WATCH IT
Paramount Plus is streaming a new take on the misfit reindeer theme (no red-nose here) with "Reindeer in Here," in which the unfortunate animal sports one antler much smaller than the other. The animated special is based on the award-winning Christmas book by author Adam Reed.
Amazon Prime Video takes a hint from Dr. Seuss in the "Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge" hosted by Tamera Mowry-Housley. Inspired by "Green Eggs and Ham," nine teams of pastry chefs vie for Seussian honors and — while it's not green eggs — there will be some green cash on the plate of the winner.
PBS KIDS rings in the season with a one-hour special, "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About Christmas." This tale finds the Cat in the Hat, Nick and Sally on a journey around the world to help a lost reindeer find his way home. Airing Friday and Sunday, this feature boasts lyrical musical numbers as well as Dr. Seuss' famous fumbling feline.
Charlie Brown and his little pals from the "Peanuts" gallery will gather once again for the special "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on Apple TV Plus. The streamer is gifting nonsubscribers with a free viewing from Thursday through Sunday.
On Christmas Day, CW is premiering the festive special "Christmas Around the USA," which features a variety of different yuletide traditions and all kinds of decorative displays.
"Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical," based on the book by Roald Dahl and the Broadway musical, premieres Sunday on Netflix. Starring Alisha Weir as spunky Matilda, the feature boasts a hilarious performance by Emma Thompson as the loathsome Miss Trunchbull.
Of course, Christmas would not be Christmas without the 24-hour marathon of that evergreen winner, "A Christmas Story." TBS and TNT reinstitute Ralphie's perpetual quest for a Red Ryder BB gun beginning Saturday and continuing until 8 p.m. on Christmas Day.
TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
READ IT
When you get tired of bingeing, crack open a book. Here are the best books of 2022 from the Star Tribune's literary critics:
"When Women Were Dragons," by Kelly Barnhill. (Doubleday, $28.)
Dragons! Dragons! Dragons! What could be bad about that? Well, as it turns out, plenty, when women in 1950s America and beyond spontaneously turn into them in Kelly Barnhill's "When Women Were Dragons." The novel deftly weaves multiple characters from multiple eras, fictitious redacted government documents, and rapturous dragonings into a powerful exploration of the feminine divine. For its sensibility, gorgeous writing and sublime storytelling, this was probably my favorite read of the year.
SHANNON GIBNEY
"Pig Years," by Ellyn Gaydos. (Alfred A. Knopf, $27.)
You will never view pigs the same way after reading Ellyn Gaydos' remarkable memoir — nor farmhands, either. In this serious, beautiful book, Gaydos writes about working on farms in northern New York and Vermont. She thinks deeply about the land, the hardworking but often impoverished people who work it, and the animals — especially the pigs, which she raises each summer, admires and adores, and then slaughters. There is nothing romantic about this work, but in Gaydos' hands there is much beauty.
LAURIE HERTZEL
"Camera Man," by Dana Stevens. (Atria Books, $29.99.)
Buster Keaton, the best-ever physical comedian, forged an unusually varied showbiz career. As Dana Stevens demonstrates in "Camera Man," Keaton's distinctive professional path — he was a preteen vaudevillian, a silent-movie auteur, a prematurely obsolete ex-star and an unlikely TV pitchman — remains one of the great sagas in American life. With fascinating digressions about the post-World War I development of new filmmaking technologies and the rise of literate movie criticism, this is an affectionate, insightful portrait of a crucial figure in entertainment history.
KEVIN CANFIELD
"Afterlives," by Abdulrazak Gurnah. (Riverhead, $28.)
Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah's 10th novel begins in the early 20th century in what was German East Africa and moves through the world wars and British rule to independence in the 1960s. Europeans, though present, are bit players and this unaffected but brilliant novel's focus is on the lives of a handful of ordinary Africans. Rich in character and compassion, the novel, though distressing at times, is truly kindhearted. Everyone I know who has read it has loved it.
KATHERINE A. POWERS
"Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne," by Katherine Rundell. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.)
Katherine Rundell's richly absorbing biography illuminates the various incarnations of a unique Renaissance man. John Donne was a libertine, lawyer, pirate, politician and priest. He also wrote some of the finest and most original love poetry in the English language. "Super-Infinite" chronicles a difficult life and examines sublime poems which, according to Rundell, "if allowed under your skin, can offer joy so violent it kicks the metal out of your knees, and sorrow large enough to eat you."
MALCOLM FORBES
"The Birdcatcher," by Gayl Jones. (Beacon Press, $24.95.)
