Telecom company Orange sums up how a lot of us felt about 2021's long months of lockdown in its holiday ad this year. It's the story of a snowman (and his pet snow-cat) who spend most of the year shut in a frozen home, getting more and more bored and frustrated as they wait for the time that they can come out. 

The ad, directed by Francois Rousselet via Division for Publicis Conseil, shows the snowman watching kids and families outside as the seasons change, while he tries to pass the time. Pandemic references abound—there's cleaning, Zoom calls with other snowmen, and board games (our snowman takes up chess, so we're thinking he was a "Queen's Gambit" fan, like the rest of us). Eventually, he sees via his phone weather app that the temperature is dropping and he can leave the house again to have fun. It ends with the message that "together season is finally back." 

The 90-second ad is running on French TV. Set to a well-chosen music track ("Everything I Own" by Bread) and featuring some impressive post-production (it made us feel cold, anyway) by Prodigious & Mikros, it's light-heartedly sweet, with only passing reference to Orange's connections and devices but a theme that everyone can relate to.