‘I’f everyone else thinks Scott is a nice, normal, easy-to-get-with guy except you – what am I telling you?” said Neil’s wife, Laura, exasperated. “He is.” winningNeil’s taunts. Such is the premise of this year’s Christmas in Heaven movie, Bad News.
Scott, a blind man (played by comedian Chris McCausland, who is also blind), is a new arrival in the neighborhood who quickly makes friends with all the neighbors. Except for Neil, who sees through his appropriate act and just knows the festive lights are still on at the Scotts’ house (we open in March and will go into August with no change in the house’s illuminations), despite Neil’s repeated requests to take them down. let his room shine, it is war. He knows Scott is making fun of him as surely as he knows Scott is guarding his recycling bin. Neil is played by Lee Mack, giving great value for a kid’n’Christmas-appropriate version of the character “Lee” about not going out.
Now it’s Christmas again and Neil’s obsession with his next festive villain has only grown. “Dad had a tricky year,” Laura (Sarah Alexander) explains to their daughter Chloe (Millie Kiss). His best friend and business partner in a security terror company has done him dirty, we understand – although I like to think that the underlying suspicion is a natural bonhomous part of Neil’s psyche. I feel less lonely and secure in the knowledge that others will be needed to form the army when the scrotums of lies turn.
This is a family-friendly festive fun (words that should be noted by television PRs everywhere) so the rivalry between two people – in which they competed to have the role of coordinator of the neighborhood watch, which makes the joint work of the neutral. he wanted them too – it reaches a climax when Neil overpowers his own holiday decorations, knocks them out and powers the entire village. On Christmas Eve! Everyone must disperse to the heated houses and set fire to whoever enters them, except for the two new neighborhood policemen who will remain in the deserted properties and in the various cares of travel as guardians.
For us in acts two and three we have the Brennans, a local crime family, comprising the formidable matriarch Stacey (Rebecca Staton Strong, of course. I think it’s set at this point), her mini-me daughter Ashleigh (Emily Coates; so good in a small part, so much more from him), humble son Barry (Josiah Eloi) and equally loud husband Big Barry (Ben Crompton) – a looming frame.
A trip to the street forces our heroes to let go of their differences and engage in various Home Solo-style shenanigans to take out the baddies after some slight danger (“One of your cameras let me go for three years!” Stacey tells Neil when he captures him. I can”, he shouts). The good ends happily (with the Christmas candles in the street dinner which, in the spirit of the times, I don’t call anyone to explain to me) and the bad unfortunately, (mostly through the upstairs doors, through the stairs and cicadas cicadas. bat). so much!
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The Bad News stretch is a bit thin – it’s an hour’s worth of material that’s best spread out over 90 minutes. It also worked, especially compared to the absolute deals we had two years ago. Before Christmas Heist (with Timothy Spall and James Nesbitt as good and bad Santas respectively) and Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto’s Christmas Carol (a retelling of the Dickens story, Suranne Jones stars as a modern day corporate Scrooge plus Morecambe and Wise impersonators Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel as the shadows of Christmas past).
But Mala tells his moments. Stacey’s motherly advice to her teenage daughter – “Ashleigh! You can’t avoid the attention of the police and you can be on the move.” The quintessential Mack webs in “I fit the panic, I don’t do the criminals. What you did was confuse me with the Swat team.” And the heart-to-heart between Neil and Scott that adds depth to their lives, as a man living with a vice becomes elegant and poignant.
The ghost of Christmas came to Carole though. I recommend reviewing that as your annual Christmas treat – if you’ve been good enough, of course.