Our annual trawl through the detail of the Christmas Day schedules from thirty years ago leads us into the new decade. Styles, practices and visual trademarks that come to represent each ten year block don't definitively become apparent until two or three years in and the Nineties only really started to pick up its go-faster blocky aesthetic around 1992, but there's a couple of Xmas newcomers of interest and ITV's self-inflicted big day decline hasn't begun just yet. What is notable in a transitionary way is this is the last December in which you'd have had to buy more than one double issue TV listings guide, deregulation in February 1991 saving casual table space but meaning an end to the kind of market where the special Radio Times can sell 10.6 million copies as this one did, and the rise of multichannel television allied to that of the home gaming industry was facilitating the long tail fragmentation of the television audience. It's not worth going through the main Sky channels in detail (and probably won't be until we come to write the equivalent blog in around 2035 in truth) but Sky Movies offered Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Good Morning Vietnam in prime time, BSB's Movie Channel countered with Crocodile Dundee II and A Fish Called Wanda, while Sky One showed a gala from Milan starring in this of all years Pavarotti.
For the vastest of vast majorities it was as usual the third channel that sprung out of bed first at 6am, following a TV-am news bulletin with the annual catch-all Cartoon Carnival, from The Adventures Of Parsley (which ended in 1971) to The Adventures Of Portland Bill, both of which are stop-motion so not actually cartoons but that's the perils of alliteration for you. Channel 4 was up and going too but at a more sedentary pace with Bobby Jones Gospel and the reliable The Art Of Landscape. Children's BBC gets going at 7am from Santa's grotto with the A-list team - Peters, Parkin, Forrester, Duck - presenting a festive Wizbit, Playdays' supergroup Christmas Tree Stop and, brace yourselves, Jingle Bell Rap. Radio Times' blurb barely helps: "Now here's the story of a father and son/It's Christmas Day and there's a lot to be done/The rock group's strumming, But the singer's not humming/Here comes Santa to get things buzzing!" There was an animated film by that title released in 1990 which doesn't match up to that synopsis at all. That said we're not sure it matches up to anything, being about The K9-4, a rap group of animated dogs putting on a hometown gig. Writer/directors Jerry Reynolds and Russ Harris were previously responsible for A Merry Mirthworm Christmas so they knew the form. Then again the only competition was confused and noisy kids' jungle based game show Top Banana on ITV and Trans World Sport on Channel 4. Bruce Hammal... at Christmas!
BBC2 starts up at 8am with, counterintuitively, Summer Holiday - not that one, the 1948 musical with Mickey Rooney - while BBC1 offer the kids compilation The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie. And it would have to be the kids they're catering for as in place of the usual celebratory Good Morning Britain - must have been a strike on - we get a Cliff Richard Christmas Day Special, strangely buried in the year of his second festive chat topper Saviour's Day wherein the Peter Pan of something "sings, tells the Christmas story, shows some clips from his latest tour and introduces the Choirboy of the Year". Due to his fervent fanbase any Cliff is very well represented online but tellingly not this. Channel 4 meanwhile offer a preview of the day in Christmas On The Box and Oprah Winfrey talking to New Kids On The Block and Bobby Brown, and while TV-am fills the space up to its 9.25 handover with Alvin And The Chipmunks there's a festive Countdown Masters, the abbreviated version unmoored from its Channel 4 Daily home.
ITV recommences the cartoon trend once it gets going with three Tweety Pie cartoons, except in Scotland where the Moderator wanted a word first and on Tyne Tees which showed Inner Space for some reason. Everyone regathered afterwards to find out where your money went after May's 27 hour marathon in Telethon - Thanks To You, against Sesame Street on Channel 4. BBC2 has a rather more earthy cartoon in Watership Down from 9.30am, against which BBC1 get the god slot done early in Shout For Joy!, the Christmas Day Mass from St Francis Church, Handsworth. After that is something you probably wouldn't associate with this early hour even if host and date had had success there not long before - Noel's Christmas Presents, in its second year and still in the slot it would take up until moving to its more famous 3.10pm mooring in 1993, in which Noel heads worldwide and hands out twelve gifts and general issue surprises with the aid of Frank Bruno in disguise, David Essex in a back garden and, good moaning indeed, Arthur Bostrom, not to mention a Geoff McGivern character cameo. ITV is still on its social caring kick with Find A Family Update at 10.45am, featuring the children in care who had been put with new families as a result of Central's initiative being thrown a party at Beaulieu, the kind of thing that might be in prime-time these days rather than cut to fifteen minutes so communion at All Saints Church, Fulham could be taken. Channel 4 for their part continue a Batman And Robin story from the previous day followed by the traditional imported obscure animation, Australian 1987 work And The Lighthouse Made Three, and the other great Channel 4 tradition of the years we've been covering their festive offerings, a Cirque du Soleil film, this one pointedly titled We Reinvent The Circus. BBC2 meander even further on their own path with RKO musicals compilation Gotta Dance, Gotta Sing.
