We're all about the movies - and documentaries about the movies - this Christmas Day.
Gene Kelly - Réalt an Rince
10:05pm, TG4
Push the settee back and get your dancing shoes on... Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without another class documentary on TG4 about an icon of Hollywood's golden age. This time, it's the turn of actor, dancer, singer, and director Gene Kelly, the genius behind some of the greatest musicals of all time, including Singin' in the Rain, On the Town, and An American in Paris. "The grandson of Irish immigrants, Kelly was extremely proud of his Irish heritage and carried an Irish passport, holidayed in Ireland frequently, and was fascinated by Irish dance, culture, and history," says TG4. Its latest doc also features "an exclusive interview with Gene's eldest daughter, Kerry Kelly Novick, who offers unique insights into her father's private and professional life and reveals a wealth of never-before-seen archive". After all these years, that smile still dazzles. As for the moves...
Jaws Night
9:15pm, BBC Two
You're going to need a bigger Selection Box as the BBC marks 50 years of the film that changed Hollywood forever. First up at 9:15pm, it's another chance to inhale the salty magic of the 1976 rager - famously described by Billy Connolly as a film about a shark that plays the cello. Then, at 11:15pm, it's the feature-length documentary Jaws@50: The Definitive Inside Story as Steven Spielberg and his famous fans relive events on Amity Island all those years ago. Best watched in the dark.
Belfast
11:35pm, RTÉ One
A beautiful coming-of-age story, a pitch-perfect celebration of family, and a fitting tribute to the goodness in a city and its people, Belfast crams a lot into an hour and a half. Writer-director Kenneth Branagh's Oscar-winning return to his birthplace to explore his early years inspired him to deliver his best work - poignant, funny, and timeless. It's the kind of charmer that parents or grandparents would watch whenever it came on the telly way back when. It may well be one of your own go-to movies already. Filmed in black and white to conjure the magic of old photographs, Belfast glides from one snapshot to another with the kind of enchantment you feel when turning the pages in an album. It's also proof, if needed, that you can go home again.
Local Hero
Channel 4 Player
If it's unhurried charm you're after, then the Highlands are waiting in writer-director Bill Forsyth's glorious fish-out-of-water story. Peter Riegert plays Macintyre, the Houston oil executive who's the point man on the "acquisition of Scotland", or, rather, "the-bay-in-a-million" fishing village of Ferness. Dispatched across the Atlantic by his eccentric boss (a wonderful Burt Lancaster), Mac discovers that the people of Ferness are well up on his big city ways and can run rings around him with their endearing quirkiness. He's barely unpacked when he falls in love with the place - and them. You will too. With the warmest glow of friendship, enough-is-plenty wisdom, and a strong ecological message, Local Hero encourages us all to live up to that title and leave the world in a better state than we found it. A comfort movie of the highest quality, this is a bolthole to bliss. And there's room for us all.
Jay Kelly
Netflix
Back in 2012, George Clooney gave a powerful interview to The Hollywood Reporter where he admitted that his life wasn't all it was cracked up to be. "Anyone would be lying if they said they didn't get lonely at times," he told Stephen Galloway. "The loneliest you will get is in the most public of arenas. You will go to a place and end up in the smallest compartment possible, because it's a distraction to everybody, and you end up not getting to enjoy it like everyone else." Seen through that lens, he's the perfect man to play at-a-crossroads A-lister Jay Kelly - and Jay Kelly is Clooney's best work since Gravity. Director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Mistress America, Marriage Story) gives us mere civilians a tour of the gilded cage in this breezy and profound Hollywood satire, which was written with Clooney in mind. This film is made for Christmas Night, and, in an era of best-life braggadocio, there are lessons here for us all.
