What to watch at home during the festive season

“I’m afraid we didn’t do a very good job of looking after the planet,” says the astronomer Augustine (a haggard George Clooney) from an Arctic research station in 2049, three weeks after an unspecified catastrophe has ravaged the Earth. Suffering from a terminal illness, Augustine has chosen to live out his final days in this increasingly inhospitable environment, while the rest of humanity has been driven underground to survive, until an abandoned little girl (Caoilinn Springall, solemn) breaks his solitude. Out in space, Sully (an unflappable Felicity Jones) and her crew are heading to K23, Jupiter’s previously undiscovered moon, to figure out whether mankind can make it their new home. Switching between these parallel narratives, The Midnight Sky delivers an urgent message about the impending threat of climate change with ice sheets cracking underfoot and snowstorms swirling overhead. The movie, which Clooney also directed, features impressive technical skill: its alarming, post-apocalyptic world transforms our once blue and green planet into a muddy sludge of red and brown. Very sobering indeed.

‘The Midnight Sky’ will be available on Netflix from 23 December.

Mariah Carey, in her infinite wisdom, realised we could all use a mood boost to round off the year. With this in mind, she has assembled some very special guests (among them Snoop Dogg, Tiffany Haddish and Billy Eichner) for a glittering, feel-good Christmas concert that will give every viewer a much-needed rush of endorphins. Surrounded by a workroom of dancing elves and mountains of beribboned gifts, the singer puts her spin on all your favourite holiday tunes while showing off a parade of rhinestone costumes each more spellbinding than the last – hell, even her microphone is jewel-encrusted. For her new song ‘Oh Santa’, Mariah is joined by Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson, and the three powerhouses each belt out their verses before harmonising melodiously on the chorus. Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special is a feast for the senses complete with a soulful gospel choir and whistle tones galore.

‘Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special’ is now available on Apple TV+.

Audiences just can’t seem to get enough of true crime: millions of us tuned into Serial, hundreds of thousands binged Mindhunter. For some reason, we are innately compelled by the twisted psychology that propels someone to take another’s life. The BBC is sating our appetite for serial-killer drama this Christmas with its blood-pounding eight-episode series The Serpent, which skips backwards and forwards in time to follow both the murder spree of the French conman Charles Sobhraj (A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim) and the pursuit of the foreign embassy working to bring him to justice. Having glided through Bangkok airport with their counterfeit passports in 1975, Charles and his wife Marie-Andrée (Jenna Coleman) pose as gem dealers and, weaponising their wealth and charm, lure unsuspecting marks into their opulent home. Anyone who refuses to smuggle stones for them is drugged and dispatched with. Aware of the authorities’ general disdain for free-loving hippies, the couple targets Western tourists as a means of evading capture. But when a missing-persons report surfaces for two young Dutch travellers, the diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) makes it his mission to find the truth. Hurtling between clues and cover-ups, The Serpent is a fast-paced, high-octane thriller whose compelling intrigue will keep you hooked.

‘The Serpent’ will air on BBC One on New Year’s Day at 9pm.

In April, Dolly Parton strived to protect our physical health by donating $1 million to fund research into a coronavirus vaccine. Now, she’s looking after our mental health with her cheering festive musical Christmas on the Square, a vibrant extravaganza of tango and tap-dancing that features 14 brand-new songs by the country superstar. The film is a loose retelling of A Christmas Carol in which Christine Baranski plays the hard-nosed Scrooge Regina who wants to sell off her small town and leave all its residents destitute. Parton, starring as a sparkling, feather-sleeved angel, gradually warms Regina’s heart with a combination of elaborate dance numbers, rousing speeches and community spirit. It’s an undeniably slight tale, but a comforting way to while away an evening.

‘Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square’ is now available on Netflix.

Black Mirror’s creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones are renowned for being prescient. Their dystopian sci-fi series predicted everything from PigGate to VR criminal convictions, but even they did not foresee the chaos that defined this unprecedented year. The pair’s mockumentary comedy special Death to 2020 takes a silly, satirical look back over the past 12 months through a combination of real-life archive footage and talking-head interviews with a star-studded line-up that includes Samuel L Jackson, Lisa Kudrow, Hugh Grant and Kumail Nanjiani. The 70-minute show’s mission statement is to find humour in the absurd and awful, and it takes aim at 2020’s watershed moments (among them the US election, the pandemic, the Royal Family and the rise of TikTok). “Every time there’s a crisis, I realise how important entertainment is,” says Kudrow. “Let’s laugh as soon as we can about this.” After all, laughter is the best medicine.

‘Death to 2020’ will be available on Netflix from 27 December.