Josie Gibson helps you with your Christmas shopping, Netflix film the unfilmable with One Hundred Years of Solitude and a star-studded Dexter prequel sees Patrick Dempsey play a budding serial killer.
Ultimate Christmas Gift Guide with Josie Gibson
Monday
Channel 4, 8.00pm
To save you from the inevitable last minute dash to your nearest petrol station for a set of screw drivers and a tin of biscuits (I’m talking to you, Dad), Josie Gibson’s here to give you a head-start on your Christmas shopping.
Gibson will be joined by celebrity guests who will divulge stories of their own “Christmas chaos,” while mixologists, gadget enthusiasts and decorative artists will review the best festive buys for budgets of all sizes.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wednesday
Netflix
One of the most ambitious adaptations of recent times sees Netflix take on Gabriel García Márquez’s multigenerational, time-jumping masterpiece of magical realism.
It’s been deemed unfilmable, but this sounds like a faithful adaptation. Shot entirely in Spanish and on location in Colombia, the series spreads the sprawling novel across 16 episodes, which will drop in two parts of eight. Long, but it has to be in order to follow the cyclical story of the Buendía family across seven generations, beginning with the fateful marriage of those two incestuous cousins: José Arcadio Buendía (Marco González) and Úrsula Iguarán (Susana Morales). After wedding against their parents’ wishes, they establish a utopian town and baptise it Macondo.
A fictional microcosm of Colombia’s turbulent history, Macondo becomes a stage for tragic romances, absurd wars and a terrible curse that threatens to condemn the Buendía family to 100 years of solitude.
Celebrity Escape to the Country
Thursday
BBC One, 8.00pm
A vicarious escape for anyone stuck in a tiny, overpriced bedsit in the Big Smoke. This celebrity edition counts among its rural home seekers the musician Alfie Boe OBE, broadcaster Anita Rani, H from Steps, journalist Kaye Adams and The Apprentice winner Tim Campbell MBE.
First up is Britain’s most decorated sprinter, Linford Christie OBE. Together with his daughter Briannah and presenter Alistair Appleton, Linford goes looking for a slower life somewhere in the Buckinghamshire or Oxfordshire countryside.
It’s like a speculative MTV Cribs, but quintessentially British and without all those fridges filled with drinks.
Dexter: Original Sin
Friday
Paramount+
This new prequel adds an intriguing coming-of-age element to the iconic, darkly comic drama that brought a whole new meaning to ‘Cowboy Cop’.
Patrick Gibson stars as the young Dexter who joins his father Harry, played by Christian Slater, at the Miami Metro Police Department as a forensics intern. The job allows Dexter to indulge his bloodlust while Harry instils in him a somewhat dubious moral code: to “kill the bad guys who escape justice.”
Michael C. Hall returns to voice Dexter’s depraved inner monologue, while Patrick Dempsey, Christina Milian and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, aka Sarah Michelle Gellar, also star.
