King Charles has been a victim of his own success. His first Christmas broadcast last year, which was both affecting and socially conscious, attracted 10.6 million viewers, making it not only the most-watched monarch’s seasonal address since viewing records began, but also the most popular single programme to air over the festive period last year.

The cynical might argue that its success was partly down to rubber-necking curiosity – would Charles mention his family’s rift with Prince Harry? – and partly because of the relative paucity of must-watch television in our increasingly bifurcated age. Still, it was a triumph both of presentation (the new monarch is a far more natural and committed performer than his mother ever was, let alone his hapless grandfather) and, in its own modest way, of content. How could this year’s instalment compare?

Predictably enough, the hashtag #NotMyKing trends on Twitter. The presence of both Prince Andrew and, bizarrely, Sarah Ferguson in the Royals’ entourage at the annual Christmas service at Sandringham has excited the usual – and, it must be said, justified – negative comment. It was left to the broadcast, filmed from the Centre Room at Buckingham Palace, to steady the ship. It was trailed in advance that the theme would be that of service once again, and that it would be a conservative, no-horses-frightened address. (Personally, I’d be up for a waspish, witty attack on the seemingly infinite follies of his son and daughter-in-law, but alas, regal precedent has intervened.)

Beginning with a brass band of the Grenadier Guards playing the National Anthem from the balcony of Buckingham Palace, the King began with talk of shared meals, of faith and ‘the joy of fellowship’, before he went on to remember ‘those who are no longer with us’ – as much a reference to his estranged younger son as his mother, perhaps? – before moving into explicit Biblical allusion by discussing the story of Jesus in the manger. This then allowed him to talk of those going the extra mile to care for one another, ‘because we know it is the right thing to do.’ He praised those who serve their community, and then talked of how ‘the essential backbone of our society’ was present during his coronation earlier this year, and that service lies at the heart of the Christmas story.

It was far more explicitly Christian than his address last year – and more so than his mother had dared to be for several years – and returned to his 2022 theme of how we must support those less fortunate than ourselves. Some might see this as a dig at his Prime Minister, the multi-millionaire who has raised the tax burden to the highest that it has been in living memory, but the heartfelt ecological theme of the message – ‘the one home which we all share’ – was backed up by the way in which Charles noted that the original Christmas message was initially brought to the world by shepherds. There was a timely allusion to ‘increasingly tragic conflict around the world’, but the King spoke of the universal values that we share – ‘the Abrahamic families of religion’ – and concluded by praising those who seek the good of others, ‘the friend we do not yet know’, before the usual warm wishes.

It will, of course, be seized upon by republican elements as the out-of-touch wittering of the privileged – it is very easy to suggest that we must all help and love one another if you are never going to face the suffering and difficulty that you allude to – but, as with his well-delivered and thoughtful address last year, the King has shown that he is unafraid to be his own man. He is venturing into areas that his mother might have only hinted at.

#NotMyKing? Perhaps. But, for the rest of us, we might tuck into the turkey quietly grateful for the presence of a thoughtful, compassionate monarch in these wildly uncertain times.