Season's Greetings

If you unaccountably wanted to watch some middle-aged British people be absolutely beastly to one another this Christmas - content warning: alcoholism, suicidal ideation, emotional abuse within marriage, an act of violence - do watch Alan Ayckbourn's Christmas plays as adapted for the BBC in the mid-1980s, 'Season's Greetings' & 'Absurd Person Singular' (the second, in particular, is bleak though sometimes horribly funny for certain values of 'funny').

This is very much not the Richard Curtis's version of the UK (a decade or two later, these plays were written in 1972 and 1980 and are 'of their time') - though they are part of a certain tranche of 1980s British television that offered me, as a teenager, some early intimations of what adult life might turn out to be like... the series 'A Very Peculiar Practice' did too, a few years later, and some specific films, though more obliquely... not that my actually existing adult life resembles an Alan Ayckbourn farce, thankyouverymuch. 

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, kind thoughts to any who find this season difficult or upsetting. 

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[See also: Christmas 2018 / Christmas 2019 (Luton) / Christmas 2019 ('Cats') / Christmas 2023 / 'Giving Birth to Birds' (story) / Comedy / Ghosts / Incomplete Site Index ]