We might only have just entered November, but the first new Christmas film of the year is already upon us in the shape of Merry Christmas Aubrey Flint – which arrives in UK cinemas tomorrow (Friday 6 November).

The film is led by former Game of Thrones star John Bradley, and he's joined in the ensemble by a huge number of familiar British stars – from Richard E Grant and Celia Imrie to Karl Pilkington and Kiell Smith-Bynoe.

"It felt like every time I had a conversation with the creative team a new legend had joined the cast," Bradley recalls in an exclusive interview with Radio Times ahead of the film's release.

Bradley had been the first to sign up in March 2025 after reading and loving the script, and wasn't too surprised that others were keen to join.

"We had a script that was so well populated with these characters," he explains. "And all the characters were so well drawn that people who had no other reason to do it wanted to do it. That's when you start to think this could end up being a lot more than the sum of its parts."

The story of Merry Christmas Aubrey Flint is, on the whole, typical festive film fare – following an anti-Christmas curmudgeon who gradually learns to appreciate the meaning and value of the season, in this case through helping stage a production of A Christmas Carol at the care home where he's been tasked with doing community service.

But Aubrey's reasons for initially detesting the Christmas period are pretty understandable. As we learn in an emotional opening section set during his childhood, his mother had tragically passed away on Christmas Day and it's clear that those painful memories have come to define the season for him ever since.

"It encourages you to look at certain people and be a bit more compassionate towards them in a way," Bradley says of the film. "Because I think if you didn't have that initial flashback sequence, Aubrey would be unappealing, and there'd be something about him that you'd find unattractive.

"You'd look at him and think, 'What's his problem? What's the matter with him?' But in our film, you what's the matter with him. So you're on his side in a way that you wouldn't be if you just saw him being miserable about Christmas."

He continues: "I just think, if you do see somebody who looks like they're not having a good day, maybe think that they are struggling with something or getting over something. Like all good Christmas stories, there's lessons to be learned about humanity along the way."

Of course, in addition to exploring Aubrey's story, the film's care home setting also allows it to shine a spotlight on issues surrounding elderly care in the UK – with impending cuts to the services being a major part of the film's storyline.

This was another aspect of the film that initially drew Bradley to the script, and something he says was "very important" to get right.

"We don't get many films made about people in that situation, let alone Christmas films," he says. "Christmas films are quite often about open fireplaces and happy families and having people around. And we wanted to just be a bit like: 'It's not like that for everybody.'

"There are people who society, in general, just forgets about sometimes and don't make that leap to think about. What about old people who don't have families and have lost people? How are they feeling at Christmas? And in a broader sense, what situation are they in the whole year round?

"I think that a lot of the way we treat our elderly people in this country is a disgrace in terms of packing them off and forgetting about them and just treating them as an inconvenience. And we wanted to make a film about them because we think they they're worth making a film about."

Merry Christmas Aubrey Flint is released in UK cinemas on Friday 6 November 2026.

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