This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

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“The jury’s out on Santa Claus,” says Richard Curtis, careful not to dash anyone’s Christmas hopes. “I’m not sure how you feel but I’m 67, and I still don’t know if he’s real or not.”

Having just heard him voiced in gruffly warm Scots by Brian Cox in Curtis’s new Netflix animation That Christmas, I would very much like to believe in this Dundonian Santa Claus.

The film is adapted from the Notting Hill and Love Actually writer’s works for children, compiled in That Christmas and Other Stories.

Based loosely on real-life Walberswick near where Curtis keeps a home with his wife Emma Freud, it’s set in the fictional Suffolk seaside town of Wellington-on-Sea. Here a cast of families, single parents and sometimes troubled children are preparing for Christmas and a carol concert arranged by Bill the lighthouse keeper, when a wall of snow descends upon the town, so dense it disorientates Cox’s Santa in his sleigh.

Cox recorded his dialogue in snatches while still “in the full, resplendent glory of his Succession moment”, says Curtis, taking tea with RT in a London hotel.

Alongside Cox, there are the voices of Lolly Adefope, Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittaker, Guz Khan and Bill Nighy as the lighthouse keeper. After his memorable 2003 turn as ageing rocker Billy Mack in Love Actually, 75-year-old Nighy now functions as Curtis’s septuagenarian muse. “I was so thrilled he did it,” Curtis says, with feeling. “Bill’s voice is lovely, it’s one of the joys of the film.”

The great snowstorm kiboshes Bill’s carol concert and Christmas Day itself comes under threat. The town is cut off, adults are separated from children and a film that had been shaping up to be a standard dose of seasonal animation veers towards wider questions concerning children’s mental health and, at one key point, physical safety.

“As a writer, that’s the thing that’s convenient about Christmas,” says Curtis. “If you’ve got a kid and his mum and she’s recently divorced, when is the pain of that going to kick in? It’s if dad doesn’t turn up at Christmas. If you’ve got two sisters, twins, one of whom is naughty and the other nervous, when does it all come to a head? When you find out if Santa Claus is leaving presents or not.”

Father Christmas hangs upside-down holding a sack of presents on a dark, snowy night
Father Christmas in That Christmas. Netflix

Curtis, who has brought up four children with Freud, was sent away to school in the 1960s. “Going to boarding school made Christmas so precious, because you came home and you had that glorious two or three weeks.”

He doesn’t believe in innate naughtiness in children. “The story isn’t what might have been written 50 years ago, which is, there’s one real goody-goody and one naughty child. We’re looking at what’s behind someone who misbehaves, and what it’s like being in the company of someone who’s behaving worse than you in every respect.”

This shading of the feel-good or funny with darker themes is an old Curtis trick. “When we started Comic Relief in 1985, everyone said, ‘This is a really bad idea, you can’t do comedy sketches and then go to an appeal about domestic violence,’” he says. “But I think you can, because that’s the rhythm of life.’’

His own life, illuminated by screen triumphs that range from Blackadder through Notting Hill to Mr Bean, has also been shadowed by tragedy. His sister Belinda took her own life in 2017 after years of mental health problems. “I’ve lived with a lot of sickness in my family,” he says, “but you can be really aware of that and then, two hours later, be having fun with your friends. I think life is about the fact that it’s both hard and easy at the same time.”

Curtis’s imaginary version of Suffolk isn’t immune to the world’s troubles – the snowstorm hints at climate change – but it’s also a place where everyone, whatever their social status, is eventually appreciated.

Are his politics too saccharine, his films too quick to paper over the things like social class that divide us? “I don’t know about that, but I do think there’s enormous and increasing inequality and injustice in this country, and there’s something about villages that breaks down some of those differences in a way that’s good and interesting.

“They reflect the way that things used to be more than they are now, as people move into cities, where there’s a more clear line between those who have money and those who don’t. Many of the things that people might feel are starting to be missed in the UK as a whole are still there.” Would life be a lot better if we all lived in a Suffolk village? “I think that’s probably true.”

Animated characters in That Christmas, stood around watching another character, who is speaking on the phone
That Christmas. Netflix

Curtis-land, often peopled by romantically troubled toffs, can seem like a privileged place, but thanks to the excellent cast, That Christmas looks and sounds a lot more like the country most of us live in. “I love the fact that this is a more diverse film and I liked the opportunity to work with the diverse acting cadre in this country. It’s lovely to be able to have Guz Khan and Lolly Adefope.”

Is he deliberately making the Suffolk coast more diverse than it is? “I’m just taking advantage of how many great actors there are out there. But casting has always been a revelation from the start of my film career. When we did Four Weddings and a Funeral, I said, ‘Hugh Grant? Over my dead body!’ I thought he was too posh and too handsome for my movies. When he auditioned, he was much better than everybody else and I still fought against it. Then the first time we screened the movie I realised I was wrong; it turned out that he was the most important thing in the film. Now it’s such a joy to make a movie that doesn’t have him in it.” He laughs, then adds, “Though he would have made a good villain.”

There is no real villain in That Christmas other than the vicissitudes of the weather and even that, as things tend to in Curtis films, turns out to be a force for the general good. No spoilers intended, but nothing here will ruin your Christmas Day.

As well as personal tragedy, Curtis has worked in the backbiting world of film and TV for 40 years – does he still think love is a good fix for most problems? “Well, I do think I’m very interested in love and friendship and family,” he concedes. “I’m not saying ‘love is the answer, and I know that for sure’, but I think a lot of us experience love and tenderness in our lives, and that’s what I like.”

Radio Times.
Radio Times.

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