Misery and whine: 9 of the saddest and un-Christmassy Christmas specials ever made
Think this is a time for goodwill to all men? Not in these bleak-as-they-come festive TV episodes
9. Moonlighting, It’s a Wonderful Job (1986)
Before Bruce Willis spent Christmas crawling through ventilator shafts, he spent it working in a detective agency. The plot of this Christmas episode of Moonlighting from 1986 is based on It’s a Wonderful Life and sees Maddie telling all the staff that the agency has to be kept open all Christmas. Then her father calls to say her aunt has died, she then fires someone for basically no reason and turns to drinking alone. She then heads to the top of the building and contemplates taking her life before she’s visited by a guardian angel called Albert. It’s all OK in the end, but suffice to say the festive cheer is in short supply (unlike in their other festive offering, Twas the Episode Before Christmas).
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