Essential Christmas · 2012
Following The Snowman is an impossible job, and this sequel is wise enough not to try to beat it.
Rent or buy · Apple TV, Sky Store →The CineClaus Christmas score
Christmas in good measure.
A little magic in the making.
Five ingredients make the Festive Factor.
Open an ingredient to find out more.
What we ask: Take Christmas out. Does the plot survive? Worth up to 30 of the 100 points.
What we ask: How much of the running time is visibly Christmas? Worth up to 20 of the 100 points.
What we ask: How many kinds of Christmas icon turn up on screen: trees, lights, snow, carols and the rest? Worth up to 15 of the 100 points.
What we ask: Does the ending depend on what Christmas means: goodwill, family, redemption, belief? Worth up to 20 of the 100 points.
What we ask: Is it actually watched at Christmas in the UK? Worth up to 15 of the 100 points.
Deeply warm in tone. Mild threat. A content ending.
Festive Factor measures how Christmassy a film is. Five ingredients add up to 100: story (30), setting (20), seasonal details (15), emotional heart (20) and returning tradition (15).
Cosiness is a separate score for warmth of tone, sense of safety, visual comfort, a reassuring ending and how easily you can settle into it.
How the Festive Factor works →
The Snowman and the Snowdog · Rental and purchase cost extra, separately from membership.
Christmas on telly? Channel 4 over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, where it is a regular seasonal fixture (shown three times in 2025); Channel 4 streaming out of season not confirmed. No broadcast date is confirmed here; a past tradition isn’t tonight’s TV listing.
Streaming changes constantly and we cannot promise it is still right - check the service before you settle in. Streaming availability information provided by Streaming Availability API by Movie of the Night (opens in a new tab). Sky and Rakuten TV data by JustWatch.
A boy moves into a new house with his mother, still missing the dog he has just lost, and finds a box of keepsakes hidden long ago by a boy who once lived there. He builds a snowman and a snowdog that come to life at midnight and fly him north to a gathering of snowmen, where the three enter a downhill race and Father Christmas has a gift waiting. Made thirty years after The Snowman, it is a sequel in the same wordless, hand-drawn style.
Following The Snowman is an impossible job, and this sequel is wise enough not to try to beat it.
It borrows the wordless, hand-drawn look and the midnight flight, then gives the story a gentler heart: a small boy missing the dog he has lost. The race in the snow drags a little and the new flying song lacks the old ache, but the ending is kinder than the first film's, which matters for younger viewers.
Pair it with The Snowman on Christmas Eve, as British television has trained us to.
Our take: pre-schoolers will manage fine with this U: the snowman still melts, but a wished-for present softens the goodbye, so any tears should be brief.
The series
2 films, in release order
The film before
Made for the original film's 30th anniversary.
You’re here
The faces in front of the camera, and the people who brought the story to life.
Ilan EshkeriThat tune you recognised. That score you loved. Take a little of the film into the rest of your Christmas.
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Every track on the soundtrack album, in album order.
Try a song title or an artist.
Behind the music. Ilan Eshkeri composed the score.
These are the songs and soundtrack we hold for the film, not a complete cue sheet, and they give no scene timings. Album track lists and durations come from MusicBrainz. Spotify and Apple Music links open the matched recordings; links marked Search open a search on that service. Album covers are each release's own, from the Cover Art Archive, credited under the cover.
Wikidata film item ↗ (opens in a new tab) MusicBrainz ↗ (opens in a new tab)
For the fans who stay after the credits.
Music & sound
Andy Burrows wrote Light the Night after watching early cuts of the sequel, aiming it at the flying sequence. It is a contemporary, pop-leaning song in his own voice rather than the first-person boy-soprano style of the 1982 original, and a choral number was ruled out because the story is set thirty years on.
On set
When the songwriters began, few of the scenes the song covered were finished. Much of what Ilan Eshkeri and Andy Burrows watched together was pencil drawing or early animation, so they wrote to unfinished pictures.
Music & sound
Burrows played his demos to his four-year-old daughter and dropped anything she did not like. The two writers developed the main melodies together in the studio, then worked on themes apart and swapped ideas.
Movie magic
The flight now crosses a modern landscape that includes skyscrapers, a change from the original's countryside and coast, and it shaped the musical direction. The sequel was made for the first film's 30th anniversary.
Source: Channel 4 press ↗ (opens in a new tab) · Channel 4 press ↗ (opens in a new tab)
Each production story is linked to its source, in our own words. Ending details stay behind a spoiler reveal.
Gifts for film lovers · The Snowman and the Snowdog
Little gifts for someone whose Christmas always includes The Snowman and the Snowdog.
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Check the current price, options and delivery at Amazon.co.uk.
It had its first UK television showing on Channel 4 on 24 December 2012, and reached Blu-ray in the UK in November 2013.
Hilary Audus directed it and Ilan Eshkeri composed the score.
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Festive Factor 33 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.More winter than Christmas, and it takes a while to notice.
Festive Factor 24 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.Collections, stories & Christmas memories
More places to find The Snowman and the Snowdog, and a few good reasons to keep exploring.
