Blood Actually: A Murder, They Hope Mystery review – All-star cast meet gruesome ends straight out of Midsomer Murders, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Blood Actually: A Murder, They Hope Mystery (Gold)

Rating:

Disco: Soundtrack Of A Revolution (BBC Two)

Rating:

Anything The Crown can do, Lee Mack can do – well, not better, exactly, but much funnier.

Like Princess Di returning to haunt Charles, Lee came back as the ghost of a turkey dinner, scaring the socks off Johnny Vegas in the crime comedy Blood Actually: A Murder, They Hope Mystery (Gold).

His character, Willy Watkins, was killed off last year but, in a serial that treats its celebrities more callously than Ant and Dec in the jungle, death is not necessarily permanent in Murder They Hope.

That’s reassuring news for Robert Webb, Martin Kemp, Rosie Cavaliero and Samuel Anderson, who all met gruesome ends while dressed as Santa or one of his elves.

Vegas and co-star Sian Gibson, as a pair of hapless private sleuths, are sending up every cosy detective show, but this time the joke was on Midsomer Murders. 

In a picturesque village where life revolved around the pub (run by Anita Dobson, one-time landlady of the Queen Vic), an all-star cast was preparing for the cut-throat competition of the annual Father Christmas contest.

Johnny Vegas stars alongside co-star Sian Gibson in the crime comedy Blood Actually: A Murder, They Hope Mystery

Some of the murders were certainly worthy of Midsomer: a severed Santa head in a gift-wrapped box, and another Father Christmas hung up in a giant stocking and skewered with a candy cane.

As in Midsomer, you could happily spend the two hours spotting cameos. Look! That’s Jack Carroll, who made his name on Britain’s Got Talent. 

There’s Jane Horrocks, remember her in Ab Fab? Sarah Hadland from Miranda. And Sherrie Hewson, from . . . just about everything, really, but most recently seen flashing her bits on The Real Full Monty.

Peter Davison made a valiant effort to steal the show as a creepy Airbnb landlord, renting out his home to visitors and hovering in doorways to complete their sentences. 

He’s often seen hamming it up, for instance as the chain-smoking vicar in that dreadful Darling Buds Of May remake. I’d love to see him do what other comic actors such as Ade Edmondson have done, and start playing darker roles in crime dramas.

Vegas always pours energy into his performances, though they never stray far from his persona as a whimpering man-baby. But it’s Gibson who is the real heart of the partnership. 

She doesn’t have a lot to do, except fend off the ravings of the other characters and have a stab at solving the murders. Still, without her, there wouldn’t be a show, just a ragbag of sketches. She holds everything together.

There’s Jane Horrocks (pictured), remember her in Ab Fab? Sarah Hadland from Miranda. And Sherrie Hewson, from . . . just about everything, really, but most recently seen flashing her bits on The Real Full Monty

A steady, hand-clapping beat held everything together in a double bill of Disco: Soundtrack Of A Revolution (BBC2), a blend of social history and musical celebration.

Stars including Patti LaBelle, Candi Staton and Thelma Houston traced the phenomenon’s history, from underground to mainstream. 

For decades, disco was dismissed as the most lightweight, disposable pop, but it was far more complex than we guessed at first from the glossy, superficial production.

Long before John Travolta played a straight, macho guy strutting his stuff to Stayin’ Alive in Saturday Night Fever, the music was a soundtrack to emerging protest movements for gay rights and racial equality.

In particular, it gave a voice to black women. Incredibly, they were blamed in the civil rights era for all America’s ills – the Moynihan Report, a government paper from 1965, accused them of being ‘strong women’, wielding too much matriarchal power in their families, as if that were a crime.

The sheer charisma of natural superstars such as Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer becomes all the more impressive when set in that context.

Liberally illustrated with paparazzi shots of A-list nightclub parties and wild archive footage, this was history to set your toes tapping.

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