BBC1 get to midday with the first Allo Allo!, not yet under the repeated comedy catch-all Christmas Selection Box title. There's also comedy on BBC2 as they oddly throw out the Christmas special of American sitcom The Famous Teddy Z. Starring Jon Cryer (much later of Two And A Half Men) as a Hollywood showbiz agent and Alex Rocco (Mo from the Godfather, who actually won the comedy supporting actor Emmy for his role) as a heartless old-timer in the same trade, the first six episodes had been shown from October 1989 before the series was dropped, only to return to a 9pm slot on a piecemeal basis throughout 1991 including episodes not shown by CBS as they axed it three quarters of the way through its twenty week commission. The BBC1 repeats continue with the 1985 Two Ronnies special at midday, while ITV launch a classic kids vs parents battle for the remote with a Disney Club Christmas Special from Aspen, Colorado with Dannii Minogue and Breathe (them who did Hands To Heaven) and Channel 4 have a chat with Arnold Palmer, all whilst BBC2 ramp up their high culture alternate offering.
Because nobody wants anything too taxing while the sprouts are on BBC1 throw out another Dad's Army repeat at 12.55pm, the 1976 special The Love Of Three Oranges, and five minutes later BBC2 follow suit with the visual grace of Simon King documentary Drift, The Mute Swan. That's very much what the commercial channels aren't doing from 1pm, with a special for briefly in demand ventriloquist Ronn Lucas on ITV - a prime time series would follow - and Lisa Stansfield talking to Paul Gambaccini on Channel 4.
At 1.30pm Mark Goodier and Anthea Turner are your hosts for the Christmas Top Of The Pops, still being simultaneously broadcast on Radio 1, clips of festive number ones from down the years interspersing new studio performances from Kim Appleby, Beats International, the Beautiful South, Bombalurina, Kylie, Adamski, Londonbeat and Status Quo but Cliff only via repeat. That's followed by EastEnders, which in a pre-Queen slot still seems odd given its ubiquity borne through the divorce papers episode but the three years between then and now had seen it shown at 3.10pm, 1pm and not at all, and it would then skip the big day once more in 1991 before settling into prime time from 1992 onwards. As for this episode Diane finds Disa's new born baby on her doorstep and Ian deliberately crashes his van in an act of revenge over Simon not being his baby for the second time in five months. More genteel pursuits take place from 2pm elsewhere with BBC2 joining the traditional Christmas Day Concert from Amsterdam, Torvill & Dean with the Russian Allstars on ITV and on Channel 4 what sounds like a hell of a seasonal concept, Talking Turkey having Barry Took hold an "alternative Christmas lunch" with Warren Mitchell, John Noakes, Helen Lederer, Johnny Speight, Nina Myskow and Frank Sidebottom. Warren Mitchell and Frank Sidebottom met!
At 3pm, produced for the fifth and last time by David Attenborough, the Commonwealth listens.
That's for all except the minority channels, BBC2 still enjoying Liszt, Channel 4 showing 1986's Max Wall: A Life Class, which is as it sounds - Wall, who died that May, talks about his life to a group of Liverpool and Manchester art college students who then turn their impressions of him into art.
After the speech, the big films, and while ITV play it safe with their Bond catalogue in Moonraker (which debuted over Christmas 1982) there's a huge BBC1 premiere.
The start of a run of Spielberg hits on the big day - and in fact he had his own BBC1 season as a build-up - E.T. attracted 17.5 million viewers. Against that behemoth BBC2 offered To Try Again... And Succeed, the animated story of a baby eagle narrated by Orson Welles, then a study of Henry Moore's landscapes and the premiere of Powaqqatsi, the Third World based successor to time lapse cult film Koyaanisqatsi. On Channel 4 there's another Australian animation, 1985's The Huge Adventures Of Trevor - A Cat, after which...
...It's A Gift kicks off a WC Fields season before the public service breather of news and Queendom.
