Last Christmas, Waitrose made a four-minute romcom about Keira Knightley falling for a man called Phil over a block of cheddar, and the internet treated it like a real film. This year it did what every studio does with a surprise hit: it made a sequel, made it longer and booked a wedding. “The Perfect Gift 2,” created by Wonderhood Studios and directed again by Molly Manners through Biscuit Filmworks, went up on the official Waitrose & Partners YouTube channel on November 10, 2026. It runs 5:51, and Waitrose says it is the longest Christmas ad a UK supermarket has ever made. It is charming, well cast and very funny in places. It is also proof that the second helping is never quite as good as the first.
Phil versus the posh groom
The setup is pure Richard Curtis. Keira, playing herself, is about to marry Hugo Bunty-Griffin, a polished, faintly insufferable rich man played by Alex Hassell of Rivals. Phil, played again by Joe Wilkinson, is a bearded wreck on the sofa. His friends stage an intervention, and the plan they land on is gloriously Waitrose: turn up at the wedding with a homemade beef Wellington. “So I’m just turning up to her wedding with a beef Wellington,” Phil says, and Wilkinson’s flat, hangdog delivery is the best special effect in the film.
From there Manners runs the full race-to-the-church checklist. The car breaks down, Phil has to run (“But you don’t run”), there is a scooter, a dog with designs on the pastry and a snow-dusted stately home that looks borrowed from a period drama. The payoff in the chapel is the ad’s funniest image: Phil skidding across a chequered marble floor on his stomach, Wellington held out in front of him like an offering, while a room full of wedding guests stares. Hassell plays the groom with exactly the right amount of smug, and a cameo from Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond gives the middle section a jolt of light-entertainment chaos.
The twist that saves it
The smartest move comes after the big gesture fails. Phil is turned away, walks off across a bridge at dusk and the film lets him be properly beaten for a moment. Then the story flips. Keira walks out on Hugo, heads to the Waitrose cheese counter where the whole romance began, and is waiting in Phil’s kitchen with a cheeseboard and a question of her own. The scene openly borrows Notting Hill’s “standing in front of a boy” speech, and Knightley plays the steal with enough self-awareness to make it land. Giving her the grand gesture instead of Phil is a genuinely nice idea, and it ties the food to the feeling more neatly than the Wellington plot ever does.
Craft is high across the board. Benedict Spence shoots the country house like a Christmas release, Fiona Crombie’s production design is lush without tipping into parody, and the original score, recorded by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, does a lot of the heavy lifting before Jennifer Rush’s “The Power of Love” swells over the ending. Food styling by Fergal Connolly keeps the Wellington and the cheeseboard looking like the real stars, which, for a supermarket, is the whole point.
Six minutes is a choice
The problem is length, and Waitrose knows it. Last year’s four minutes felt like a happy accident: a small joke that kept going because it was working. This year’s six minutes feel engineered to break a record. The opening wedding-prep scenes repeat beats, the friends’ pep talk lingers, and the chase has at least one obstacle too many. Each scene is fine on its own, but together they slow the rhythm a romcom parody depends on. There is also less surprise. The first film’s joke was that a movie star could fall for a cheese-counter regular. The sequel has to take that joke as given, so it leans on bigger set pieces instead of a fresh premise.
As marketing, though, it is hard to argue with. The film is built like a franchise, with trailers, posters, bloopers and product spin-offs for mince pies, croissant stacks and smoked salmon. It keeps Waitrose in the Christmas conversation in a year crowded with M&S, John Lewis and Sainsbury’s, and it does it with jokes rather than tears.
The verdict
“The Perfect Gift 2” is a warm, confident sequel with a terrific comic lead in Joe Wilkinson and a smart late twist that hands the grand gesture to Keira. It is also about two minutes too long and noticeably more formula than its predecessor. Fans of last year’s film will happily give it six minutes. Everyone else will probably prefer the 60-second cut.
Credits: Client: Waitrose & Partners (Chief Customer Officer: Nathan Ansell; Head of Advertising and Social: Sarah Hood). Agency: Wonderhood Studios (Founder and CCO: Aidan McClure; ECDs: Stacey Bird, Jack Croft; Creatives: Jennifer Ashton, Oli Short). Media: MG OMD. Production: Biscuit Filmworks UK. Director: Molly Manners. Producer: Peter Knowles. Director of Photography: Benedict Spence. Production Designer: Fiona Crombie. Food Stylist: Fergal Connolly. Edit: Shift Post. VFX: Time Based Arts. Audio post: Runamok Studios. Music: Native Music Supervision and Production, Holy Wax; score recorded by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra; Jennifer Rush, “The Power of Love.” Cast: Keira Knightley, Joe Wilkinson, Alex Hassell. Film: 5:51, official Waitrose & Partners YouTube, uploaded November 10, 2026. Credits per Waitrose, Creative Salon, shots, LBB and The Grocer.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5