TV: Damien Love reveals his pick of the week's TV

House Of Fools

10.30pm, BBC Two

"Step into Christmas with those bulbous Teesside chestnuts!" Ah, man. Here's the best slightly late present you could ever hope to receive, as Reeves and Mortimer invite you back into Bob's house for a full-on festive edition of their splendiferously stupid panto-com, the perfect antidote to the mimsy of Miranda. (And a much better use of your time than, say, the new series of Last Tango In Halifax, starting on BBC One at 9pm tonight.) It's party time, and the pair are done up to the nines in bowties and smart suits - as Vic says, he's the image of James Bond - and their lovely tree is decorated in just the most beautiful manner. But when the bobble hat that Bob has bought as a present for his son, Erik, is tragically destroyed, their plans for a perfect Christmas seem ruined. Until they realise that there might just be a way of getting their hands on another … Probably best served with a drink. I gave myself a headache laughing.

Monday, December 29

Mapp And Lucia

9.05pm, BBC One

Miranda Richardson and Anna Chancellor are good casting as the duelling dames of EF Benson's beloved books, but while this adaptation by Steve Pemberton really looks the part and comes on with a bustle, there's a faint sense of something missing as it goes on. Set in a summery, picture-postcard version of the 1930s, Richardson is Mapp, snob mistress of all she surveys in her gossiping little village by the sea, until she feels her position as social queen threatened by the arrival of Lucia (Chancellor), a glamorous widow from the city, who has come to rent Mapp's home for the summer.

Pemberton peoples their poisonously polite game of one-upmanship with a lively cast of grotesques (including himself, as Lucia's devoted friend Georgie, and his League Of Gentlemen comrade Mark Gatiss as Mapp's confidant, Major Benji), and there's a heightened, cartoonish flavour to things. But I don't think people will take it quite to heart the way they did the great, acidly catty 1985 series with Prunella Scales and Geraldine McEwan.

Tuesday, December 30

Narnia's Lost Poet: The Secret Lives And Loves of CS Lewis

9pm, BBC Four

For those who know him mainly as the author of the Narnia books, this profile of Lewis by his biographer AN Wilson will be something of a revelation - although it's perhaps slightly more familiar territory for audiences who remember Lewis best as the repressed subject of the movie Shadowlands. Wilson puts great emphasis on Lewis's crucial work as a theologian and medieval scholar. But, as the come-on in the title suggests, the real draw is a tactful exploration of his personal life. Aged 18, Lewis began a long and close relationship with Jane Moore, the 45-year-old mother of a friend who was killed in the First World War; the writer routinely referred to Moore as his mother, but Wilson contends they were lovers. He also considers the circumstances of Lewis's subsequent marriage to American writer Joy Gresham, the period covered in Shadowlands.

Hogmanay

Look, there's nothing wrong with sitting in on New Year's Eve staring at the TV and promising yourself, again, that next year, no matter what, you are definitely not going to be sitting in and watching the telly on New Year's Eve. So, time to assume the usual Hogmanay positions on BBC One: Jonathan Watson's back with another Only An Excuse (11pm) and Jackie Bird is on hand once more for Hogmanay Live (11.30pm), with contributions from King Creosote (performing from his soundtrack to the fine From Scotland With Love collage film, which is repeated tomorrow night, 10.30pm, BBC Two) and the wily dependables Phil Cunningham and Ally Bain.

Meanwhile, over on BBC Two, Jools Holland rolls out the barrel for his Annual Hootenanny (11.30pm).

Over on STV, meanwhile, John Mackay and Jennifer Reoch are at Stirling Castle for What A Year! (11.15pm), looking back on the year we liked to call 2014. To get 2015 rolling, STV is then showing Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake of Cape Fear (12.05am), with Robert De Niro as the vengeful self-righteous psychopath. Start as you mean to go on.

New Year's Day

Do you have room left for something sweet? Think carefully before indulging in Roald Dahl's Esio Trot (6.30pm, BBC One), because co-writers Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer and their director Dearbhla Walsh have set the sugar levels perilously high. Around midway, I felt myself slipping into the television equivalent of a diabetic coma, a dangerously pleasant feeling as you go under. In the same way that Michael Caine tried to resist brainwashing by pushing rusty nails into his own palms in The Ipcress File, it was only by focusing again on how incredibly stupid and annoying the non-finale of The Fall was a couple of weeks ago that I managed to snap back awake.

