If I were, say, a wacky Iraqi movie star arriving in this neck of the woods on a fact-finding mission, and I used television as a window into the culture, I'd be puzzled by this weekend's TV menu.

For the next few days, mainstream television is filled with sentimentality and silliness. Sure, there are a handful of serious documentaries and some religious programs, but if you're trying to avoid frivolity and schmaltz, you'll have to try hard. At the same time, there's a Canadian TV special that attempts to mock sentimental holiday-themed TV specials. It's all a muddle.

The Golden Hanger Awards (tonight, Star!, 9 p.m.) takes the view that a cogent summary of events in 2002 means a look back at outfits worn on the red carpet at various tacky awards shows. Joan and Melissa Rivers sit in an L.A. bar and make wisecracks about the favourite and least-favourite celebrities and clothes. A guy named Leon who squeaks out an occasional insult joins them in this endeavour.

The program is surreal, cheap and staggeringly stupid. Priceless moments keep coming. Among the most memorable is one scene in which Melissa Rivers, who is not a tiny gal, attempts to interview the giant basketball player Shaquille O'Neill and present him with a Golden Hanger award. He's not well-dressed and neither is Melissa. They look like itsy-bitsy-and-the-Beast.

Gwyenth Paltrow is mocked for that see-through, no-support thingy she wore to some awards show: "What the hell was Gwyneth thinking?," Leon squeaks. "I mean there she was with her two little chicken-cutlet breasts under that T-shirt?"

Some people like to watch an interview with the Prime Minister to end the year. Others like stupid shows that make fun of what celebrities wear. If that's you kind of Holiday entertainment -- go for it.
Silent Night (tonight, Global, 9 p.m.) is a curious thing. Simultaneously a serious movie about war and a sentimental Christmas-themed story, it doesn't do either particularly well, but it's a peculiarly engrossing drama. Set in 1944, as the American army is pushing through Europe, it's about a group of disparate characters that end up in a remote hunting lodge during Christmas.

The story we're told is a reminiscence by Fritz, who was 12 years old in 1944. His home in Germany had been bombed and his mother (Linda Hamilton) took him to the family's hunting lodge to escape the carnage. The lodge is no more than a shack in the woods and, on the way their way, they pass a German tank and the bodies of German soldiers. Soon after they arrive at the lodge, three American soldiers storm into their sanctuary. One is badly injured.

Soon after that, some German soldiers show up. The mother manages to impose her will on the situation and commands the soldiers to behave in a civilized manner in her home. They share a Christmas meal and, of course, get to know each other better. For the brief Christmas holiday, the war is on hiatus.

The movie, mainly set in a couple of rooms, is really a piece of theatre in which the action is in the dialogue. Some of that dialogue is atrociously laboured. When one of the German soldiers asks, "Is this really happening?" you tend to agree with him. There is also something unbelievable about the 12-year-old Fritz (Mathew Harbour), a German boy who supports the Nazis but speaks excellent English and has read Mark Twain and Herman Melville.

What makes Silent Night interesting is the forceful, often awkward, speechifying about the horror of war and the necessity of putting conflict aside at Christmas. Linda Hamilton is very good as the strong-willed, middle-aged mother. She really does look like a weary-of-war mother and nothing like the love interest she played in Beauty and the Beast on TV or the muscled babe she played in the Terminator movies.
Must Be Santa (Sunday, CBC, 4 p.m.) was made in 1999 and it's a very brave attempt by CBC to make a different kind of Christmas movie. The sentimentality is low-key and at times it's even a bit prickly -- it doesn't try to force good cheer on people. Dabney Coleman plays Tuttle, the cranky CEO of the North Pole. A mistake is made and a sad sack guy named Floyd (Arnold Pinnock) is chosen as the new Santa Claus. Initially, he wants nothing to do with the weirdos from the North Pole, but eventually he comes around. He's persuaded, in part, by Natalie (Deanna Milligan), who is Tuttle's angelic assistant. Expensively made and ambitious, Must Be Santa is an oddity in the genre.
Dave Foley's The True Meaning of Christmas Specials (Sunday, CBC, 8 p.m.) is grotesque. The idea is that former Kid-In-The-Hall Foley (who wrote and directed) is hosting a Christmas TV special and he can't quite get the right spirit. He means the spirit of Christmas TV specials, not Christmas itself. Thus we get a self-conscious, smarmy, self-congratulatory smirk-fest. A variety of Canadian comedy stars (Mike Myers, Tom Green, Dave Thomas) make feeble attempts to mock their celebrity status and wealth, while remaining utterly conscious of being very rich and remote from Canada.

Foley consults Myers about finding the spirit of a Christmas TV special. Myers is bathing in a bath of money and his butler is Tom Green. Myers tells Foley that making a Christmas special is "a very important time in the life of a celebrity." Foley says he wants Myers's advice because, "you're famous, like me, only more famous. And that makes you a better and smarter person."

Dave Thomas shows up to do his old SCTV version of Bob Hope. Joe Flaherty does Bing Crosby and is joined by Foley in a humourless parody of the notorious Christmas special duet between Crosby and David Bowie. There is a running joke throughout about how celebrities get the girls. Jann Arden plays a ghost. Elvis Stojko plays himself.

The upshot is a decidedly crass program that isn't a true mockery of Christmas sentimentality on TV. It's just a bunch of guys with a grisly sense of self-importance making jokes about their own celebrity. You'll find more Christmas cheer in a news report about some celebrity trying to stop a war with Iraq. At least Sean Penn isn't making a TV special or making jokes about TV specials.
jdoyle@globeandmail.ca