It would be ideal to say “look, here are seven Christmas series to watch these days”, the equivalent of It’s a Wonderful Life or The Holiday, but the sad reality is that (spoiler alert!) the festive series that premiere these days do not They are especially memorable. This does not mean that specific recommendations cannot be made for these days taking into account each person’s personal circumstances.
There will be those who will have a lot of free time because they have a few days of vacation, but they will want to stay at home under the blanket because of the winter cold and how soon it gets dark. There will be those who are looking for series to watch with the family or to help digest the infernal binges. And what series do we recommend watching?
Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) is the bastard daughter of Murder Wrote and Columbo, covered in a patina of extreme and modern quality. She has the gift of detecting lies and, as she finds dead bodies wherever she goes, she dedicates herself to solving crimes using an innate and infallible ability. Behind her is Rian Johnson, who perfected her passion for relaxed crimes developed in Daggers in the Back.
Why is it ideal for these days? The episodes are self-contained: each episode has a different murder case and the only main character that repeats is Charlie who detects a lie and cannot stop investigating until she discovers the truth. They are like short films, each with its setting, its sense of humor, its essence and an ability to always present episodic characters with charisma. And, if someone has murder-loving parents with a sense of humor, this will unite more than nougat.
Allison and Mike (Charlotte Ritchie and Kyel Smith-Bynoe) inherit a mansion in the country. When she suffers an accident that almost kills her, she discovers that she has the power to see and communicate with ghosts… and that the property is full of deceased tenants. The episodes of Ghosts are short, the spectral presences are endearing, the scripts are fun and, as icing on the cake, Christmas Day says goodbye on the BBC and Movistar Plus with its definitive and festive finale.
Christmas is a time of opportunities. After The Squid Game, many viewers forgot about Korean fiction, but Moving has the ingredients to reach a mass audience beyond the Asian market. Bong-seok (Lee Jung-ha) has had an unusual childhood: he sleeps tied to the bed and always carries a backpack with weights inside to avoid floating. As a hitman arrives in South Korea with the mission of murdering anyone with superhuman abilities, Bong-seok will discover that he is not the only teenager with powers at his school.
The first episode may lead the viewer to fear that it is the umpteenth superhero story, one with points in common with Heroes. It is wrong. He soon proves to have an adult sense of violence while developing an emotional narrative of adolescence that does not neglect the adult characters. Kang Full’s talent in writing the characters’ life stories is commendable.
This proposal is really Christmassy. Netflix released Smiley in December of last year with the hope that it would be a Love Actually in a queer and Barcelona key, although it did not have the expected audience. This does not mean that it is a classic and friendly romantic comedy, centered on Álex (Carlos Cuevas) and Bruno (Miki Esparbé), two boys with nothing in common but who come into contact when they send each other the wrong text message.
Álex has no education, he works in a cocktail bar and spends the day fucking with the men he wants, taking advantage of a gym-like physique that he always shows off in tank tops. Bruno, on the other hand, is an architect somewhat older than him and also more uptight. On paper, they are not made for each other. But chemistry is something that is not controlled.
Darby (Emma Corrin) publishes a book about how she caught a serial psychopath. She did it with Bill (Harris Dickinson), who she came into contact with via online crime-solving hobbyist forums. When she receives an invitation from a tycoon to go to a luxury hotel in Iceland, she goes without knowing that the first night she will find a body and must solve a murder in the middle of a snowstorm.
The Icelandic factor is one of the reasons why Murder at the End of the World is worth seeing around this time. Another is that Emma Corrin, the first Diana of The Crown, is as magnetic as Harris Dickinson (The Triangle of Sadness), whose character serves as an interesting analysis of the new masculinity. But the key is in Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the creators, who after signing The OA show how they adapt such a conventional and trite genre to their identity as artists. An unmissable miniseries.
On Apple TV they say that Cooking with Chemistry is their most watched miniseries to date. It’s not hard to understand why. Based on the novel Chemistry Lessons by Bonnie Garmus, it could be described as a kind of Queen’s Gambit set in the world of chemistry and cooking.
The protagonist is Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott, a chemist discriminated against in the laboratory due to the sexist practices of the 1950s who receives the opportunity to host a cooking show. But she’s not like other women and, as she will discover, it’s very hard to be consistent with yourself when society thinks you should be hanging out at home instead of making scientific discoveries with your brilliant mind.
And finally, a common place for these holidays: Gilmore Girls which, despite setting episodes at all times of the year (including Christmas installments), has that comforting aroma of a cup of hot chocolate. Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator, wrote not so much a story about a single mother and a teenage daughter who are best friends but a pleasant universe with her own idiosyncrasies. The inhabitants of Stars Hollow, like Lorelai’s mother, may have an irritating streak but they exude a sense of community.
