Originally arriving as a Christmas special back in 2016, "The Devil of Christmas" is another wonderful dive into horror, but with the trademark wit and invention that we'd come to appreciate from Shearsmith and Pemberton.
The director of a 1970's horror movie (Derek Jacobi) recounts the events of the shoot in the style of a DVD commentary. The movie shows Julian (Steve Pemberton) arrive at a Swiss Chalet for a holiday with his mother Celia (Rula Lenska), son Toby (George Bedford) and his second wife Kathy (Jessica Raine). Kathy is struggling to fill the gap left in Toby's life by the absence of his mother, and Celia's disapproval is not well hidden. Their holiday starts to take on a more sinister turn, when Klaus (Reece Shearsmith) explains the story of the Krampus, a creature that kidnaps naughty children around Christmas.
It's a very meta twist that comes in this episode, as the nature of what we're seeing becomes clear. The 70's aspect of the show is wonderfully authentic, with (according to the trivia section) genuine cameras and film stock used to create those particular colour hues. The performances are really good, even the ones that work on a couple of levels, with George Bedford giving a good turn as a bad child actor, for example. I watched all the episodes of both "Beasts" and "Hammer House of Horror" last year, and enjoyed the fact that the in-show movie was reminiscent of those.
It perhaps suffers a bit on a second viewing if you remember what happens in the final scenes, as it renders much of what you've seen before a little redundant, but it's increasingly horrific the more that you think about it and consider the normality and organisation of it.
A great episode, and one of the more memorable.