Jill Dando is on BBC News duty all day as Gorbachev gains more powers and parts of the country flood. Following that at 5.10pm is the day's most watched programme, 17.97 million tuning in for Only Fools And Horses, more than two million down on 1989 but still among the twenty most watched Christmas Day shows ever. And what do they get? Rodney Come Home, in the running for the most straight up depressing Only Fools episode ever, in which Rodney's marriage to Cassandra falls apart, none of the regulars outside the family appear and there's a tear-stained downer ending. Not exactly the previous year's Jolly Boys' Outing, even if it does set up the central story arc of the next series. Regardless, following the ITN news, the Strike It Lucky Christmas Special with child contestants couldn't match up, much less BBC2's repeated tribute to Joyce Grenfell - this got a lot of outings a decade or more after her death - or Channel 4's Faerie Tale Theatre - Jack and the Beanstalk, a 1983 episode from an American anthology series narrated by Shelley Duvall starring Elliott Gould, All In The Family's Jean Stapleton and Soap's Katherine Helmond. They followed that with the first part of Harry Enfield's Viz port The Further Adventures of Billy the Fish and, just in case you thought they'd forgotten, The Snowman.
You'd expect nothing less from Doddy than going long, and Ken Dodd At The London Palladium takes up 75 minutes of ITV from 6.15pm as we head into the evening. It's another old variety stager who made his name at that grand old venue who takes the honours of helming the day's third most watched programme at 6.25pm on BBC1, though, Bruce Forsyth's Christmas Generation Game marking the end of the first year of its return in front of 16.73 million. While Channel 4 gives in with an episode of Cosby Show spinoff A Different World and the party central of Father Oleg, Mother Russia, a profile of Russian Orthodox priest Father Oleg Cherepanin, BBC2 heads back to the opera - the Royal Opera House to be exact as Simon Rattle conducts Leos Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen. At 7.30pm it's time for Coronation Street to take the ratings hindmost with ITV's biggest audience of the day, 14.73 million watching as Gail Tilsley gives birth to David Platt the day after Rosie Webster was born. That beats out the Bread fifty minute special, which is more about shifting existing story arcs than a singular grand day out.
Corrie's not finished for the day, though, as over on Channel 4 at 8pm The Coronation Street Birthday Lecture is given by celebrity fan Roy Hattersley, a recorded version of a tribute he'd given to much bemusement at that year's Edinburgh Festival to mark the soap's thirtieth anniversary. ITV had moved on to something very dissimilar, the premiere of Beverly Hills Cop II, cut to shreds given the pre-watershed start time and with a twenty minute head start on BBC1's Birds Of A Feather, which features a convoluted hour-long story involving Sharon having to find a bubble car in Berlin and getting there by winning a game show hosted by Leslie Crowther. Once they get the Queen out of the way BBC2's alternate is another TV premiere, Jean de Florette, introduced by star Yves Montand.
Yet another premiere, successful but now forgotten Diane Keaton with inherited toddler rom-com Baby Boom, follows the late BBC1 news at 9.45pm, while ITV have one last festive special up their sleeve as Hester has Christmas pudding calamities on French Fields at 10pm. You'd almost be better off with Channel 4's Carmen On Ice from 9pm, a Bizet rewrite starring legendary figure skaters Katarina Witt and Brian Boitano, followed at 10pm by Nigel Kennedy Plays Bruch (no score draw) BBC2 meanwhile drift into the night with yet another Amnesty International benefit, An Embrace Of Hope, which took place in the newly de-Pinocheted Santiago two months earlier featuring Sting, Peter Gabriel, Sinéad O'Connor, Jackson Browne, Wynton Marsalis and New Kids On The Block.
By this time of night we're into repeats and dregs, so after a news update and weather from the actual Met Office office ITV drift into that good night with, depending on region, Barbra Streisand screwball comedy What's Up Doc?, Mike Hammer adaptation Murder Me Murder You, Burt Lancaster's Scorpio, German musical Feel The Motion (with Meat Loaf, Limahl, Pia Zadora, Falco, Katrina & The Waves, Re-Flex and Die Toten Hosen as themselves) and Sounds Like Christmas, "a documentary about the business of selling records at Christmas", at the prime time of 4.35am. BBC1 flings out the Party Games Yes Minister, five minutes of consideration of what all the fuss is about from Christian author Adrian Plass entitled Christmas Presence, and neo-noir spy thriller The Quiller Memorandum. BBC2 reaches for the Hitchcock with Notorious while Channel 4 closes on He Turned Up, the autobiographical tale of a Christian pastor, and Jackie Chan-produced Hong Kong thriller Rouge. And then it's onwards to the Boxing Day after, with toys to play with, turkey to finish and a demoted Russ Abbot, Lorna Doone starring Sean Bean, Peter Cook's A Life In Pieces, Christmas Cluedo and an actor special of the Krypton Factor to look forward to...
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