On This Day: Christmas Day 1995

This is an odd Christmas schedule. While not near the infamous depths of ITV in 1993, you'd be forgiven for wondering if there was a funding crisis going on across television, which with recent years having brought BBC accounting and commercial income overestimations and ITV advertising recession downturns might be reasonable, and on top of that the Government was in the process of publishing a new BBC charter.

The staggered starts of yore really are a thing of the distant past in this not too far off completely 24 hour broadcast age, so both BBC1 and GMTV pitch in at 6am with Channel 4 following at 6.45pm and BBC2 at the very precise time of 7.05am. Three of them cater for the kids early on, so CBBC starts with Podddington Peas, Bump's Christmas Story, Moomin (singular), White Christmas (animation) and Playdays, moving on to the specialist animated buy-ins they have lying around collecting dust for the rest of the year. Namely: PJ's Unfunnybunny Christmas, a 1994 ABC special in which a bunny Learns The True Meaning Of Christmas with the voices of Bart Simpson, Yakko Warner, Pinky, Duckworth, Tommy and Chuckie, Powerpuff Girl Buttercup, Tiny Toon Buster Bunny, Dexter and, er, Babe; and McGee and Me, a 1990 episode from a Christian morality tale. That's not us ascribing religion to it, it's produced by Focus on the Family and Living Bibles International. Not exactly washing that taste away is A Flintstones Christmas Carol, because it's from 1994. They're doing a Christmas Carol tale within an in-universe Christmas Carol play.

So what of ITV? Well, GMTV until 9.25am of course, and this is still Mr Motivator's world we're just living in so he's linking the cartoons with White Power Ranger Jason David Frank. The Mighty Morphin types come at the end of a sequence that starts with Tom And Jerry Kids, Galaxy High and forgotten fantasy series Starla & the Jewel Riders. Channel 4 opens up with Ulysses 31 - what? How did that broom cupboard staple end up all the way over there? - The Adventures of T-Rex and Little Dracula, but The Big Breakfast will not be denied so its Christmas Special is pushed out to 8am, packing out Lockkeepers' Cottages with Eternal, Eastenders' Paul Bradley, Peter Cunnah, Gloria Gaynor, Barbara Windsor and Dame Barbara Cartland. BBC2 meanwhile get completely the wrong end of the stick and start with a repeat of the previous day's Songs Of Praise special Christmas with Cliff, then the undistinguished 1938 A Christmas Carol and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

So which hot Children's BBC property are BBC1 fending off the start of the ITV day with? Er, The Movie Game, the currently John Barrowman fronted dress-up and film light knowledge game show whose celebrity edition tempts in Donna Air, Toby Anstis, Clare Buckfield, Mark Curry, Saturday morning vet Mark Evans, Grange Hill's Natalie Poyser and Gladiator Nightshade. Not that they should have worried much about effort as ITV's first job once in charge is Christmas Morning Worship from Arundel Cathedral, the religious quotient fulfilled on BBC1 at 10am not in a place of worship but at Beaulieu, a surprisingly common place for BBC media to head to for the big day usually on Radio 2, but this time it's Don Maclean dropping by Lord Montagu's gaff for Christmas Day In The Morning, taking Harry Secombe, Ruth Madoc and Clive Mantle with him. Channel 4 sense the way the heavy hitters' wind is blowing and repeat an episode of Saved by the Bell: The New Class instead, followed by a repeat of Showtime, Blur live at Alexandra Palace just over a year earlier, and yet another A Christmas Carol, this one the Oscar winning Richard Williams animation from 1971 with Alastair Sim and Michael Hordern reprising their famous roles, Michael Redgrave narrating and Melvyn Hayes as Bob Cratchit. "Melvyn Hayes has been in an Oscar winning film" is a tremendous fact to drop in, until someone retorts that so has Danny Dyer.

