If you need a little Christmas, like, right this very minute, you have no shortage of options on the vast cable landscape. Our editors are going for movies — probably not coincidentally ones from our earliest formative years. Christmas Eve on Clicker Street is bedecked by one percenter brothers betting whether they can make a pauper a prince, a rap duo try not to get 2 hype as a college party slowly gets out of hand, and terrorists taking over a Los Angeles skyscraper to the dismay of an NYC cop who just wanted to come out to the coast, get together with his wife, and have a few laughs. Basically, if you have one of those alphabetical remotes, stay in the “e” channels section tonight and you won’t have a blu.
NAVANI’S PICK:
Trading Places [Esquire, 8p]
All I want for Christmas is to be magically taken in by rich people and taught how the other half lives. Watching it happen to Eddie Murphy is almost as good. I am still trying to wrap my head around that Stock Exchange move in the end Louis Winthorpe III and Billy Ray Valentine use to extract revenge.
JASON’S PICK:
Die Hard [Encore, 8p]
To me (and many others), it’s not truly Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from the Nakatomi Tower. Gather ’round your set and toast with a piece of toast for John McClane, Reginald VelJohnson’s sweets-loving cop, and, of course, the unfortunate “quarterback.”
KATHERINE’S PICK:
House Party [Esquire, 10:30p]
And I thought Esquire was for Parks and Rec reruns.