Like the Will Hay classic Oh! Mr. Porter and the droll BBC miniseries Love on a Branch Line, Charles Crichton’s 1953 Ealing comedy, the first shot in Technicolor, celebrates the English love of rural railways run by unworldly eccentrics in whose hands ancient locomotives are objects of love, and sometimes dangerous weapons. A slight but ineffably charming pipedream, it was both nostalgic for pre-war village life and prophetic of the Beeching railway cuts that slashed branch lines in the mid-1960s, ending a way of life. 

Broadcast: Berberian Sound Studio Original Soundtrack

René Clément? Who he? Sixty years ago the question didn’t need to be asked: 1952 was the year of his greatest triumph, Forbidden Games (Jeux interdits), one of four titles being issued separately by StudioCanal to mark his centenary. A quick glance at The Deadly Trap (1971), a tension-free thriller, with Faye Dunaway and Frank Langella all at sea, will partly explain why his reputation faded. Poor material aside, Clément was also a victim of bad timing. Rising to fame just before the New Wave hit, he felt himself in his own eyes to be a New Wave precursor.

You have to wonder whether blood, squalor, flea infestations, DIY childbirth and urine-soaked tenements are really the perfect family viewing elixir for 7.30pm on Christmas Day, but the BBC has obviously decided that it's good for us. Or, considering that the ornate and crenellated shadow of Downton looms so large over the festivities, maybe they felt they had no choice but to deploy the Midwife weapon, the Beeb's biggest drama hit in a decade. 

When the first series of The Hour aired last year, there was a lot of excitable talk about how it was the "British Mad Men". Having sat through series two, I've concluded that in fact it's the British version of Pan Am, that bizarrely idiotic airline series where all the air hostesses were covert operatives for the CIA, and visits to exotic international locations were achieved using plywood props and big photographs of famous landmarks.

White Christmas is named so you know that gorgeous song is inside it somewhere. Yes, this is the 12-year-younger and lesser remake of Holiday Inn that also stars Bing Crosby and also features the cry-your-guts-out, I-regret-everything holiday tune by Irving Berlin. The big difference is that in White Christmas, Bing sings along to a music box.

The first rule of temptation is to yield to it slowly, says a sozzled roué surrounded by semi-clad lovelies, it’s much more fun that way… The Hour is back and, the silly conspiracy strand sewn up at the end of the first series, better than ever.

William Klein’s exhibition opens with Broadway by Light (1958), a celluloid elegy to advertising made in the days before neon. Myriad bulbs flash the names of brands like Coca Cola, Camel, Budweiser and Pepsi across New York’s night sky. Silhouetted against vast hoardings, men perch on ladders to hang letters outside Broadway theatres or screw in brightly coloured bulbs that create gaudy, syncopated patterns which, when reflected in rainwater puddles, ripple and shimmer with the subtlety of abstract paintings.

Lee Hazlewood: A House Safe for Tigers

Graham Rickson

The fright wig is instantly recognisable. Even with her back turned, it’s obviously Tina Turner on stage. Except it isn’t. It’s actress Emi Wokoma playing the singer in a performance virtually guaranteed to turn her into a star. Casualty and EastEnders will soon be distant memories for Wokoma. Good for her, maybe, but she’s the best thing about the otherwise wafer-thin Soul Sister.