We're getting ahead of ourselves timeline-wise, ITV is still at 10.25am and showing The Little Engine That Could, which we're guessing is the 1991 animated version of the folk tale with Frank Welker's voice and financed by Universal with, oddly, S4C, which they follow with the all new (apart from being made in 1979) Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales and that most reliable of family film fillers, Herbie Rides Again. BBC1 also have a fantasy kids' film of a very different hue against it, The Neverending Story, an ITV property until now, followed by Neighbours, because no special occasion can stop it even if it has no festive content having aired in May in Australia. BBC2 counter with something for the dads and Propaganda fans, Top Gear Rally Special recalling the Lombard RAC Rally and Colin McRae clinching the world title at home, and then something for... mum? Treasures In Trust, a repeat documentary showing how the National Trust manages its properties. After that is a weirdly buried documentary about The Sound Of Music fandom, The Hills Are Alive!, which surely they could have shown in a better slot given the actual film wasn't airing until the 29th. Channel 4 are still in a cartoon frame of mind for a while, turning to two lightly satirical takes on fairytales with Prince Cinders and Beauty, and then interrupt that for Christian Rave Special. Now, there's a concept for a Christmas Day approaching lunchtime, fulfilling Channel 4's religious brief with an examination of the world of religious raves, as in Christian dance acts in churches and youth services in nightclubs. Oddly, as if predicting Channel 5, it's actually introduced under the title God In The House by its presenter... actually, no, we won't spoil it.

The day's first news on BBC1 is at 12.50pm, followed by Top Of The Pops seeing off the Christian rave but notably still trying to reclaim its status after the Year Zero disaster, and it's not going to do that an hour earlier than is traditional, almost as if they were willing to take it out of the firing line of... we'll get to that. The team of your dreams, Jack Dee and Bjork, introduce clips of the year and a strong line-up of new performances from - keep two of these names in mind for later - N-Trance, Annie Lennox, the downsized Take That, Boyzone, Robson & Jerome twice, Pulp, the Outhere Brothers, Blur, Simply Red and... well, as it was recorded a week or two in advance two endings were recorded based on who would be Christmas number one, so on the day a Michael Jackson video closed proceedings but when BBC Four repeated it the other year they somehow accidentally got the wrong tape and showed a version with Mike Flowers Pops in the studio heralded as festive victors.

So why did BBC1 go early with TOTP, sticking a repeat of the 1992 Only Fools And Horses special Mother Nature's Son (the Peckham Spring one) up to 3pm? Because on ITV at 1.55pm, after Disney short Lambert The Sheepish Lion, news and a repeat of presumably the episode of Coronation Street from the 22nd comes the first hour, with more to follow on Boxing Day, of Take That At Earls Court, one of a ten night run marred by the reduction in numbers and more notoriously the Smells Like Teen Spirit cover. God, we hope that was included in part one. Channel 4 at this point are half an hour into Elenya, the premiere that we can't imagine was greatly fought over - note the editor is an Alan Smithee credit - of a 1992 film about a WWII German aircraft crashlanding in Wales and the sole survivor being rescued by a twelve year old. BBC2 is at the same time reminding us of the summer's fiftieth anniversary of VE Day, contemporary compilation Victory Stills followed by highlights of the commemorations Memories And Celebrations.

Anyway, how's her majesty been?

Channel 4's Alternative Christmas Message was still being pitched directly against HRH and this year was given to Brigitte Bardot to complain about live calf exports and the Dangerous Dogs Act, while BBC2's alternative was a compilation of their Tricks On Two shorts.

3.10pm was still regarded as valuable real estate for the big two and they went about it in their separate ways, ITV with Ghostbusters II, and on BBC1 the equally spectral Noel's Christmas Presents, the seventh in all, mining a handy invocation of the Victoriana that used to go hand in hand with popular Christmas imagery. The emotional crux ties in with the WWII anniversary, before which Noel and Chris Jarvis take kids to Lapland to meet Santa, as everyone did, and Noel lays territorial claim on behalf of the show to Antarctica. Airier fare elsewhere, a Baz Luhrmann reworking of La Boheme from Sydney Opera House on BBC2, a repeat of the previous New Year's Eve sprawling two and a half hour launch of Heroes Of Comedy on Channel 4 which apparently requires something called Coping With Christmas afterwards.

The day's first big film premiere is Hook at 4.30pm on BBC1, or if you prefer Martyn Lewis fires archive clips at celebrities on a Today's The Day Christmas Special at 5.05pm on BBC2. At the same time there's a new version of Wind In The Willows on ITV, a year in the making combination of a live action Vanessa Redgrave as narrator and luxurious animation by the same studio that made The Snowman (which was on Channel 4 at 6.30pm), with a cast that proves the worth of a good casting director - Rik Mayall as Mr Toad (he would win a voice acting Emmy for follow-up The Willows In Winter, but his being so close in cast to Vanessa went unremarked upon), Alan Bennett as Mole, Michael Palin as Rat, Michael Gambon as Badger, with Emma Chambers, James Villiers, Judy Cornwell and Enn Reitel amongst other voices. Some Enchanted Evening may be on BBC2 at the time - a Julie Andrews hosted celebration of Oscar Hammerstein's musicals' lyrics - but this is the real thing.

