Christmas double features

Now that we're at the first of December, TCM is going to be running more Christmas movies. I kind of like one of the things they're doing this year, which is to have double features every Saturday and Sunday in prime time in the run-up to Christmas. It works well now that there's Noir Alley in the midnight slot between Saturday and Sunday as well as the old Silent Sunday Nights. There's only around four hours each night to program, which isn't really enough to do justice to regular themes, but running something like Christmas movies throughout the month works well.

I haven't read enough on the TCM boards yet to see whether anybody's complaining about it being the same old Christmas movies, but TCM claims that three of the movies are TCM premieres. That should give people something to look forward to. And of the ones that aren't premieres, O. Henry's Full House on November 9 doesn't show up very often what with it being a Fox film. Granted, it's an anthology and only one of the segments deals directly with Christmas. But that one is "The Gift of the Magi".

As for tonight's lineup, it's Beyond Christmas at 8:00 PM followed at 9:45 by the venerable The Bishop's Wife, one of the best Christmas movies in my book.