On this day: Christmas Day 1991

You could make a case for 1991 being the transitional televisual Christmas Day between the lingering image of the family gathered around the set for the big night of big hitter broadcasting and the modern ratings-driven against plentiful entertainment options approach. For one thing, it's the first festive season you'd only have needed one listings magazine for, the deregulation back in February bringing all schedules together whether in cheapo lifestyle-manque magazines or the grand old Radio Times, the cover of which makes the universal umbrella nature a selling point. For another, it's the last where the 25th was overseen by Thames Television. But if you want a major signpost, this was the last Christmas Day to date not to feature an episode of Eastenders, the stories of Mark admitting his HIV+ status to his parents and Grant and Sharon's surprise wedding instead split over Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Come 1992 it'll be back on the 25th in mid-evening and there it will stay until the heat death of the universe or it becomes unprofitable, whichever happens first.

So what could it offer? ITV as always use their 24 hour nature to start the official day bright and early at 6am with their TV-am Cartoon Carnival selection, kicking off with a new programme, Canadian animation A Klondike Christmas featuring the voice of Long John Baldry as a mine owning bear who insists his staff work on Christmas Day to produce enough gold to stuff his hibernation bed only to nearly lose his business. Look, we just copy these things down. At least you know where you are with Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mr Men and, because it's Christmas, Hanna Barbera's Greatest Adventure Stories From The Bible. This year Channel 4 is up at the same time and providing live competition through their own bought-in animations such as Santa And The Three Bears and The Christmas Tree Train.

BBC1 starts at 6.55am keeping their familiar holiday special umbrella programming banner But First This going, Simon Parkin, Philippa Forrester and Esther McVey linking Pingu, Playdays, Postman Pat and, intriguingly, a new animation, Santa And The Tooth Fairies an Anglo-French production featuring Penelope Keith, Nigel Planer, Brian Wilde and David Kelly on voices in which the titular entities have to join forces after a letter arrives too late for Santa to assign a child his toys. By 8.15am it's drifted off and is showing Yogi's First Christmas from 1980, in which Jellystone Lodge revellers disrupt bear and sidekick's slumber.

BBC2 gets going at 7.20am with the livener of a rendition of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing from Ely Cathedral, followed by the reliable black and white-ness of episodes of Flash Gordon and King of the Rocket Men, both of which had been running throughout the season, and the White Christmas musical film. Against that, on ITV at 8.30am, The Osmonds. Just billed as that. Although the 1976 Osmond Family Christmas album of standards was reissued on CD in that year we can't find proof of what this actually was, as the family or Donnie & Marie specials only ran up to around 1980. If there's anyone who does know what was showing in this near hour long slot officially listed as part of TV-am, do get in touch.

At 8.55am Channel 4 throw out something genuinely fascinating. The station had bought fifty two episodes of The Magic Roundabout, about three quarters of them never previously shown in the UK, to show during the Channel 4 Daily and with Eric Thompson having passed on hired Nigel Planer to provide new voiceovers. To preview the revival Planer and his brother Roger wrote and produced The Return Of The Magic Roundabout, an alternate history of the series placing it within conspiracy theories involving the secret service and tapes being deliberately lost, with the aid of a cast including then leader of the opposition Roy Hattersley, John Craven, Leslie Crowther, David Gilmour, Michael Grade and Melvyn Bragg (although the only acknowledged actor in the whole thing is Ken Campbell, and it's not like you could mistake him for anybody else) Repeated over the new year weekend and then left to exist in half-memories - suspiciously, the master tapes were apparently lost years ago - it's a decidedly odd way of approaching a text that vaguely flirts with DRUGS LOL studenty nostalgia but then takes it elsewhere to illogical conclusions. That's followed by five minutes of something called Dance Of The Snowflakes, presumably related to the routine from The Nutcracker.