It's kind of surprising to find that the night's Coronation Street was its first ever hour-long episode, both because we're so used to the form and because Eastenders was kind of there nine years earlier. Newly secretly married Curly and Raquel's families want answers, the Duckworths are in no festive mood and Steve MacDonald's day is spoilt by a police raid. It was obviously ITV's most watched programme of the day but only sixth overall, and it's tempting to wonder how many potential viewers were instead drawn to the surprisingly behemothic Auntie's Brand New Bloomers, still in its Wogan days. The other channels respond at 7pm with very different layers and levels of populist fare - a repeat of the Austen Easter hit Persuasion on BBC2, Turtle Diary on Channel 4, a 1985 kind of rom-com screenplayed by Harold Pinter starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley who find love over the sea turtle enclosure at London Zoo and Michael Gambon as the zookeeper who helps smuggle them out.

Eastenders was doing the two half hour parts thing again, 7.30pm and 8.30pm laid out for the traditional misery, what with Arthur despondent in prison and Frank Butcher surprisingly returning to an unhappy Pat. In between is a very different type of familial saga and what would turn out to be the final episode of Keeping Up Appearances before Patricia Routledge left fearing typecasting, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates beginning nine days later. Not that you'd know it as Hyacinth organises a Civil War pageant which is turns out nobody else wants to take part in. This and the second 'enders episode landed clear of sixteen million watching.

Facing down the colossus of soapland, ITV pull out the big guns for the drunk mums. It's the Robson & Jerome Christmas Special! This was the year of the singing squaddies' imperial phase, not just two number ones and the biggest selling single of the year in Unchained Melody but the biggest selling album of the year - no, really, it topped two million sales in just six weeks, beating (What's The Story) Morning Glory? by a good 200,000 sales by year end. (Over the next ten years it shifted less than 300,000. Rip up all those theories about cultural long tails) And because it already has a prospective captive audience nobody even needs to really try, comprising clips of the pair chatting aimlessly about their year between Soldier Soldier moments and the singles' videos. As for more professional singing actors, that can be arranged by the subsequent big evening movie premiere, Sister Act. And if you want bad ideas by actors out of their depth, try The Other Christmas Story on Channel 4, a fifteen minuter in which Michael 'Sinbad' Starke tells "an alternative to the first Christmas story in which everything goes wrong".

A year earlier One Foot In The Grave had pulled off one of the great Christmas Day sitcom episodes, the one with Brian Murphy. The Wisdom Of The Witch, which came at the end of the last regular series for five years (though there would be Xmas specials in the next two) and at one time was intended by David Renwick as the series' finale, isn't far behind and demonstrates again how to make an hour long episode run smoothly despite a maze of sub-plots and footnotes. Clearly the trust was there from the audience as 16.8 million made it the day's most watched show. In actuality, Patrick and Pippa finally move away but find they still can't shake Victor's capacity for building farce or their having to deal with him as they ignore the prophecy of Tarot cards and get snowed in with a psychopath played by Phil Daniels, with an ending met by an audience reaction that can only be transcribed as "HAHAHAohfuck".

Meanwhile on BBC2 is an odd thing, The Abbey With Alan Bennett, the start of a three part series in which the melancholic observer goes behind the scenes at Westminster Abbey with fresh erudition. Channel 4's post-watershed offering is a real punt at the highest mark, England, My England, a musical drama about Henry Purcell part-written by John Osborne who died almost exactly a year earlier, which because not much of Purcell's life story was known about goes and makes up a Restoration timeline as within a storyline about a 1960s actor played by Simon Callow writing a play based on what he imagined Purcell's life to be like, in which he has cast himself as Charles II. Bertold Brecht, were you alive for this moment. Purcell, by the way, is played by the natural choice, Michael Ball. In fact this cast list brings up new thrills throughout, whether that be Letitia Dean as Lady Castlemaine, Lucy Speed as Nell Gwyn, Rebecca Front as Queen Mary II, John Shrapnel as Samuel Pepys, Corin Redgrave as William of Orange, Sir Robert Stephens as John Dryden, Bill Kenwright essentially as himself, John Fortune, Patricia Quinn, for christ's sake, Antonia de Sancha fresh from the David Mellor affair.

