Unlike your grand visions for snowman and snowdog perfection, the British Christmas TV lineup for 2025 is beginning to take shape. And they’re bringing in the big guns – not just Joanna Lumley, Russell T Davies and Mark Gatiss, but the iconic Pat Butcher, back at Albert Square and The Queen Vic for the first time in a decade (and the second time since being killed off).

Lumley leads the marquee production, an adaptation of E. F. Benson’s 1912 short story The Room in the Tower, which becomes the 18th instalment in the BBC’s long-running A Ghost Story for Christmas anthology series. Roger Winstanley accepts an invitation to his friend’s family’s country house, to be confronted by the very thing that for years has haunted his nightmares.