When his dad sits him down to finally tell the ‘truth’, it sets Chris off on an adventure to prove him wrong, tapping into the expertise of TV’s intelligentsia, including Stephen Fry, Professor Hannah Fry and Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a nutshell, Finding Father Christmas<\/a> is everything you expect it to be \u2013 the jokes are a bit lame, the schmaltz is off the charts and the celebrity cameos are forced. But come on, I’d have to be a real Scrooge to give it less than three stars!<\/p>\n At the very least, Rush remains on track to achieve ‘national treasure’ status before the end of his teenage years and holds this hastily assembled ship together with another charismatic turn.<\/p>\n Want to see this content?<\/p>\n Sign out of ContentPass<\/p>\n The emphasis is on ‘hasty’, though: this whole feature was filmed in two weeks and, as a result, often has the look and feel of a Comic Relief<\/a> sketch, i.e. good enough to serve a short-term purpose, but not exactly built with a vision to last.<\/p>\n We can look past these shortcomings in the spirit of the season, or perhaps even in a mulled wine-induced stupor, but the misgiving that persists is my general confusion over who this is for.<\/p>\n Its early time slot on Christmas Eve and all-ages tone would suggest ‘everyone’, but surely that changes if you have any kids for whom the Father Christmas question hasn’t yet come up or been definitively settled.<\/p>\n Finding Father Christmas sits in a strange place where it alludes to the idea that Father Christmas could \u2013 or maybe does \u2013 exist, even getting its guest experts to explain how in educational monologues (that I struggled to grasp, to be honest).<\/p>\n However, down-on-his-luck dad Nick readily denies the existence of Father Christmas throughout, so surely that could be confusing for any kids who are yet to even start broaching this topic.<\/p>\n Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocok and Lenny Rush star in Finding Father Christmas\u00a0Tom Martin \/ Channel 4<\/p>\n My conclusion is that families with children can probably watch this together, so long as the children are too young to really know what’s going on, old enough to be confronted with these questions, or have never believed in Father Christmas at any point.<\/p>\n But maybe I’m overthinking it.<\/p>\n After all, virtually inescapable festive films like Elf<\/a> and Miracle on 34th Street<\/a> have addressed the topic of disbelief in Father Christmas, so I suppose the ideas are out there and probably ignored, to some extent, by younger kids.<\/p>\n Ultimately, I trust that parents (a group that I am not a member of) will be able to judge for themselves whether Finding Father Christmas is the right viewing option for their child.<\/p>\n For Channel 4’s sake, I hope my doubts are merely the ravings of a lunatic, because there isn’t much reason to watch this simplistic special unless you have kids to entertain \u2013 and therein lies the real paradox that needs explaining.<\/p>\n Finding Father Christmas premieres on Channel 4 at 7:30pm on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n Add Finding Father Christmas to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app<\/a> \u2013 download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.<\/p>\n Check out more of our Comedy<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide<\/a> to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A star rating of 3 out of 5. Riddle me this: Finding Father Christmas is a family-friendly comedy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-335167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dame](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/78103Finding-Father-Christmas-d021f2b.jpg\" "\\"Finding")
<\/p>\n