To be fair, beyond the names of characters, Braveheart has little to do with either Scotland or history. It does, however, have a pretty decent James Horner soundtrack that doesn't sound phoned in.
I don't think anyone's saying Christmas Day isn't a valuable slot, just that getting a New Year's special instead of a Christmas one isn't a big deal. What are you talking about? We have a title (Resolution) and we have this nearly a minute long trailer:
Man, I'm still fuming over this. Fucking BBC, man. At least we get 13 episodes, right? Wait... no, we don't!!!
The BBC didn't want a Christmas Special and Moffat wasn't an employee of the BBC? Then how did he make them put it on the air?
BBC sure knows how to destroy momentum. They shouldn't have taken a year off with Capaldi, and taking a year off kills all the noise made for Whitaker. Maybe the show is in trouble. Maybe BBC takes the viewership for granted.
16 month wait for season 8 of Game of Thrones, 101 days, 21 hours , 52minutes to go according to the GOT counter.
Christmas is too specific of a religious holiday, New Years is more universal and won't "offend" the viewers who do not partake of Christmas. As for GOT it's wait for it to come back on, was supplemented by the fact most people would rewatch over and over the series, because quite frankly, it was good. Without any prior series, I doubt I will be rewatching most of these boring episodes, with the exception of Kerblam! and possibly The witch hunters It's not something I would rewatch over and over until the new series debuts, likewise, I think the hiatus is just to fulfill the contract, by having the special air in 2019, and if Chibs and Whittaker do leave after 2020, they technically did Doctor Who 3 years, and Jodie can also claim that as well due to technicality. At least that is what I am getting from all this debate about the premature Drexit..
Not having Doctor Who on Christmas Day isn't anything to do with the holiday being too specific or to not offend anyone, it's about the BBC trying to freshen up their Christmas Day schedule.
Both well known family viewing... When you are a kid, a year is an eternity. Doctor Who’s audience is kid based. The breaks always take the wind out of the sails, and this is very early in a new Doctor’s run to be tampering.
717,000 children u16, from 8.1 million viewers for the premiere, according to this article, or about 8% of the audience. They are also very common in UK programming, especially drama, and not entirely unexpected. Would I prefer it debut in fall 2019? Sure, because I enjoy it. But it's not that big a deal that it is a few months later. As for Christmas vs New Year, a lot of this year's festive content is moved to Boxing Day or New Year, especially the more serious drama. It seems that Christmas Day is seen more as the place for softer, comedy offerings like Mrs Brown's Boys or Michael MacIntyre. It certainly isn't worse being on New Year's Day.
I am not remotely gonna trust statistics on what demo the viewers fall into. There is literally no way of knowing that. Estima-te on viewers overalL? Fair enough. Working out the percentage of ages? I wouldn’t even trust that for a program on CBeebies. Breaks in drama series? Sometimes. Some series. It’s not good for a series like who, one series after a new doctor. There’s no escaping that. It’s not good for the show in general. Eastenders is on three times a bloody week last time I looked, so every series has different set ups. Like for like, there’s point putting Who next to Sherlock or Luther. You may as well stick it next to Bodyguard, or the rubbish ABC murders adaptation that just started. It’s not an attack on the show. If anything it’s a defense of it.