9.25am is the traditional start of the commercial channel day proper, so both spring into action in their own ways, Channel 4 with the Sesame Street Christmas Special - presumably Christmas Eve On Sesame Street from 1978 - and ITV by heading to Bristol Cathedral for Morning Service. God is all around by the end of the hour with BBC2 popping down to Devon to hear Prayer for a New Mother and While Shepherds Watched, while after a pre-10am weather forecast St Philip's Church, Edinburgh plays host to the latest iteration of the celebratory service, A Christmas Gift. BBC2, aware that with both the big channels at services it has to provide some distraction, schedules the premiere of a cartoon film version of Asterix In Britain...



...claymation short A Christmas Gift and an old WDYT? Christmas blogs favourite, 1983 Richard Williams-animated Harry Nilsson-soundtracked Ziggy's Gift on its final terrestrial screening. Channel 4 gets in on the act from 10.30am with kids' favourite Rosie's Walk and La Postoreia, a retelling of the traditional Mexican festive story with Linda Rondstadt and Los Lobos, but they're reckoning without ITV at the same time repeating The BFG, the Cosgrove Hall version premiered in a prime spot two years earlier.

None of these attempts to distract the kids from playing with discarded wrapping works with BBC1 as they have loftier things in mind, namely the third Noel's Christmas Presents. Noel, in a frock coat within the old Quality Street tin design, introduces a completely changed Twelve Days Of Christmas theme in which the presents range from a desk and a Reliant Robin to a set-up involving a sailor on duty in the Gulf, a couple whose son helped build a hotel, a murdered family member and the active involvement of John Major, whose casual acting we greatly admire. In between someone becomes a pantomime fairy in an otherwise closed theatre opposite Les Dawson and John Nettles ("appearing in Dick Whittington at the Wimbledon Theatre"), there’s a mass title-defeating rendition of Silent Night involving Michael Ball and the constantly for hire London Community Gospel Choir, someone else meets Whoopi Goldberg on the set of Sister Act and there’s a flight to Moscow to introduce pen pals - though we barely actually see the meeting and suspiciously not what happens afterwards. (This, by the way, was the Presents that got repeated three months later when a bomb threat cancelled House Party at late notice.) After all that they recognise people have things to be cooking and tidying up so slip into the already established Comedy Christmas Cracker, a triumvirate formed by the model volcano episode of Hi-De-Hi!, the 1984 Two Ronnies special and the Wake Up Walmington Dad's Army.

BBC2 keep things classy with the premiere at the remarkably early time of 11.45am of Jean Renoir's acclaimed Bergman vehicle Elena et les Hommes. On the other hand Channel 4 feel like they've handed in their homework at the last minute with a Wonder Years compilation, a non-seasonal Cosby Show and a documentary about the Virgin Mary, Ave Maria, so high profile Four couldn't even sell advertising space during it. ITV show a weirdly scheduled Children's Ward Christmas special at 12.15pm following a family from the just ended last series - Paul Abbott's pen, obviously - followed by animated love story Brown Bear's Wedding, with the voices of Joss Ackland, Helena Bonham Carter and Hugh Laurie, and the classic Pinocchio. BBC2, who have nobody to appeal to but themselves, come out of the Bergman at 1.20pm with a filler repeat of an episode about false teeth from the series Small Objects of Desire followed by a Murray Perahia piano recital from Aldeburgh.

It's 2pm and time for Christmas Top Of The Pops! Except, as you may have seen at the end of November on BBC4, this was neither a vintage year for pop nor one for Pops, Tony Dortie, Mark Franklin and Claudia Simon introducing the not stellar line-up of Nomad, Kenny Thomas, Oceanic and the Scorpions. Channel 4 fill out the hour with animation in the shape of The Lighthouse, about the inhabitants of a small Scottish island who join together to build the titular illuminatory outhouse, and then Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, a Russian claymation musical take on the classic set in the country post-perestroika, though as it was released the previous year the USSR had actually commenced break-up in the interim. Again, happy Christmas! Here's a plasticine wolf being beaten, ripped apart and chained up!

