Bad Tidings review: Lee Mack and Chris McCausland comedy is forgettable festive fare

Equally, you might get The Heist Before Christmas, last year's entry in the genre from Sky. That film posed a delightful set-up, with James Nesbitt and Timothy Spall playing duelling Santas, but ended up being utterly confounding – a tonal mess with one of the most baffling, un-Christmassy final twists of all time.

Now, Sky returns with a new addition, Bad Tidings – but where does it sit on sliding scale from snow covered fun to cinematic sleigh crash? Well, somewhere in between.

Bad Tidings stars Lee Mack as a home security expert going through a rough time. He's become fixated with his blind neighbour Scott, played by Strictly sensation Chris McCausland, who he believes has a vendetta against him.

The rest of the street are enamoured with Scott, and intend to make him head of the Neighbourhood Watch, but Neil's protestations mean they end up sharing the role.

When Neil tries to one-up Scott's Christmas lights, he ends up blowing the power on Christmas Eve. All the residents have to leave their homes to spend Christmas with relatives or friends, but Neil and Scott, in their Neighbourhood Watch roles, stay behind to guard the street.

They think it will be an easy, if somewhat cold and depressing job, but soon find themselves teaming up and fighting back against an infamous local crime family, as they attempt a one-night Grinch-tastic stealing spree.

If that sounds like a lot of set-up, that's because it is. Neil and Scott's rivalry is established in an instant, yet there is still a long way to go (and a strange amount of emphasis put on a neighbourhood watch group) until we get to the meat and two veg of the film, AKA Christmas night.

Thankfully, it's still a great deal simpler than The Heist Before Christmas, and that's certainly to the film's benefit. Once things do get cooking, you know where you are – indeed we've seen a lot of this before in various iterations.

The home invaders are very much in Home Alone territory. The warring neighbours are Deck the Halls. In fact, Lee Mack and Chris McCausland's dynamic is very similar to one they previously developed in an episode of Not Going Out. The film ends up feeling sort of like a Christmas mash-up.

None of this is necessarily a problem, in fact, a lot of it is a blessing. These things are tried and tested so we know that they work, and no one's going to begrudge a TV Christmas movie for being a little derivative.

The problem is that none of it is particularly memorable. There are no stand-out jokes, no killer one-liners, no hugely noteworthy set pieces. It all ends up feeling a bit flat, like it's going through the motions.

Mack and McCausland do their best to liven up proceedings, but there's only so far that their personal chemistry can go to liven up proceedings.

We're jokingly told that Mack's character Neil is having a bit of a breakdown, which is the only thing which can possible explain his demented behaviour and excessive aggravation in the first half of the film.

When Lee is going off on one in Not Going Out, we understand because we know and empathise with the character. With Neil, the same level of understanding isn't there, and the social awkwardness starts to dampen the humour.

McCausland gets most of the best lines, and his deadpan delivery does work up against Mack's brashness. It's in the small moments of bickering between the two of them that you can start to see a version of the film firing on all cylinders.

That's not to say the arrival of the villains is a huge problem – they're fine additions, as it goes. The talents of actors such as Rebekah Staton and Ben Crompton do feel somewhat squandered (as is the case with Sarah Alexander, who gets almost nothing to do as Neil's Wife Laura), but they provide a couple of chuckle-worthy moments.

There are also some effective moments of slapstick (Mack has particular fun with one solid sequence involving a flight of stairs).

But the best scenes are still to be found in the downtime between incursions with them, both from an emotional standpoint and a comedic one. One almost wonders what a scaled back version of Bad Tidings might look like – two warring neighbours, played by two high calibre comedians, forced to spend Christmas together. It might just have been a proper Yuletide treat.

In the end, there's some festive fun to be had here, if you're simply looking for something to while away an hour and a half. It's perfectly fine, inoffensive, and will keep the family somewhat entertained.

But with the talent involved, you can't help but feel a bit let down by how empty and by-the-numbers it all feels, and how quickly it will likely be forgotten. Click & Collect, this ain't.

Bad Tidings premieres at 7:30pm on Sunday 22nd December on Sky Max and NOW. Find out more about how to sign up for Sky TV.

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