Worth Watching: "After The Party" and "Elton John: Never Too Late"

Plus a lookahead to what is on at Christmas.

Hello,

Welcome to Worth Watching.

The Radio Times Christmas double issue came out earlier this week (it’s £5.95, in case you were wondering), and naturally I’ve already gone through it with a highlighter.

I can’t tell you whether many of the shows are actually worth watching yet, as previews of some of these shows are not yet available. So I’ll be doing another newsletter with my recommendations, around this time next week.

Here is what looks decent at first glance.

WHAT LOOKS DECENT FROM THE CHRISTMAS RADIO TIMES

• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (BBC One, Christmas Day)

• Gavin & Stacey: The Finale (Christmas Day)

• Squid Game 2 (Netflix, Boxing Day)

• Outnumbered Christmas Special (BBC One, Boxing Day)

• Cunk on Life (BBC Two, 30th December)

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The BBC seems to be upping the ante on the Christmas Day schedules this year, which is lovely to see at a time when the future has been considered to be streaming.

On ITV, apart from the reboot of Bullseye with Freddie Flintoff there’s hardly anything on the network worth mentioning. Even Russell T Davies brought it up on The One Show last night, saying “Have you seen what they’ve got on? Nothing.”

Take Christmas Eve for instance. ITV is counting down the TikTok: Top 100 of 2024.

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In case you missed it… I launched my WTF TV News thread of 2024, which you a watch on TikTok, Threads, Instagram and Bluesky.

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FOUR TV PICKS FOR THIS WEEK

After The Party (Channel 4, all episodes) – Channel 4 has saved one of the best dramas of the year to the very end of the year. The six-parter follows Penny (Robyn Malcolm), a no-nonsense and respected teacher, whose life is turned upside down when her ex-husband, Phil (Peter Mullan), returns to the area. You then learn that several years earlier, she had accused him of a sex crime she claims she witnessed following a party.

I know the subject matter isn’t exactly light here, but this series is worth watching because it exceeds on every level. The plotting, production, and acting are all spot on. Robyn Malcolm brings out Sarah Lancashire as Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley. The drama also explores the issue of finding justice when the criminal justice system does nothing or is virtually impossible to prove.

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Elton: Never Too Late (Disney+, one-off documentary) – Elton John is a fascinating subject for a documentary, behind some of the most known songs in the modern era and so incredibly open about the hardships he has experienced throughout his life and so eviscerating on his own actions. If you haven’t read or listened to his audiobook ‘Me,’ you really should.

This new ninety-minute film (co-directed by his husband David Furnish) follows his final tour and tells you his life story through a mixture of archive clips, animation, interview clips, and narration by Elton.

The archive section is the most compelling part, particularly when you see him exude such confidence on the stage (you see him perform ‘Rocketman’ for the very first time), alongside his narration talking about how unhappy he was. My only wish is that the archive looked back at his whole life in chronological order, rather than picking and choosing selective parts.