Ho Ho Hum - Christmas TV in August

By the BBC's William Gallagher

If it happens in the USA, a few months later it will reach us here in the UK - so as we reach the middle of August, Merry Christmas.

We look to be getting off a little lighter than usual this year but beginning this week we are to see what was warming the hearts of Americans over Christmas, beginning with a seasonal episode of The West Wing (Thursday 14 August, 2100 BST, E4).

Christmas must be a very bad time to watch television in the USA because it seems that every primetime drama and sitcom is required by law to work in a moral and someone in a Santa suit.

Commercialised

In two weeks, for instance, Friends (Fridays, 2100 BST, Channel 4) will have both in spades plus Ross dressed as Superman, possibly as a hint to how commercialised Christmas is.

Shortly after that we'll see Ally McBeal's Christmas episode (Wednesdays, 2200 BST, Channel 4) which is an unfair dismissal case about a newsreader sacked for announcing on air that there is no Santa Claus.

Ally McBeal's Christmas episodes gleefully subvert the season

Light and frothy Ally McBeal does buck the wholesome trend and try to go for darker twists on the Christmas flavour, generally revolving around loneliness but for its first year also nicely and subversively undermining childhood.

Ally asked John Cage what made him stop believing in Santa: "My mother," he said. "She told me he fondled the elves."

This year's Friends episode is trying its little best to be different too and focuses the episode on Ross's attempt to convince his son to ignore Christmas and instead embrace the Jewish festival of Hanukah.

It will not spoil things to reveal that the Christmas moral in Friends is that we can embrace all cultures, including Superman's

It will not spoil things to reveal that the Christmas moral in Friends is that we can embrace all cultures, including Superman's, and that things end happily.

It is decidedly less certain that things will go well in The West Wing, though, as matters get rough enough for Josh that it is only your knowledge that he is in the title sequence that convinces you he'll win through.

Turkeys

For having gone overboard with turkeys for the Thanksgiving edition, The West Wing's Christmas story is a more sombre piece that uses the season as a tool to heighten some old problems for Josh and perhaps to spark some new ones.

Few celebrations for The West Wing cast in a great festive story

Without ruining it for digital viewers now and terrestrial viewers next summer, this edition is reminiscent of the famous last episode of M*A*S*H that showed Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) furious at how his friends were treating him and slowly unpeeled the terrible reasons why.

All credit to The West Wing for being just as good, then, but you can bet E4 will feel a compulsion to apologise on air for this being a Christmas episode or to at least make a joke of it.

We're expected to cope with Star Trek being set in the 24th century and Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman in the 18th but episodes set at Christmas really bother UK broadcasters for some reason.

Last week, for instance, BBC Radio 4 repeated a sequence of short stories but dropped one of them because it had Christmas in the title.

Perhaps if we are all very, very good and tidy up our rooms, the US television networks will be checking their lists twice and relax this Christmas law.

Then UK summers will only be filled with cold because of the weather.