Our take
A science-fiction Dickens that keeps the bones of the original and adds fog, flying fish and a love story told one Christmas Eve at a time. Michael Gambon is perfectly cast as the lonely old man with a grudge against Christmas, and Katherine Jenkins, in her acting debut, makes the romance believable. Steven Moffat's first Christmas Day script is unashamedly sentimental and small in scale, and all the better for it. Kazran's change of heart lands because the episode lets him earn it.
What happens
Honeymooners Amy and Rory are trapped aboard a crashing starliner with more than four thousand people, heading for the planet Ember on a human colony far in the future. Much of the world below belongs to Kazran Sardick, a heartless miser who refuses to help. Borrowing from his old friend Dickens, the Doctor travels back into Kazran's boyhood to try to make him a better man, arriving down the chimney. As a young man Kazran falls for Abigail, a woman kept in cryogenic suspension, and the Doctor takes the pair to visit her every Christmas Eve, through a sleigh ride pulled by a shark and trips around the world, neither knowing that she is dying. The older Kazran stays unmoved until he meets himself as a boy. In the end he is reunited with Abigail for her last day of life, the ship can land, and the mended miser finally lets Christmas Day come.
Can the kids watch it?
A warm, family teatime special; a giant flying shark gives one jump, but it suits most children from about 7.