Scandi all the way: the best things to watch this festive season

There’s always that one TV show or film that you must watch at Christmas – Love Actually, Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone…and yes, for some, Die Hard, but for all Swedish households, a 1950s episode of Donald Duck (Kalle Anka’s Jul).

Here, five of our favourite festive picks and where to watch them.

It does what it says on the tin and we’re hooked. Perpetually single twentysomething Johanne (Ida Elise Broch) is done with the relationship chatter from her family; this year she’s bringing her boyfriend home for Christmas. Except she hasn’t got one. What follows is a classic rom-com plot – a 24-day search for a boyfriend – but it’s cute and funny and awkward and set in Norway’s most festive town, Roros, so you forgive all the cheese and binge watch season 1 and 2 – ho ho ho!

Watch: Netflix

Finnish movie Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale sounds innocent enough (right down to it being set in the land of Mr and Mrs Claus) but writer/director Jalmari Helander ensures viewers won’t look at Santa the same way again with his 2010 black comedy.

For Pietari Kontio (Onni Tommila), the jig is up: December is a time of dread, not joy in his small Lapland village and this year he is convinced Santa isn’t a jolly man in a funny red suit, but an evil creature with horns who kidnaps and punishes bad kids every year. Pietari spends each night in his bedroom on guard with a rifle and hockey helmet for protection.

Meanwhile Pietari’s dad, Rauno a reindeer herder, has built a wolf pit next to their home and on Christmas Eve he discovers a naked old man trapped down it; he even has a white beard. Is this the real Santa Claus who has found himself in a bit of a pickle, or is there something more sinister at play?

Watch: Apple +, Amazon Prime, Viaplay

A family of four from the city travels to Aarmand, a remote island in the Danish archipelago, for some quality family time over Christmas only to discover the island is inhabited by elves, but not the cute variety found in Santa’s workshop. When Jose (Sonja Sofie Engberg Steen) the teenage daughter, rescues a baby elf and gives it a name (Kee-ko) everything goes downhill, and those elves turn out to be evil little carnivores who turn the family’s well-intentioned Christmas into survival of the fittest. Season two isn’t quite on its way yet, but this six-episode ripper – fantasy, folklore, horror, and atmospheric Denmark – needs to be watched more than once.

Watch: Netflix

This 2018 family friendly Christmas gem is the story of 12-year-old Lucia (Ella Testa Kusk), her mum Claudia (Mia Lyhne), and her dad Julius (Martin Buch), otherwise known as the Father Christmas, who all live in Greenland. Lucia wants to follow in her dad’s footsteps one day, but the Council of Elders who run the Santa Claus School remain staunch defenders of their male-only rule, quashing Lucia’s dreams.

Just when all’s lost, Lucia wins a school raffle granting her one Christmas wish, and that is of course to become a student at the school. Instead of bringing glad tidings, the Council put another roadblock in her way: find a cure for a mystery illness caused by the Krampus and then we can talk.

In the second instalment released in 2020, Lucia is now a student at Santa Claus School but just like Hogwarts, nothing is as it seems. She’s on a mission to find a stolen crystal, prove her friend’s innocence, and defeat a sinister cult who are trying to destroy Christmas forever.

Watch: Apple+, Amazon Prime

Bagging multiple Academy Awards in 1984 including Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, Fanny and Alexander, follows the Ekdahl family’s seemingly typically Christmas celebrations in their Swedish town: eating a huge festive meal with all the trimmings, singing and dancing around the house, and watching a nativity play. Nice, right? All goes askew when Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) Alexander (Bertil Guve) their father (Allan Edwall), and their mother (Ewa Fröling) replaces him with – yep, you guessed it – an evil stepfather who doubles as a bishop (Jan Malmsjö). They spend the rest of the film trying to escape him and be rest assured, it’s a Christmas movie so there’s a happy ending. Phew.

Watch: Apple +