Coronation Street on a Christmas Day feels like a modern invention but before now it's happened every year but two since 1985 and five times before that, as far back as 1961. This however was the only time there were officially two episodes on the day. Actually technically you could argue there were three, as the first began at 2.50pm and uniquely paused while Alf, Audrey and sundry paused to watch the speech, then carried on for another 25 minutes afterwards, enough time for Mike and Ken to form a new love triangle with Alma. The Queen's Christmas Message was actually notable, or at least newsworthy in the way her words rarely are, as after some chat about the Iron Curtain break-up and the dedication of the voluntary workforce she closed with the words “I shall try to serve you in the years to come”, which the press interpreted as a slapdown to both idle talk of abdication now she was 65 in the midst of one of the perennial royal crises (and it got worse in 1992) and to her own son’s ambitions on such.



BBC1 followed one tradition with what was by now another, Only Fools And Horses. Though it wasn’t common knowledge at the time the show had finished its run of regular series that February but Miami Twice was the only tenth of eighteen festive specials - in fact between its inaugural year of 1981 and 1993 it only missed out 1984 (Lennard Pierce died on 15th December but they’d already started filming the next series so would have skipped that year anyway) Del and Rodney’s trip to Florida and getting wrapped up in Mafioso business was spread over two parts, the first on Christmas Eve, the second running over fully 95 minutes in an edit pretty much never seen again as, not uniquely for these specials, even the repeats and streaming versions have ten minutes cut off. While it still won the day's ratings war the figure was well down on both the previous year and part one (and both were left in the dust of the first Auntie's Bloomers four days later), which is partially why you don't tend to get a TV special episode at 3.10pm any more. Lots of anomalies too, as Barry Gibb has a walk-on part, there's incidental music unusually for the series (including Vic Reeves' Born Free) and no laugh track, and it ends with a cover of Summer In The City. That all said, David Jason has claimed this is his favourite episode.

Speaking of adventures by unlikely figures, BBC2 at the same time starts The Wizard Of Oz. Channel 4 ducks out of the clash of classics by showing a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto in G Major by the Gustav Mahler Orchestra and then the annual Cirque du Soleil spectacular, Novelle Experience. Having its own annual standards to uphold, ITV break out the Bond once Corrie is done, namely For Your Eyes Only.

The Generation Game - trailer only, unfortunately - had been a Christmas Day fixture for all eleven years of its original run so when it came back there was only one date it was set for, even if the night's big event had moved it to 4.40pm, a little earlier than when it would have worked best. Over on BBC2 The Staggering Year Of Ferdinand de Bargos was a year in review version of the Geoff Atkinson and Kim Fuller series of shorts putting new dialogue over old news clips, the voiceovers in this series' case coming from Mount Rushmore of VO candidates Kate Robbins, Enn Reitel and Jon Glover plus the ever adaptable Susie Blake, followed by a Broadway recording of Stephen Sondheim's acclaimed Into The Woods starring his regular lead Bernadette Peters. Against that Channel 4 throw on five minutes of news and then settle back with this year's outing for The Snowman.

Magician David Berglas is a leftfield choice for the big This Is Your Life, with the great and good of both magic - Paul and Debbie, Uri Geller, the Morettis, the Pendragons, the Great Soprendo - and otherwise - Ted Rogers, Ruth Madoc, Bill Maynard, Anthea Turner, Henry Cooper - coming by. During this time Channel 4 has brought together the best of Tonight With Jonathan Ross' autumn New York trip. If it feels like everyone is getting the small fry out of the way, there's a very good reason for that. After Chris Lowe has drawn the BBC news short straw - though not for actual news value, as this was the day Gorbachev stepped down - we are upon the TV premiere of Batman attracting 14.3 million, 600,000 short of OFAH.



An hour long Watching special on ITV, after Sue Carpenter has been ITN's short shift, can't compete. Maybe it wasn't meant to.

"It is Christmas Day in the Farnham household" says the Brookside blurb, which makes us think their horizons are limited, though there is a sting. Following that, we're reminded that in many ways this was the era of big showy Status Quo publicity stunts, as an hour is given over to Rock Till You Drop, the story of their playing four charity gigs across the UK (except Wales and Ireland) in twelve hours. Which is, by the way, a repeat from October. A repeat! At 7pm on Christmas Day! And not even a festive one!

