Three Men in a Boat Boat" is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty. The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at Barclays Bank) and Carl Hentschel (the founder of a London printing business, called Harris in the book), with whom Jerome often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog". The trip is
The Dog Who Saved Christmas that Sunday, and became the season's number one cable film of the season. Overall, it was a 14% increase in viewers from the same timeslot in the previous year. Critics compared it to another Christmas dog themed TV movie of 2009, "A Dog Named Christmas" and cited influences from "Home Alone" and "Look Who's Talking". "A Dog Named Christmas" was broadcast on the same night as "The Dog Who Saved Christmas" with the original timings overlapping by an hour. Overall, critics rated "A Dog Named Christmas" as the superior film over "The Dog Who Saved Christmas," but praised the performances