The BBC has made a dramatic change to its Christmas TV schedule, pulling a festive sitcom special from the line-up with just days to go.
The Mandy 2025 Christmas special, starring Diane Morgan, was meant to go out late on Monday night, but has been swiftly taken off the air.
Titled The Mandy Who Knew Too Much, the episode was originally slated to be broadcast on BBC Two at 10.25pm on Monday, December 22, but things have seemingly changed at the last minute.
Mandy follows Diane Morgan’s eponymous heroine who is ‘hapless, jobless’, and whose ‘daft adventures mostly end in disaster’.
The series has already produced one Christmas special – We Wish You a Mandy Christmas, from 2021 – and was set to follow that up with Monday’s episode.
It’s not clear why the episode’s broadcast has been postponed – it had been promoted by the BBC has one of its flagship Christmas specials for 2025 – however, a plot synopsis may hint at the reasons why.
‘Mandy rarely dabbles in global diplomacy – especially over Christmas when it’s so cold out, and there’s good TV on – but when she does, you can bet that she makes a real difference to the balance of power in the world.’
According to the British Comedy Guide, the episode was filmed in January 2025, alongside the rest of Mandy’s fourth season, but has now been pulled in order to ‘update’ certain parts.
British Comedy Guide continued: ‘The episode’s footage has been with the BBC for nearly a year, and the decision to postpone the special was made after the listings magazines went to print.
‘It could be speculated that the episode contains a reference to global diplomacy that has recently become an issue. One topical event which has occurred this week is that Donald Trump is now suing the BBC.’
The episode hasn’t been pulled completely – it is still expected to go out at some point – but certain scenes are reportedly being ‘updated’ before its eventual broadcast in 2026.
A BBC spokesperson told Metro: ‘The Mandy Christmas Special has been moved to 2026. For background briefing, the Christmas Special was shot in January 2025, and there are parts of it that we want to update.’
In its place is now a re-run of the 1988 Tim Burton film Beetlejuice, which stars Michael Keaton alongside Winona Ryder – that will be broadcast at 10.30pm.
Mandy has received critical acclaim from its outset, with The Times critic Dominic Maxwell calling the series ‘bold and ludicrous’ in 2021, as well as ‘the funniest thing on TV’.
The absurdist comedy series has now run for four seasons, producing 26 episodes in total – although, each episode has a runtime of just 15 minutes.
A pilot episode was broadcast in 2019 before it was picked up for a full series that was first aired during the height of Covid-19 lockdown in August 2020.
Metro has reached out to the BBC for more information.
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