Today's TV Picks! Christmas Eve

Specials

Angela’s Christmas (RTE 1, 6.20pm)
The half hour animated film is based on Frank McCourt’s only children’s book inspired by a story his mother Angela told him as a child. McCourt, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling memoir, Angela’s Ashes, set the tale in Ireland in the early 1900s as a funny, heart-warming and poignant story about the power of family and the innocent desire of a child to ensure everyone is safe, warm and loved at Christmas time.
Malachy, Frank’s brother, and Irish-American actor, writer and politician, provides the narration.

Michael McIntyre’s Big Christmas Show (BBC 1, 8.30pm)
Recorded at a packed Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London's West End, Michael McIntyre's Big Show is overflowing with performances from soul sensation Seal and comedy virtuoso Bill Bailey, as well as new stand-up material from Michael himself. Plus a very special guest will be bravely handing over their phone in Celebrity Send To All and Father Christmas gets the surprise of his life before delivering a spine-tingling finale as the Unexpected Star

Maigret In Montmarte (ITV, 9pm)
Maigret investigates the random murders of a Countess and a Showgirl and discovers a dark secret that links their past lives at the Grand Hotel in Nice. Arlette, a beguiling showgirl from a seedy club in Montmartre arrives at the Quai des Orfevres late one night drunk and claiming she has overheard two men discussing the murder of a Countess whilst she was performing. The next morning news arrives that Arlette has been found murdered in her apartment. 

Carols From The Castle (RTE 1, 9.15pm)
Mary Kennedy brings Christmas magic into every home with a special evening of festive music, old and new, from the magnificently decked halls of Dublin Castle. Mary and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra are joined by legendary folk singer, Ralph McTell, teenage Centenary sensation, Síbeal Ní Chasaide, Irish Country’s band of brothers, The Three Amigos, and many more, all under the baton of conductor, David Brophy.

Bridget & Eamon’s Christmas Special (RTE 2, 9.45pm)
Entitled ‘Four Funerals and No Wedding’, Bridget works out that with the widow’s pension and life assurance Eamon would be worth more dead than alive. So she fakes his death -  but Eamon can’t resist going to his own wake. Jennifer Zamparelli and Bernard O’Shea are back for Yultide mania in this the IFTA award winning comedy series.

Movies

Casablanca (RTE 2, 3.45pm)
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman set the screen aflame in this classic WWII drama set in Casablanca, December 1941, where a cynical American expatriate encounters a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

Frozen (RTE 2, 6.55pm)
When the newly crowned Queen Elsa accidentally uses her power to turn things into ice to curse her home in infinite winter, her sister, Anna, teams up with a mountain man, his playful reindeer, and a snowman to change the weather condition.

The Great Gatsby (BBC 2, 9pm)
F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale get a modern makeover by director Baz Luhrmann, with Leo Di Caprio and Carey Mulligan as the star-crossed lovers alive and wild in New York’s Roaring 20s.