Given the low bar for most contemporary Christmas movies – does someone wear a plaid shirt? That’ll do – and the desperate need for material that isn’t totally hackneyed, one can see the appeal of adapting some children’s books by Richard ‘Love Actually’ Curtis. The resulting British animation is a little disjointed and meandering at times, but it’s also genuinely touching and, thank Santa, better than all those formulaic romcoms.

The material is drawn from three storybooks Curtis wrote with illustrator Rebecca Cobb: ‘That Christmas’, ‘The Empty Stocking’ and ‘Snow Day’. We open with Brian Cox’s Santa Claus struggling to deliver presents through inclement weather, before flashing back to a few days earlier when things started to get difficult. There’s unrequited love at a school play, absent parents stuck in the snow, one good twin concerned that her naughty twin sister won’t get any presents,...