” Laura (Sarah Alexander) explains to their daughter Chloe (Millie Kiss). His best friend and business partner in their security alarm company did him dirty, we understand – though I like to think that a basic suspicion of the naturally bonhomous is an innate part of Neil’s psyche. It makes me feel less alone and secure in the knowledge that there will be others to form the necessary army when the lying scrotes eventually turn.
This is family-friendly festive fun (a phrase that should be trademarked by knackered television PRs everywhere) so the rivalry between the two men – including a competition to nab the role of neighbourhood watch coordinator, whereby they become joint holders of a job neither of them actually wanted – reaches a climax when Neil overdoes his own holiday decorations, switches them on and knocks out the power to the whole street. On Christmas Eve! Everyone must disperse to the heated and lighted homes of whoever will take them in – except the two new neighbourhood watchmen, who will stay as caretakers to the deserted properties and assorted pets that cannot travel.
To carry us through acts two and three we have the Brennans – a local crime family, comprising fearsome matriarch Stacey (the mighty Rebekah Staton, of course. I think at this point it’s statutory), her mini-me daughter Ashleigh (Emily Coates, so good in her small part that you wish there had been more of it), bumbling son Little Barry (Josiah Eloi) and equally bumbling husband Big Barry (Ben Crompton) – eyeing up the joints.
Their raid on the street forces our heroes to put aside their differences and engage in various Home Alone-style shenanigans to thwart the baddies after some mild peril (“One of your cameras put me away for three years!” Stacey tells Neil when she catches him. “I can only apologise for the excellent resolution,” he whimpers). The good end happily (with a candlelit Christmas dinner in the street which, in the spirit of the season, I am calling upon no one to explain to me) and the bad unhappily (mostly via loft doors, booby-trapped stairs and a cricket bat). Hurrah!
Bad Tidings is stretched a bit thin – it is an hour’s worth of material at best spread over 90 minutes. It’s also underworked, especially when compared with the absolute treats we have had over the past couple of years, such as The Heist Before Christmas (with Timothy Spall and James Nesbitt as good and bad Santas respectively) and Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto’s Christmas Carole (a reworking of the Dickens tale, starring Suranne Jones as a modern-day corporate Scrooge plus Morecambe and Wise impersonators Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel as the ghosts of Christmas past).
But Bad Tidings has its moments. Stacey’s maternal advice to her teenage daughter – “Ashleigh! You can’t avoid police attention AND be an influencer”. The quintessential Mack spin on “I fit alarms, I don’t take down criminals. What you’ve done there is confuse me with a Swat team”. And the heart-to-heart between Neil and Scott that adds depth to his life as a man living with a disability is neatly and movingly done.
The ghost of Christmas Carole past does hover though. I’d recommend a rewatch of that as your annual Christmas treat – if you’ve been good enough, of course.
• Bad Tidings aired on Sky Max and is available on Now
