YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT (AMANDALAND: 2025 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL & THE TWISTED TALE OF AMANDA KNOX)
It's quite a feather in the cap for a sitcom to get a Christmas episode.
To get that episode aired on a primetime slot on Christmas Day is even more special.
However to be gifted that after just one series is extraordinary.
Such is the high regard BBC commissioners have for 'Amandaland' - the 'Motherland' spin-off that was a big critical and ratings hit earlier this year - that it was given that honour this Christmas.
The 2025 Festive special saw Lucy Punch's deluded would be influencer and Queen Bee, Amanda packing her two kids, Alexander Shaw's Manus and Miley Locke's Georgie off to the Cotswolds to spend Christmas Day on the country estate of her aunt, Jennifer Saunders' Joan.
In typical Amanda fashion, heading to the estate was less about family and more about trying to gain traction on social media by recreating a "hilarious photo" from her childhood involving a pavlova.
Also in typical Amanda fashion, a taxi she booked failed to materialise with her having to lean instead on her neighbour Samuel Anderson's Mal to take them to the estate near Cirencester in his van.
Mal, who had hoped to spend the day on his own in his pyjamas ordering a curry and watching 'Die Hard,' wasn't thrilled about having to drive Amanda and her family .
Amanda further tested his patience by collecting her mum, Joanna Lumley's Felicity en route who wasn't that thrilled either to be seeing her sister.
They picked up Philippa Dunne's Ann along the way, who was distraught because her flight to Dublin had been cancelled.
This meant she was forced to spend her first Christmas away from her loved ones.
Arriving at Joan's country estate, the group were greeted by Amanda's scatty aunt in a blood stained apron who laid on an unappetising spread of Marks and Spencer's party food, pate that one of her dogs licked, expensive champagne and an array of out of date soft drinks.
A quick gaze at a photo album, containing the photo that Amanda wanted to recreate, revealed some other pics that Felicity was eager to conceal but which fell into the hands of Mal.
These suggested Amanda may have a famous father.
Meanwhile Ann developed a taste for high end champagne which helped her to jettison her guilt over failing to join the rest of her family in Ireland.
Would Amanda successfully recreate her childhood family photo with the pavlova?
Would Felicity eventually warm to being back in the company of her Queen Camilla like sister?
Would Mal and Ann spill the beans to Amanda about who her father might be?
Working from a script by Laurence Rickard and Holly Walsh, director David Sant must have hoped the Christmas special would serve as a mouth watering appetiser for the second series which will air next year.
Unfortunately, this episode felt a bit like the Christmas episode that 'The Young Offenders' got after just one series in 2018 - undercooked.
Moving the show out of "SoHa"- the London neighbourhood of South Harlesden - meant sacrificing key elements of the show.
Regulars like Siobhan McSweeney's chef Della, her lesbian partner Rochenda Sandall's Fi and Ekow Quartey's kind hearted stepdad JJ were cast aside and were sorely missed.
While some gags in the Festive edition landed - including Amanda having the same mannerisms of a very famous rock star - there were simply not enough of them that did and it fell considerably short of the high strike rate of Series One.
The appearance of Jennifer Saunders was a huge plus and she stole the show with a well observed character that could have been ripped straight out of one of her old sketch shows, with her longtime comedy partner Dawn French.
Lumley shone too, playing everything absolutely straight while her 'Absolutely Fabulous' co-star dazzled.
With a classic episode of 'Absolutely Fabulous' airing on BBC1's Christmas Day schedule afterwards, you could see exactly what the corporation was up to with this seasonal edition - living off past glories.
However, simply grabbing audience attention by reuniting Lumley with Saunders just wasn't enough.
It felt like the show's main stars, Punch, Dunne and Anderson had their thunder stolen from them.
While they put on a decent show, they felt like supporting players and were disadvantaged by a script that lacked its usual comic bite.
Focusing on the 'Absolutely Fabulous' reunion distracted from what has been the main strength of the show - Amanda's self-obsession and her failure to live a picture perfect life.
Taking 'Amandaland' also out of SoHa robbed the episode of one of the strengths of the first series and its predecessor 'Motherland' - that ability to send up London middle class life and skewer its mores.
