Hannah Waddingham is Here For the Holidays

Christmas creep is a real phenomenon, but once Halloween passes, the Holiday special announcements start piling up to the point that covering them requires one to admit that the most wonderful time of the year is coming, whether we like it or not. Part of this is simply due to holiday movies and specials being one of the last reliable sources of appointment television left in the decimated streaming landscape. So with Thanksgiving rushing at us faster than the turkey will defrost and Black Friday sales filling up the spam filters, the specials are scheduling themselves in time for the family gatherings, including the old-fashioned British musical special Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas.

Hannah Waddingham first made an impression on American audiences as the Shame Nun in Game of Thrones before becoming everyone's favorite billionaire divorcee owner of a football club in Ted Lasso. But as anyone who tuned into Eurovision 2023 discovered, she's a song-and-dance woman at heart, a live show comedian whose best moment, hands down, was with Mel Giedroyc of Sue & Mel fame. In short, she was born to do these sorts of old-school Christmas musical performances that descend directly from the vaudeville tradition, swanning around in evening gowns, dancing with a dozen men in tuxes and tails, and generally asking us to let her make us smile.

If the first trailer is anything to go by, this is a special you can put on this holiday season and let run in the background and never once worry about offending a single soul. In fact, everyone might just wind up singing along.