New Christmas episode.

I dont know what the majority thought but my views are the new episode sucked big time.

It was embarrasingly bad at times, and reminded me of a car wreck.

End this show now before the legacy is totally destroyed!

I agree, this was absolutely awful.

Pathetic, lazy unreal writing and bad acting all round. Dave's dad has been described as a lazy wheel-chair bound guy for 3 series, and now we see him he doesn't fit the description at all. Dave said a few years ago about his mum and dads xmas that his Dad goes to bed early, but from this episode his Dad seems to be full of life.
If you watch series 1 Dave acts like a normal person, he walks into the Royle's house and watches TV with them and has normal conversations. By the time it got to series 3 I thought they'd taken his character too far and made him so stupid it was unfaithful to his character how we first saw him, and totally unrealistic. In this episode he was like a retarded or special needs person.
Denise was just as stupid. At first she was just lazy and a bit dim, now she's so thick it's not even funny.

There are so many other things I could mention. I didn't actually like ANY of it at all. I'm glad Jim was toned down a bit after the Queen of Sheeba, but he still didn't seem right.

And to one of the above posters who said things need to change and move on: I completely understand that and I'm quite happy to accept them going to different places, new characters etc. But they need to keep the original characters and humour that makes the show so great. All this was lacking. It's as if they didn't have a clue what to write or do, so they thought they could get away with just shoving the Royles in a different environment.