(courtesy IMDb (c) AppleTV+)
Christmas is an inherently exuberant time of the year.
Whether you choose to lean into that exuberance is another matter entirely, but regards of whether you’re a tinsel addict or a Scrooge, there’s no escaping the fact that the most wonderful time of the year is boisterously, colourfully and deliciously in your face.
Which is why it’s the perfect time of year for a personality as big and as talented as Hannah Waddingham to make her gold, red and white dress-themed – three dresses, not one, in a 44-minute special is every bit as gloriously over-the-top as you hope it might be – mark on the festive season.
And what fabulously upbeat, funny and soul restoring mark it is, with decorations, seasonal humour, carols and songs and general bonhomie turned up to 100 on a scale of 10.
Hannah Waddingham: Home For Christmas is a throwback to good old-fashioned variety shows, the kind where the host pretends they are in a room full of friends where they just happen to be singing some suitably festive songs and making some happily self-referential jokes; the key point of difference is that the audience, and indeed the performers on stage, are pretty much all her friends and colleagues, which delivers a lovely feeling of the star being with those she cherishes and loves, just as you should be at Christmas.
Staged in the Coliseum in London where one of the major stars of Ted Lasso has often trod the boards in a long and wistfully recalled career in musical theatre – she goes so far as to say that it’s a “place that I call home” since her mother sang in the choir there for thirty years, with Hannah in attendance from the age of eight, and now her own eight-year-old is sitting in the same box.
It’s an awww-worthy moment but it’s one of many and while more cynical hearts might see it as contrived and sentimentally corny, Hannah is so genuinely warm and engaged with the audience and the setting – her sheer and unbridled delight at everything to do with the show is part of its effervescent attraction and very much reflects the person we have come to know and love – that you just buy it all up and don’t eve bother to ask for a receipt.
And it seems all of her old work pals are just as delighted to be there as we are.
Not only does she have people like Alistair Petrie and Kedar Williams-Stirling who played Michael Groff and Jackson Marchetti in Sex Education, and John Bradley who played Samwell Tarly on Game of Thrones in the audience, but a host of Ted Lasso makes singing and dancing and comedically inspired appearances on stage including Phil Dunster (Jamie Tartt), Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent), Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard), Nick Mohammed (Nathan “Nate” Shelley) and of course Ted himself, played by Jason Sudeikis.
Sure, the banter feels scripted but these actors are so good that it barely registers as that, and instead what you get is the sense of people who really like each other and adore working with each other having a ball.
And look, maybe it is all just supremely good acting but it’s hard not to be swept into all the warmhearted mirth and gloriously high spirits of the evening which features Hannah doing duets with everyone from Leslie Odom Jr, Eurovision breakout star Sam Ryder, and actor Luke Evans and featuring the luminously playful talents of the London Gay Men’s Chorus and the Fabulous Lounge Swingers who are, it seems, good friends with the star.
It’s light, frothy and fun and awash in the glitzy buoyancy of the season, and while it’s only 45-minutes long, it feels like it runs for just the right amount of time – long enough to soak yourself in all the high humour and luscious musical numbers but not so long that you begin to tire of being revved up to such a frenetically deck the halls extent.
Could you tire of being endlessly festively up?
If you’re a diehard Christmas-a-holic likely not but an old showbiz adage suggests you are best always leaving the audience wanting more, and Hannah accomplishes that with mischievous zest and endless enthusiasm so pronounced that you’d have to a confirmed Grinch indeed to begrudge her one second of that appears to be the absolute time of her life.
Full to the brim with nostalgic recollection and alive with a career inarguably in its ascendancy – Hannah hasn’t just wowed streaming and cable audiences, she continues to pop in any musical worth its West End billing and has hosted major events like Eurovision to critical and popular acclaim.
She’s having a ball and how could she not?
People love her, she’s brilliantly funny and superlatively musically talented, she has a showperson’s gift for putting on a memorable performance and she’s well and truly in love with Christmas, all of which comes together in Hannah Waddingham: Home For Christmas to transcendentally wondrous effect.
This is a show that feels like Christmas, however intangible a description that might be, but isn’t that true of the whole season?
It can’t be quantified or qualified, existing in a fervently light and escapist beyond the reach of the bleak and wearing everyday and Hannah Waddingham: Home For Christmas absolutely bottles that up perfectly, delivering a show that feels like all the Christmas loveliness and wonder you’ve ever craved and makes you feel, just for a short time, as if all your festive dreams have come fabulously, warmly, hilariously and colourfully true.
Hannah Waddingham: Home For Christmas streams on AppleTV+