Sticking to that tried and tested formula was they key to the two successful 'Motherland' Christmas episodes.
Relocating 'Amandaland' out of London just felt forced.
Hopefully like 'The Young Offenders' Christmas special, this Festive episode was a temporarybblip.
However there's no doubt the thinner laugh rate has slightly lowered the bar for the show heading into Series Two.
('Amandaland: 2025 Christmas Special' was broadcast on BBC1 on Christmas Day, December 25, 2025 and was also made available for streaming on the iPlayer)
The story of Amanda Knox and the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher has always been controversial.
Turning it into an eight part miniseries about Knox's incarceration in Italy, therefore, was always going to be challenging.
Wrongfully convicted in 2009 for the murder of her flatmate, the decision to turn the tragic events into a TV drama told from Knox's perspective has not surprisingly attracted a bit of a backlash and stirred up a lot of painful memories.
Dramatising real life crime is always hugely risky but the risk is even greater in this instance because one of the executive producers was at the centre of events.
Based on Knox's 2013 memoir 'Waiting To Be Heard,' the programme revisits the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia and the eagerness of the Italian authorities to pin the blame on her American flatmate.
Adapted for the screen by KJ Steinberg, Sam Rubinek, Nate Burke, Wes Taylor, Mary Laws, Sofya Levitsky Witz, Rebekah Barnett and Knox, it stars Grace Van Patten as the wrongfully convicted American student.
Giuseppe De Domenico plays her boyfriend of eight days, Raffaele Sollecito who was wrongfully imprisoned too.
Sharon Horgan adds some acting heft as her mum Edda Mellas, while John Hoogenakker co-stars as her father Curt Knox, Joe Lanza as her stepfather Chris Mellas, Francesco Acquaroli as the Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, Roberta Mattei as a cop Valentina Greco, Alfredo Pea as a priest Don Saulo Scarabattoli, and Rhianne Barretto as Kercher.
In a nifty piece of casting, Van Patten's real life sister Anna also plays Knox's sister Deanna.
Stretched over eight episodes, the narrative shifts between various characters and goes back and forth between the terrible events of 2007 to the accused's childhoods and the subsequent court cases in 2009 and 2014.
Unsurprisingly with Knox involved as an executive producer, the miniseries is scathing about Mignini and the Italian police's eagerness to prove Knox and Sollecito were involved.
It lambasts the police and prosecutor for the cackhandedness of their investigation, their manipulation of the Italian and international media and also criticises the country's courts for their desperation to secure convictions
It's especially damning of the DNA evidence presented at the original trial, the brutality of the Italian prison system and the prosecutor and police's obstruction of justice.
While these scenes are undoubtedly shocking, there are, however, some tonal misfires that undermine the show.
The writers and directors - Michael Uppendahl, Cate Shortland, Natalia Leite and Quyen Tran - have a rather bizarre obsession with the quirky French movie 'Amelie' which Sollecito and Knox were watching on the night of the murder.
Rather unwisely the show tries to ape Jeunet and Caro's movie with magical realist sequences.
Other scenes, where Knox seems to make light of the events unfolding around her during her trisl, may be intended to show her naivete but are actually quite alienating.
There'a a really clunky, on the nose metaphor of a bird trapped inside a building too while Knox is being overwhelmed.
It doesn't help that Knox has been assiduous since her release in trying to assert her own innocence with two books, a Netflix documentary and now a TV drama.
While her motivation is clearly to clear her name, it does leave Knox open to claims that she is insensitively revisiting traumatic events that haunt the Kerchers to this day and profiting from it.
While the show does acknowledge their pain and suffering, it comes across as a bit tick box.
At eight episodes, 'The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,' like a lot of miniseries on streaming services, is too bloated and padded out in parts.
Some episodes are more effective than others.
Van Patten, Horgan, De Domenico, Hoogenakker, Acquaroli and Pea turn in solid performances that keep the audience engaged in spite of the script's deficiencies.
As a piece of drama, 'The Twisted of Amanda Knox' is better than a lot of streaming fare but is hardly top drawer.
But it also leaves an aftertaste that makes you question the wisdom of making it.
('The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox' was made available for streaming on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland from August 20-October 1, 2025)
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