We've already had two decent sized film premieres today and at 10.10pm on BBC1 after Peter Sissons has read the news we get a third, Indecent Proposal, direct from the summer of erotic thrillers. In fact there's another starting ten minutes earlier on BBC2, Chinese milestone Farewell My Concubine. ITV's idea of something for those stopping up is by comparison the kind of programme that could have fallen anywhere within the festive week and just happened to land here, a special episode of ensemble cricket club sitcom Outside Edge based around, in a neat subversion of cliche, watching back the video of a recent tour to Corfu and the key events happening during the get-together. That's followed by another premiere but not quite one of the same stripe, Bette Midler's Scenes From A Mall. From there it's the race to see who can most successfully keep people who really are stretching out the definition of Christmas Day the longest. BBC1's then usual festive themed short is I Hate Christmas, "a poem about a man who gets into a taxi after arguing with his wife on Christmas Eve", followed by The Greatest Music Party In The World, a special extravaganza at Birmingham NEC intended as advertising for of all confectionary Twix featuring David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Diana Ross, Soul II Soul, the Lightning Seeds, Des'ree, Echobelly, Alanis Morissette, Alannah Myles (hello 1990), Curtis Stigers and Diana King. BBC2 has picked up a 25th anniversary Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In compilation and the Marx Brothers' A Night At The Opera; the whole ITV network is together for once to enjoy Margot Kidder crime thriller Trenchcoat, Jean-Paul Belmondo's Cartouche and, my oh my, a 1992 German TV version of Snow White; and Channel 4 see the day off with Hepburn and O'Toole's How To Steal A Million, maudlin old Sentimental Journey which surely isn't something you should be showing at 2.20am in the early hours of Boxing Day and just to cap off the night... an episode of Rawhide. And merry Christmas to you too, Channel 4.

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Radio choice

Allegedly Chris Evans is live on breakfast at 8am, following Claire Sturgess' breaking in of the Radio 1 day, and he's got Mick Hucknall and Cher with him. Simon Mayo has an early lunch at 11am with "the stars of 1995", namely Boyzone, Michelle Gayle, Deuce, Sean McGuire, Louise and EYC - hey, remember all you've been told about how Britpop dominated culture that year? A curio at 2pm, Danny Baker's Reeling In The Years, a one-off pop quiz with actual willing members of the public, after which Wendy Lloyd coasts through the afternoon. And then, via the magic of Lunewyre Technology in total Spectrasound, Kid Tempo and The Ginger Prince, whose first series of Radio Tip Top had been a sleeper cult hit with readers of Corsair magazine in the spring/summer so now regathered in the Starlight Ballrooms for a two hour Christmas Cracker (part two; three; four) at 5pm. Back down on Radio 1 The Evening Session goes back through the year's best live music, Peter Cunnah's Star Review looks back at the year in dance, and then at 10pm Wet Wet Wet Live at the Bowl, which nobody has ever previously or since called Wembley.

As so often Roger Royle is pressed into morning Radio 2 service, handing off at 8am to a remarkable piece of blurb: "Charlton Heston, Kriss Akabusi and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth join Don Maclean for Christmas celebrations live from Beaulieu". Sure. Why not? Ken Bruce is the other side of the Queen at 10am, Aled Jones does the midday shift, followed by Celebrity Choice, celebrities not listed. And then from 3pm, a Radio 2 exclusive as Mickey and Minnie Mouse are given the DJ gig their voices cannot surely carry for a full hour, Merry Christmas From Walt Disney World. Carson sidekick Ed McMahon is parlayed into action to help out despite his name surely meaning nothing to 99.9% of the audience, but then guests such as Whitney Houston, Steve Martin, Gloria Estefan, Mel Torme, Natalie Cole and Bill Clinton are doing the heavy lifting. Equally glamorous fare subsequently, Roy Hudd's Extremely Amusing History Of The Comic Song. Ed Stewart fills a gap to the documentary O Come All Ye Jacobites, a new version of the old "stories behind the carols" canard, and then a slight return to Natalie Cole recorded live in Birmingham. The BBC Big Band Christmas Special do their thing from 9pm and Martin Kelner sees off the day promising "Christmas turkeys from his own record collection".

