TV REVIEWS : ‘Christmas Time Again’ for Peanuts Gang

Watching “It’s Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown,” a new animated special airing at 8:30 tonight on CBS (Channels 2 and 8), is like visiting a once-beloved relative who’s been soured by age and success.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965) was both the first half-hour animated special and the first animation of the “Peanuts” characters for entertainment (they had appeared in commercials for the Ford Falcon in 1957). A charming, gentle show, it won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and became a holiday standard.

“It’s Christmas Time” was created by the same writer, Charles Schulz; the same director, Bill Melendez, and the same executive producer, Lee Mendelson; but 27 years later, they seem to have run out of ideas.

In the first special, Charlie Brown learned the true meaning of Christmas from Linus’ recitation of the Gospel According to Luke; in “Christmas Time,” no one learns much of anything. Lacking a real story, the show is little more than a string of loosely connected gags recycled from the comic strip: Marcie and Peppermint Patty in class and at a concert; Snoopy and the birds using candy canes in a dance routine; Sally confusing “the herald angels” and Harold Angel.

Nor do these situations pay off: Charlie Brown sells his comic-book collection to buy gloves for a girl he likes, only to discover she’s just received a pair from her mother; nothing happens when Sally and Peppermint Patty blow their lines in a play; in a school essay, Sally writes that Christmas is about the joy of getting, but she never learns that the holiday should be anything more than an exercise in greed.

An aura of weariness hangs over “Christmas Time.” In the last 27 years, the “Peanuts” characters have appeared in so many programs and films and advertisements--and on so many products--they feel overexposed.

It’s more satisfying to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” for the 28th time: The older show feels fresher and truer to the spirit of the original comic strip--and the holiday.