The Long Wait

The story

Why it stays with you

The one most people mean when they talk about the John Lewis Christmas advert. A boy spends December willing the days to pass, and for most of its ninety seconds you think you know what he is waiting for. The last scene says otherwise, and a slowed-down cover of a Smiths song does much of the work getting you there.

It set the pattern the big British Christmas advert still follows: a small domestic story, almost no dialogue, a familiar song taken down to a whisper, and the turn saved for the final shot.

It holds up even when you know the ending.