By now Paul Gambaccini has set up a spot on Radio 3 and he's on at 9am with some of his Russian ballet music. Saint-Saens is Composer Of The Week so Richard Langham Smith visits the Parisian church where he was organist to talk to a musicologist about him. In fact there's quite a bit of talking on this day where there's more devotional classical music than the rest of the year for most people, such as "Musicians haven't always played string instruments they way they do today. Tommy Pearson finds out about the changes that have taken place in string technique since 1830." At 5.30pm British Cities asks what music Burns might have heard in Edinburgh, but after two hours of that comes a curveball in the shape of Dave Brubeck's Birthday Bash, his 75th celebrated at the Barbican with a backing band of his sons. An operatic version of Holst's The Perfect Fool comes later on, as does The Shellac Show. A selection of 78rpm records, not what you might have been thinking.

Russell Davies is our first guide through the Radio 4 day on the pleasingly titled Morning Cordial. Richard Wilson, in no way stereotyping the man by his character, begins reading A Christmas Carol just before 9am, at which Christmas Morning Service is from Edinburgh. One of those splendidly opaque Radio 4 documentaries is on after that, Lashings Of Ginger Beer, involving Lenny Henry, Michael Rosen, Sophie Grigson and the food in children's books, and then yet another of those John Walters projects we'd love to hear, Walters' Festive Frolics, in which he searches for the perfect winter break. Silent film pianist Neil Brand is responsible for part-autobiographical drama The Player at 11am, with Supermarionation regular David Healy as Cecil B De Mille. Healy died that October, as well. In fact there's a real treasure trove of new programming being thrown in here, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's At Bertram's Hotel starring June Whitfield as Miss Marple, Sian Phillips, Geoffrey Bayldon, Freddie Jones and Maurice Denham at 11.30am, followed by the start of Trumpton Riots, the Brian Cant-fronted cultish series about 70s children's television beginning in Smallfilms' back yard, and then the Comedy Store Players' wildly improvised historical comedy epic The Masterson Inheritance Christmas Special. After the 1pm news is more of the same, sort of, in the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue special, while after The Archers a young woman denied the chance to go and see the Bolshoi Ballet finds the real ballet was within us all along in The Nutcracker Christmas. Maeve Binchy has written a story, Christmas Present, and Hannah Gordon reads it to us at 4.45pm, followed by Kate Adie's favourite writing in With Great Pleasure. After the 6pm news Nanette Newman reads letters from Edwardian children in Dear Peter Pan. Neil Brand's back in the evening in a repeat of a production of Coward's Private Lives with Imogen Stubbs, Stephen Fry and Louise Lombard before Spike Milligan reads his poetry in Spike's Fleas, Knees And Hidden Elephants. Kaleidoscope ponders the popularity of dream sequences in film, Nick Baker seeks a life of joy In Don't Worry, Be Happy, and the Book At Bedtime is Memo From David O Selznick, the producer behind Gone With The Wind, followed by the BBC Singers indulging in some of that light music for A Christmas Cracker.

Jane Garvey and Julian Worricker are still in charge of Radio 5's Breakfast Programme as every day. Indeed the station really doesn't know how to pitch all this, Robin Lustig's Spotlight 95 and Bosnia At Christmas followed by I'll Eat My Hat, Des Lynam's history of the stars of radio sport, and Phill Jupitus' timeline of football songs Nice One Cyril both ongoing. Now The Good News gives a Martyn Lewis-approved (presumably, it's not him) sheen on the year, Sybil Ruscoe looks back at her own show's highlights and then it's The Christmas Quiz, news vs sport for an hour and a half. Sheena MacDonald returns with another hour from Bosnia at 5.30pm, and then it's all stand by your beds for the worst title perhaps in the history of Christmas day broadcasting, The Holly And The Archivy - "questions of Christmas sport answered by Geoff Hurst, Frank Bruno, Harry Carpenter and Mike Gatting". Another quiz? What? We're not even going to ask what A Criminal Crisis is and why it's taking up two hours of Christmas evening from 8pm, but it's seen off eventually by Voices Of The Old Firm, Rangers and Celtic's rivalry explained, then Jon Ronson remembering his teens in Ages Of Being and Gareth Gaz Top Jones talking to Jim Lovell in Spaced Out to take things up to midnight. Where we don't yet find Up All Night. Not even Up All Night All Day. Nope, back to Bosnia. Happy Christmas to you too.