By Christopher Bird

Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist.

Monday

Momma’s Boys debuts, and it is the usual bunch-of-women-compete-to-be-girlfriends show, except this time the twist is that the men (men, whatever, these jackasses are barely boys, so the title is appropriate) are all being “guarded,” we guess, by their mothers. Will these mothers call out the competing girls for being gold-digging whores? Will the girls call the mothers whores? One thing is for sure: somebody will call somebody else a whore. Because that’s the type of show this is. It is also the type of show where one of the mothers is a horrible, obvious racist and the other two act like they want to nail their boys. (E!, 9 p.m.)
Supremely creepy alert: Jack Frost, the 1998 movie where Michael Keaton dies—and then comes back to life as a magical snowman so he can continue to father his son. No. Really. That’s not a joke. (YTV, 9 p.m.)

Tuesday

Spike Lee shows up on The Hour, presumably because he found out Toronto has a basketball team now and he felt the need to heckle them. (CBC Newsworld, 8 p.m.)
Hey, it’s The Mighty Ducks! Does anybody else remember when everybody got annoyed because Disney decided to call their NHL franchise the Mighty Ducks? Really, it was a huge controversy back then. Nowadays, they are just the Ducks, which makes one wonder why, when their new owners bought them, they decided the Ducks would no longer be mighty. Which begs the question: why would you buy a hockey team if you were secretly ashamed of their nickname? Oh, right, the movie. Hey, remember when that one kid totally took out the star player for the Ducks, and then some other kid acts horrified and the one kid is all “It’s my job“? That was pretty awesome, in a freakishly stupid kind of way. (Peachtree, 8 p.m.)

Wednesday

Your federally mandated required viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life is tonight. Remember, every time you watch Jimmy Stewart get Clarence his wings, an angel gets its wings. It is a meta-self-referential angel, but that’s what you get in the age of post-ironic commentary. (CBC, 8 p.m.)
If angels are too explicitly Christian for you, ABC has The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. THE LION IS ACTUALLY JESUS! (8 p.m.)
And if you don’t want any Christian commentary at all this Christmas Eve, there is always A He-Man/She-Ra Christmas: Escape From Eternia. In this kitsch classic, it is a tossup as to whether the best part is Prince Adam dressing up as Santa for Adora’s benefit or Skeletor deciding to be good (because it is Christmas, you see) even though he claims he really wants to be evil instead. Actually, on second thought, fuck everything else I just mentioned and watch this. Orko is the best Tiny Tim analogue ever! (YTV, 8 p.m.)

Thursday

It’s the Queen’s annual Christmas message to the Commonwealth! Maybe she’ll explain what the fuck Michelle Jean was thinking earlier this year. “Look, Canada, I’m sorry about the whole proroguing thing. I know Harper’s a bit of a douche, but… Stephane Dion? Really, Canada? Sometimes you leave me no choice.” (CBC, noon)
Have you no loved ones, no family to call your own? Well, NBC has you covered, with a special two-hour Christmas episode of Deal or No Deal. Hey, remember when everybody said, “Don’t be a misanthrope, come on and celebrate the holidays with us, or one day it’ll just be you and Howie Mandel on the TV and you’ll be drunk and desperately sad?” Bet you wish you had listened to them now, don’t you? (8 p.m.)

Friday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Children of a Lesser Clod,” which is the one where Homer opens a daycare centre at home and then neglects his own children horribly. Definitely one of the more brutal “Homer is actually a sociopath” episodes, but also viciously funny. “I’m sorry, little girl. Lugash must go next door to anger management class… worthless anger management class! I HATE IT SO MUCH! I SPIT ON IT!” (CFMT, 10 p.m.)
Okay, maybe it is a bit cheesy at the very least and maybe it is technically a day late, but Love Actually really is a wonderful Christmas movie, if at times treacly and sticky in its unabashed sentimentality. But you get to see Bill Nighy dance around naked with a guitar, and that’s not nothin’. (W, 9 p.m.)