The second Corrie, ITV's most watched show of the day (unless you count the combined speech viewership, but who does that?) hoves into view at the usual time and it's all go. Alma wakes up with Mike and winds round to calling him a bastard (at 7.30pm on Christmas Day! There'll have had to be letters) and throwing him out, the McDonalds get a brick through their window, Rovers decorator and Christmas dinner invitee Des Foster reacts to being turned down by Bet by hitting her and gets thrown out, and Tracy goes upstairs to listen to her tapes. Maybe she had new ones. While BBC2 gets on with the signed version of the speech followed by a Glyndebourne production of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, filling two hours 20 in one of the traditional manners, the third of eight Birds Of A Feather extended specials takes a key spot on BBC1's evening. This is the one where Brian Hibbard from the Flying Pickets offers the trio use of a villa in Majorca only for the sisters to find their escaped husbands there and then drugs planted on Dorien, possibly by a local played by John Bluthal.

Then, something strange happens. Ever since ITV had published their programming details it had been expected that their big show on the day would be their enormous hit and obvious cosy family viewing treat The Darling Buds Of May. This however was ITV in the early 1990s, where entertaining the nation came a distant second to advertising revenue, so in what might well have been a late decision that went out on the 22nd and a lot of potential huge audiences were burned off during Advent, most notably the premiere of Big as far back as the 4th December, reportedly at Thames' request. We'd see the extreme of this approach in the next couple of years but for now they had to keep something back to counteract the caped crusader so at 8pm placed the premiere of Crocodile Dundee II. Fair, as even if it isn’t the most remembered sequel to a hit the original had become the most watched Christmas Day single airing programme ever (21.77 million) two years earlier for BBC1. But... that's except for viewers in Thames, TSW and TVS, who got a special episode of Minder and a second, ITN news-straddling showing of Top Gun. Everyone else got to watch Arthur and, being this late in its day, Ray transport stolen videos across London by barge at 10.15pm. The reasons are murky, especially as it's not like the advertising premium even in the affluent capital and southern regions would have been huge when they eventually did show it on Wednesday January 22nd (when the other regions put on... well, guess) Minder's home franchise upset at the late scheduling? It's not like they'd have shifted more holiday brochures that way. While ITV were having a little local difficulty Channel 4 were showing highlights of Pavarotti's huge free Hyde Park concert in the presence of Charles, Diana and the PM from that July.

Once BBC1 has returned from Majorca/Chigwell it's onto another reliable sitcom signpost of the age, Keeping Up Appearances. It only had three Christmas specials, perhaps because there's very little room for manoeuvre when churches and costumes are already part of its world. Hyacinth orders a Father Christmas outfit for Richard's church hall duties, he gets drunk, Elizabeth has to pretend to be him, mayhem ensues. After the news follows another premiere, regular Christmas TV visitor Eddie Murphy's Coming To America, which 13 million hung on for.

Channel 4 have to show the Queen's speech so stick it out at 9.55pm before a channel that has already this morning delivered one of the great Christmas Day hidden gems puts out another. The Ghosts Of Oxford Street - yes, somehow it's on All4 - was written and directed by Malcolm McLaren as a fantastical retelling of-cum-love letter to the history of London's retail hub. Wandering the streets by night McLaren acts as narrator in his usual not quite telling all the story straightforwardly way between musical interludes. Tom Jones is George Selfridge. The Happy Mondays cover Stayin' Alive raggedly while being hung at Tyburn. Sinead O'Connor delivers a cut glass version of Silent Night. John Altman is Thomas De Quincey. Rebel MC appears to rework Pick A Pocket Or Two. Shane McGowan and Kirsty Maccoll bum, punk and old slut on junk their way down Dickensian thoroughfares. It's the kind of frustrating, dubious, odd, unique spark that McLaren made his own space, and even if nothing else you can see how Oxford Street has changed yet again in the last thirty years.

