2014圣诞节最值得期待的英美剧一览

Most of what is on TV this Christmas will be as unsurprising as someone yelling at someone else in the Queen Vic, but there is some original programming amid the glut of Christmas specials, and even a few things to stretch the over-indulged mind.

Jenna Coleman’s Clara returns to the bosom of the Tardis and Peter Capaldi’s tetchy Doctor, but is it just (as has been rumoured) for one last, climactic send-off? Of course we wouldn’t and couldn’t tell even if we knew. Suffice to say that it all takes place in the Arctic, Nick Frost plays Father Christmas and Michael Troughton, son of 1960s Time Lord Patrick Troughton, features.

A Downton Christmas special that’s actually set at Christmas for a change, with snow and all that, but which once again sees the Crawley family on the move, this time spending the season with the newly-wed Rose and Atticus (the episode was filmed at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland – the setting for Hogwarts in several of the Harry Potter films). Matthew Goode guest stars, George Clooney won’t, and Tom Branson and Daisy might both leave.

Dustin Hoffman and Dame Judi Dench bring some seriously high-wattage star-power to Richard Curtis’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s classic about a shy old bachelor, Mr Hoppy, and his plan to win over a tortoise-loving neighbour (Dench). Whatever next – Tom Cruise reads Jackanory?

Produced by the same team who made The Snowman back in 1982 – and repeated every year since – this animation is based on the book by War Horse author Michael Morpurgo. A reworking of the nativity story, the voices include those of Michael Gambon and Juliet Stevenson.

Everyone seems to agree that it was refreshing to see two women presenting the latest series instead of the usual older man-younger woman combo, but Christmas sees the return of Sir Bruce Forsyth and his hoary gags. Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Lisa Riley, Louis Smith and Russell Grant are among the former celebrity contestants working their way through the ballroom repertoire.

The return of Bracknell council co-workers Sam and Phil (Matthew Baynton and James Corden), whose lives were turned upside down when Sam answered a ringing phone at the site of a car-crash. Now stranded in a high-security jail in Texas (“do you have a code for the wi-fi?”, Phil asks rather hopefully”), can they get home in time for Christmas?

Comedy of a much darker hue as Mad Men’s John Hamm – a big fan of the last series of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian drama – joins Rafe Spall and Game of Thrones’s Oona Chaplin for a one-off, 90-minute tale that will be, according to Channel 4, “the most mind-bending episode yet, showcasing three inter-woven stories of Yuletide techno-phobia”.