The secrets to making a perfect TV Christmas special

The minds behind Gavin and Stacey, Motherland, Bad Education and Cuckoo reveal why their Christmas specials are festive favourites.

For most of us, Christmas TV specials are up there with tinsel and pigs in blankets as an essential element of the festive season, and viewers will watch the best ones every year.

But what separates the Christmas TV triumphs from the turkeys? To find out, we spoke to the people behind some of the best specials of recent years to find out how they made them a snow-covered success.

‘It's making sure that you've bought that feel of Christmas’

One of the big production secrets about Christmas specials is that they are often written and filmed in the summer.

“If you're doing a Christmas special,” says actor Charlie Wernham, “it's never at Christmas.” Charlie was part of the Bad Education Christmas special in 2013. “It was a bit weird, having Christmas decorations up and it being warm outside.”

“It's always very weird,” says Motherland writer Holly Walsh. “When you're writing about mince pies and Christmas presents, during a time when every air conditioner in the country is turned on.”

Director Christine Gernon shot the 2019 Gavin and Stacey Christmas special during one very hot summer. “It was crazy,” she says. “Particularly for the cast. Alison Steadman [who played Pam] was like, ‘I'm going to wear a big Christmas jumper,’ outdoor filming in the sweltering heat.”

Directors have ways of making it feel more wintery than it is. “We always start indoors,” Christine adds, “so that you can put them in whatever clothes you want, and not worry about it so much.”

The actors also do a lot to sell the Christmassy feeling. Christine says, “James Corden is doing some of the best cold acting I've ever seen at the end of the episode. It was a masterclass in how to be cold when you're actually really warm.”

Filming in the summer does have its benefits. Speaking of the moment in the second Gavin and Stacey special when the couple meet on the Barry seafront, Chris says “if we shot that in December it would have been horrific. It would have been freezing, but in summer it was quite a pleasant thing to shoot.”

All this trickery is in the service of one thing. “Even though you're filming a Christmas special in summer, it’s lovely going somewhere and making a bit of Christmas in the corner of somewhere. It's making sure that you've bought that feel of Christmas.”\

‘Everyone has got loads of horrible Christmas experiences that we plough into’

For Holly, it is realism that makes a good Christmas special. “There has to be a truth to it,” she says. “That's what we've always strived for. What are our experiences of spending Christmas with our families? What are our experiences of the exhaustion of having children and keeping the facade going? Everyone has got loads of horrible Christmas experiences that we plough into.”

Despite this realism, the 2020 Motherland Christmas special does give its characters one thing we don’t often get in reality – snow on Christmas Day. “We were keen to have those nice night scenes and a bit of a flurry of snow to break up the indoors-ness of it all.”

Not every Christmas special, however, gets snow. “[The Gavin and Stacey special] couldn’t afford snow!” jokes Chris. “It definitely doesn't snow in August in Barry, I can tell you that.”

The 2014 Cuckoo Christmas special has a few seconds of snow at the very end. “Our budget meant that if we had written [more] snow, it wouldn’t have gone in,” says the show’s co-creator Kieron Quirke. “There wouldn't have even been an argument. Producers would go, ‘obviously, you can't have snow.’”

This does not stop writers from dreaming of setting their shows in a winter wonderland. “We're writers. We write what we want,” says Holly. “We don’t worry about everyone else having to make it happen!”

‘We stand in a tradition with all our favourite shows’

Making Christmas specials makes many creatives nostalgic about their own Christmases past. “I used to love growing up when my brother and I used to buy the Radio Times,” says Holly, “we would spend hours circling all the things we were going to watch.”

Cuckoo’s writers paid tribute to classic Christmas content in their special. “They're actually watching some Love Actually in the episode,” says the show’s co-creator Robin French. “We took some inspiration from that. Because there's lots of rom-com elements. It's romcom-tastic.”

The special also pays tribute to the ultimate Christmas tale with its storyline for Greg Davies’ character Ken. “With Ken,” says Robin, “we've got a cranky guy being a good guy, which gives us some Christmas Carol Scrooge sort of feels.”

‘People like being with the people that they enjoy watching at Christmas’

The tinsel, lights and turkey might seem to be the elements that make a Christmas special, but it is the characters that truly make it work.

Asked why the Gavin and Stacey Christmas specials had so chimed with fans, Christine says, “it's lots of people who all love each other on the show. And what is better at Christmas than that? People like being with the people that they enjoy watching at Christmas.”

For Kieran, it is about finding which elements of Christmas work for your characters. “Early in our thinking, we definitely thought that Greg had to be a Santa at some point. To that extent, you are sort of fitting Christmas tropes to your cast.”

“It’s a very lovely, reassuring thing at Christmas,” says Holly, “to be able to turn on your telly and know these people are there for you no matter what's happening in your real Christmas.”