Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings

Victoria Wood with All The Trimmings was a one-off Christmas comedy sketch-show special, written by and starring comedienne Victoria Wood. It was first broadcast on BBC1 on Christmas Day 2000.

Lasting 55 minutes, the show is described by RDF, its rights holders as "a great big Christmas pudding of a show, stuffed full of stars in plum roles. Wonderfully funny sketches, brilliant pastiches and tons of celebrities. If you like your comedy roasting on an open fire this is one not to miss."^[1]

Also appearing were Wood's regular co-stars Celia Imrie, Julie Walters, Anne Reid, Susie Blake and Maxine Peake.

It also featured an enormous number of guest celebrity appearances such as Caroline Aherne, James Bolam, Betty Boothroyd, June Brown, Craig Cash, Roger Cook, Lindsay Duncan, Hannah Gordon, Richard E. Grant, Shobna Gulati, Philip Jackson, Derek Jacobi, Hugh Laurie, Robert Lindsay, Geraldine McEwan, Bob Monkhouse, Roger Moore, Michael Parkinson, Bill Paterson, Billie Piper, Pete Postlethwaite, Alan Rickman, Angela Rippon, Kate Robbins, Ted Robbins, Delia Smith, Kathy Staff, Imelda Staunton, Alan Titchmarsh, Ian Watkins, Honeysuckle Weeks, Penelope Wilton, Anna Wing and Bernard Wrigley.^[2] Wood said of the casting "I had a great long list of all the people I really liked. I wrote to the first 14 or so—and they all said yes. So I thought, 'Oh, bloody hell—I've got to write it now.'"^[3]

The show format was a series of pastiches, closely edited to run without gaps, ranging from a big band show from the 1950s to a period Charles Dickens saga. There was also a tale about an archetypal northern brass band ("The General Fettlers, Warp and Weft Adjusters' Band"), a documentary about a wannabe star bingo-caller on a cruise liner and a portrayal of the Women's Institutes in the guise of an American emergency hospital drama. The show ended with a musical finale extravaganza based around Ann Widdecombe.

The show was described by a BBC News Online writer in 2000 as "the centrepiece of BBC One's Christmas Day schedules". Wood responded to this accolade by saying "it's a very strange feeling—but it's got to be someone, hasn't it?" The show was made straight after Wood had finished work on her sitcom dinnerladies. She said "I was worn out from doing dinnerladies and it took me a long time to recover. "It was great to do but it was very draining...the last 10 dinnerladies I did in a really, really short time and I was ill at one point. This Christmas special was much easier to write because it was in bits."^[3]

The show was broadcast again on 21 December 2009, 22 December 2010, 5 December 2011, 23 December 2012, and 24 December 2014.

References

External links

• Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings at the Internet Movie Database