Catherine, a sculptor, and her husband Ernest, a writer, are both quite close to Amanda, a travel writer. The three artists mostly manage the challenges of their eccentric triangle and even its sensational complication — Catherine keeps trying to kill Ernest. After a 22-year hiatus, Gayl Jones returned last year with the acclaimed "Palmares," a Pulitzer Prize finalist. "The Birdcatcher" is outstanding, too — a structural masterpiece. It's brilliant, entertaining, and charged by Jones' wild imagination and distinctive voice.
MICHAEL KLEBER-DIGGS
"Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays," by Barry Lopez. (Random House, $28.)
Heart and mind combine in these posthumously published essays to redirect our focus on the natural world. Reporting from as far as the bow of a ship on a raging Antarctic sea to as near as the "familiar and ever new" woods in Oregon, award-winning writer Barry Lopez advances the argument that our redirection is long overdue. It must also involve rapt attention and unwavering dedication "to the physical Earth and to all its creatures, including ourselves." A timely, moving collection that cuts to the burning core of today's most pressing issues.
ANGELA AJAYI
"Shrines of Gaiety," by Kate Atkinson. (Doubleday, $29.)
Wonderfully balanced between the literary bravura of novels like "Life After Life" and the more mundane but ample pleasures of her Jackson Brodie mysteries, Kate Atkinson's "Shrines of Gaiety" puts a cast of irresistible characters into an intriguingly convoluted plot set in post-WWI London, wafts a Shakespearean air of antic enchantment over the proceedings, and keeps you guessing till the end — even as something tells you everything will be all right. Mostly.
ELLEN AKINS
"The Passenger," by Cormac McCarthy. (Alfred A. Knopf, $30.)
The winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award floors it off the cliff, Thelma-and-Louise-style, with a mind-bending thriller set in the 1970s and '80s, broad as the cosmos and rendered in gorgeous, symphonic sentences. The Western siblings, Alicia (dead) and Bobby (alive), dance around their father's legacy as an architect of the Hiroshima bomb — and their illicit attraction to each other — amid a cast of petty criminals, red herrings, befuddled psychiatrists and vaudevillian hallucinations. American fiction at its muscular, searing finest.
HAMILTON CAIN
"Joan Didion: The Last Interview." (Melville House, $17.99.
A new entry in the "last interview" series, this curated collection of interviews with Joan Didion is marked by her consistently brilliant way of thinking, but also by her shifts in tone over time. The interviews, presented in chronological order, offer Didion reflecting on "Play It as It Lays" and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" in 1972; by 2021, she is responding to the global pandemic. Patricia Lockwood's introduction — strong, smart and convincing — is reason enough to read the collection.
JACKIE THOMAS-KENNEDY
LOCALIZE IT
If you've lost track of which Twin Cities-area chefs are currently on the airwaves, now's the time to catch up. It's family-friendly viewing at its most delicious.
"Zoë Bakes"
With her twinkling laugh, fierce love of blowtorches and winning hospitality, Zoë François is the kind of TV host you want to declare your new best friend. Join the bestselling author and pastry chef as she travels around the Twin Cities learning about new dishes from local makers before going home to bake up her version of the dish. Magnolia Network/Discovery Plus
"Chef's Table: Pizza"
Ann Kim, the chef/owner of Pizzeria Lola, Young Joni, Hello Pizza and Sooki & Mimi, is highlighted in this visually stunning episode. Be mesmerized by the tapestry of ingredients as she methodically makes not only pizza, but also Korean dishes. Her breathtaking vulnerability goes straight to the heart and she speaks about immigrating to the U.S. as a child, being raised in a largely white setting and making the unbelievable career pivot from stage to pizza oven. Netflix
"Feral"
Yia Vang scores his first national hosting gig on this Outdoor Channel series, in which the Union Hmong Kitchen chef learns to hunt invasive species — and then cooks them. Airs on Outdoor Channel, available for rent
"Fast Foodies"
Handsome Hog chef Justin Sutherland is one of the featured chefs on this humorous TruTV competition, in which the trio of chefs is tasked with re-creating fast-food dishes for a comedian. HBO Max
"Girl Meets Farm"
There's nothing like the windswept plains of the Minnesota-North Dakota border to remind us that baking is an excellent way to pass the time. Cookbook author and host Molly Yeh delights in making cute and tasty things at her rural home while also making interesting discoveries about Minnesotan cuisine by way of dessert salad. Food Network
"Family Dinner" and "Wild Game Kitchen"
Odds are good you'll catch a rerun of "Bizarre Foods" if you still have cable. But that's not the only place to see Minnesota-based TV personality Andrew Zimmern, whose Intuitive Content production company is responsible for many Minnesota chefs' star turns. His Magnolia Network show "Family Dinner" has him traveling the country sharing meals and conversation with families. And in "Andrew Zimmern's Wild Game Kitchen" on the Outdoor Channel he cooks foraged foods over live fire. Discovery Plus, HBO Max
JOY SUMMERS AND SHARYN JACKSON
