Richard Curtis’s Christmas Actually raises the ghost of ropey light-entertainment past

Festive variety show hosts Sanjeev Bhaskar and Jayde Adams are stodgier than Christmas dinner, with all the chemistry of a broken Bunsen burner

To those of us of a certain age, few things are more Christmassy than variety. It’s the cultural memory of Morecambe and Wise on Christmas Day, or Christmas with Val Doonican (ask your mums), or The Two Ronnies setting the sketches aside while David Essex sings A Winter’s Tale. Pass the yule log, granny – and someone stoke the fire! Or go see Christmas Actually, where the ghost of ropey, cosy light-entertainment past has risen, chains a-clanking, and is treading the boards of the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank.

For Morecambe and Wise this year, read Sanjeev Bhaskar and Jayde Adams – a precipitous downgrade, as I’m sure they’d agree. They’d probably have a joke about it too, this prefab double-act, to go with the one about being a “fairly stodgy linking duo” that Adams cracks in the opening moments. She’s right: reading stiltedly from their scripts, they’re stodgier than Christmas dinner, with all the chemistry of a broken Bunsen burner. But then, a certain naffness is built-in this evening. How couldn’t it be? Christmas Actually is curated by Richard Curtis in the spirit of his famously naff 2003 film Love Actually. Money will be raised for Comic Relief. Gallumphing sentimentality comes as standard. No one is pretending this is cool.