Tesco spent last Christmas chopping its campaign into eleven bite-sized vignettes. This year BBH London has gone the other way: “The Wrong Address” is a single three-minute film with two proper actors, a real director and a cinematographer who usually shoots features. Roisin Conaty plays Polly, a Tesco delivery driver, and Anna Maxwell Martin plays Lizzie, the old school friend whose Christmas food order is heading for the wrong house. It is the most grown-up Christmas ad Tesco has made in years. It is also a reminder that “cinematic” and “memorable” are not the same thing.
WHAT HAPPENS ON SCREEN
It is Christmas Eve. Polly is working through her delivery round when a name on her handset stops her: Lizzie. The delivery is going to Lizzie’s old address, and Lizzie, now living hundreds of miles away, realises too late what she has done. “I sent it to the old house,” she admits. Polly offers to meet her halfway, and the two women end up face to face on a snowy forecourt under a Tesco sign, trading groceries and awkward small talk. “You have saved my bacon,” Lizzie says, as the beef and the champagne go into her boot.
That should be the end of it, but Lizzie’s car gives up, and Polly ends up driving her home in the delivery van. The rest of the film is a night drive through the countryside, set to The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.” The two reminisce about a school talent show and a botched attempt at ear piercing, get lost, laugh, and finally touch the wound neither has named. “I’m so sorry about what happened,” Polly says. “It was a long time ago,” Lizzie answers. They part with a polite goodbye, then the film earns its last beat: a hug in the dark outside the house, and a “Merry Christmas” that sounds like it means something.
CREDITS
Brand: Tesco. Film: “The Wrong Address,” 3:00, published on Tesco’s official YouTube channel and launched on November 1, 2026, with its TV debut on ITV the same evening. Agency: BBH London (CCO Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes; creative directors Gary McCreadie and Kevin Stark). Production: Biscuit Filmworks UK. Director: Steve Rogers. Director of photography: Bradford Young. Production designer: Maria Djurkovic. Editor: Rich Orrick. Talent: Roisin Conaty and Anna Maxwell Martin. Music: “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police. Credits per Marketing Week and LBB.
THE EXECUTION
The craft is the headline. Bradford Young, who shot Selma and Arrival, lights the second half almost entirely from dashboards, headlamps and petrol station canopies, and the van becomes a small warm box moving through a very cold country. Steve Rogers lets scenes run long enough for the actors to do something with them, which is rare in a format that usually cuts every three seconds. The opening, with its handset close-ups and rushed doorstep drops, is brisk and recognisable; the middle slows down to the speed of a long drive, and that change of pace is the film’s smartest decision.
The casting does the rest. Conaty plays Polly with a nervy brightness that slowly gives way, and Maxwell Martin is excellent at the kind of clipped British politeness that hides something. You believe these two have history before anyone explains it, and the film is wise enough never to explain it at all. The unspoken falling-out is the most interesting thing in any UK Christmas ad so far this year.
WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T
What works: the premise is honest. A delivery going to the wrong address is a real, small, very modern Christmas disaster, and building a story of reconciliation on top of it gives Tesco a way into the film that does not feel forced. The brand is in almost every frame – the van, the uniform, the forecourt, the bags – but it plays as setting rather than product placement. That is hard to pull off.
What doesn’t: the music cue is too on the nose. “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” is a lovely song, but it is also the obvious pun on “Every Little Helps,” and the moment it arrives you can hear the brief. The drive itself also drifts. Three minutes is a gift, and the film spends a lot of it on two people giggling in a dark cab, which is warm but visually repetitive. And for all its restraint, the story still resolves exactly where you expect it to, with a hug on a doorstep. It avoids schmaltz; it does not avoid predictability.
There is also the competitive problem. Sainsbury’s has the BFG, Argos has Richard Ayoade doing Dickens, and John Lewis has not even shown its hand. A quiet two-hander is a brave choice in that company. It will win respect from people who care about filmmaking; it may struggle to become the ad people talk about at the office party.
VERDICT
“The Wrong Address” is beautifully shot, well acted and refreshingly unsentimental, with a genuine mystery at its center and a brand role that never feels bolted on. But the song pun is lazy, the middle section idles, and the ending lands exactly where the trailer would tell you it lands. It is Tesco’s best Christmas film in a long while, and still a little too polite to be great. Rating: 3.5 out of 5.