A grand Christmas Day all round in spite of everything.

Radio Times: Daggers drawn at Christmas dinner.

Characters: Amy, Eddie, Emma, Jill, Mabel, Neil, Susan, William

• Susan has brought a ham to supplement the Christmas dinner; Joe is really upset about selling the turkey and has provided some home-grown parsnips.
• At the vicarage too, dinner preparations are in hand. It’s time to wake Luke and get him scrubbed up for dinner – but he is gone!
• Emma is still worried about whether her dad will behave, after all Neil and Eddie hardly speak these days. When the pie arrives it looks wonderful and contains – a few bits of this and that.
• Amy guesses that Luke will have gone somewhere to be alone and heads for the church. They meet Jill who has not seen him; she is on a mercy mission to people whose Christmas dinner might be a bit thin. Mabel has enough to feed all the waifs and strays in the county but they have lost the only one they had.
• Amy was right but Luke just wants to be alone. Being surrounded by so much love is too much for him; he feels he has blown his chances and cannot go on. Amy persuades him that her dad will think he has failed Luke and implores him to come home.
• Emma’s soup went down well, although Eddie’s opinion goes down when he finds out it was made of the chestnuts intended for the stuffing. And the ‘chicken’ pie!? Since when do we shoot chickens? Neil is silenced by his family and by the arrival of Jill, bearing a large piece of beef.
• A bath has warmed Luke up and he wants Mabel to pause while he does a drawing of her. He had better open his present then – a sketch book. That’s so kind.
• Emma and William are satisfied with their day; no major conflict broke out. It will always be like this when they are married. Happy Christmas.