This being Roald Dahl, there are still tiny hints of salt and poison lingering here and there, but the team behind this adaptation of his late story make sure to stamp them very deep down in the mix. The main business here is simply getting stars Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench together, so we can sigh at just how damned charming they are as they twinkle at each other and take ages to get to the bit where they kiss and admit they're in love.

Esio Trot is the tale of Mr Hoppy (Hoffman), a shy, lonely old man who lives in a flat and pines hopelessly after Mrs Silver (Dench), the bright, bustling and busy widow in the flat below. His balcony overlooks hers and so, in summer months, they chat often, but he can never bring himself to tell her how he feels, or even invite her up - until, one fine day, she buys a tiny pet tortoise, and Mr Hoppy hatches a daft, ingenious plan to win his way into her apartment, and thus her heart.

Dahl's original story is short and slender and, abetted by Quentin Blake's perfectly judged drawings, all the better for it. The star power here, however, demands the feature-length treatment, which is a shame. Walsh gives it a vibrant, heightened, picture-book sheen, the screen blooming with Technicolor flowers, strange gadgets, blue skies, red buses and green tortoises, and she makes a virtual co-star of Bevin Court, the 1950s-era modernist block in London where the programme was filmed. But, at 90 minutes, it feels half an hour too long; getting to the end is like having to eat a bowl of custard and trifle when you're already full, because gran made it special, and will be upset if you don't. However, this is maybe the only time of year when you'll be perfectly happy to swallow it and smile.

For something sharper to cleanse your palate, look out for The Clash: New Year's Day '77 (10.45pm, BBC Four). Last year, director Julien Temple gifted us with Never Mind The Baubles: Xmas '77 With The Sex Pistols - a sly, absorbing and surprisingly moving film built around new interviews, archive news clips and previously unseen footage he shot of the band's Christmas Day gig in Huddersfield in 1977, a free concert staged for the children of striking firefighters. It was, genuinely, the closest thing to the Christmas spirit on TV last year.

This time, he's dug out unseen film of Strummer, Jones, Simonon and Headon headlining the official opening gala of iconic punk venue The Roxy on January 1, 1977, alongside other faces, onstage and off. Sadly, preview copies weren't ready in time. But if it's even half as good as that festive Pistols documentary, it'll be one of the best things on TV in 2015.

Friday, January 2

The Musketeers

9pm, BBC One

The first series of this period romp, very loosely based on Alexandre Dumas's deathless classic, was largely good fun: compared with its BBC peers Merlin and Atlantis, it buckled a fair swash. All the same, it was Peter Capaldi's hissable, moustache-twirling turn as the villainous Cardinal Richelieu that really gave it the edge, and his departure to take up residence in the blue box has left a baddie-shaped hole in the series. Enter, then, Marc Warren, who picks up the blade as Dumas's other no-goodnik, the Comte de Rochefort. Other than that change, it's all pretty much as you were. For historical adventures of a weirder sort, Top Of The Pops: The Story Of 1980 (9pm, BBC Four) marks the turn of the decade for BBC Four's 35-years-later repeats of the charts show, with a documentary trying to gauge the flavour of the year that saw the programme's format rejigged, and a wave of post-punk popsters coming to the fore with breakthroughs for Adam And The Ants and The Human League. A compilation, Top Of The Pops: 1980 - Big Hits, follows at 10pm.

Saturday, January 3

Wallander: The Dogs of Riga

9pm, BBC Four

To be honest, with all the various Wallanders getting shown and repeated in random order, it's getting to the stage where I can't tell if it's one I've seen or not. This 1995 version of Henning Mankell's book The Dogs Of Riga was one of the first run of Swedish adaptations, with Rolf Lassgard in the role, and I'm pretty sure it's actually new to British TV. But I wouldn't be prepared to testify to that in court. A two-parter showing in a double bill tonight, it begins in characteristically bleak style when a raft washes up on the shores of Sweden, holding the corpses of two men bearing signs of hideous torture and mutilation. When the case leads back to Russian mob activity, Kurt is aided by a detective from Latvia, a country still caught in the upheaval of separating from the Soviet Union, and mired in corruption - as Kurt will discover when he is forced to journey over there himself, as the case grows more complex, and more dangerous.