We're past ten by now so everyone's thinking about what they're heading into the small hours with. BBC2's nightcap from 10.20pm is, but of course, a double bill of Jean Vigo directed French films from the Thirties, Zéro de Conduite and L'Atalante. Channel 4, having given Cirque du Soleil their annual fill earlier on, showcase their briefly cooler modern circus counterparts Archaos, then dive into Dial M For Murder after midnight, then at 2.50am - but of course! - a random episode of Swedish satirical series Lorry, followed by a Jonathan Ross repeat. BBC1 is still closing down in these days where News 24 is a gleam in John Birt's eye and gets there with a repeat of the previous year's In Sickness And In Health special (which had gone out on the 30th), John Wells - drain your glass, Christmas Day Schedule Drinking Game players - monologue Just What I Always Wanted! and the Likely Lads film. That just leaves ITV and they're doing as little work as possible. Once another premiere is out of the way, and given Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol ends at 12.50am you can see what they think of it (and the fifth premiered three days later!), practically the whole network gets to quietly snooze through some or all of 1987's Assault And Matrimony, a hilarious tale of attempted domestic murder, David Essex motorbike racing thriller Silver Dream Racer, the 1984 animated A Tale Of Two Cities, and then it's just a triple bill of Porky Pig and Sylvester before TV-am kicks off a post-Christmas 1991 world...

ON THE RADIO: Simon Bates is off around the world, as per, linking up with BFBS to play requests from the Forces in Cyprus, encompassing the Queen at 11am. DLT has somehow got the keys to Ambridge's Grey Gables to host the Radio 1 Christmas lunch, with John Peel making the return visit. The station then collectively sleeps it off with Steve Wright's best of the year's guests, Paul Simon live in Central Park and Level 42 from Crystal Palace Bowl before Neale James sends everyone off to bed.
-Predicting the home broadcasting revolution of the last two years, Don Maclean presents the Radio 2 breakfast show from his home in Solihull with family, friends, Des O'Connor, Lenny Henry and Sue Lawley. The speech is on at 10am, handled by Ken, with Michael Aspel taking us towards a lunchtime decorated by festive News Huddlines and a 1967 Round The Horne. File the next show under "things you'd never dream of today" as Norma Major, as in the Prime Minister's wife, introduces her favourite seasonal music before Alan Titchmarsh does likewise. Jeremy Nicholas presents a celebration of Junior Choice and its ilk, Merry Christmas Children Everywhere, two decades before the station just bit the bullet and brought it back, followed by James Stewart celebrating the work of Frank Capra, seasonally enough. Gloria Gaynor's gospel scented Christmas Special from the BBC Hippodrome Theatre is as good a way as any to bring on the night before the handbrake turn of Sing Something Seasonal and Sir Yehudi Menuhin talking to Sheridan Morley, after which Tony Capstick introduces A Traditional Yorkshire Christmas.
-Radio 3 highlights? Gladly: the Westminster Abbey Choir lending itself to a Bach Cantata, a chat with Pavarotti about his greatest roles and influences, Mozart from Salzburg, Jeremy Beadle conducting a Christmas Quiz, an episode of the struggling writer sitcom Such Rotten Luck starring Tim Pigott Smith, Zoe Wanamaker and Stephen Rea, an adaptation of Don Quixote with Paul Scofield and Bob Hoskins, and ancient chanting from the Lebanon to end.
-Radio 4 get off to a flyer, Dilly Barlow introducing "your choice of memorable radio moments" in Christmas Past, Christmas Present. Clearly the Greg James of her day. The Queen is on as early as 9am. The Christmas On The Hour is at the remarkable time of 10.30am (yes, we know it's a repeat from the previous day), followed by a repeat of the 1968 adaptaion of The Hobbit ahead of JRR Tolkien's centenary, though there's a lot of this recycling going round as there's a Hancock's Half Hour and a Tommy Handley profile later. In one of those brainwaves Radio 4 producers have occasionally a new festive season series begins entitled Namesakes, in which people meet their famous namealikes, Victoria Wood today. Dion Boucicault's comedy London Assurance is the afternoon production, involving Samantha Bond and Reece Dinsdale. At evening Dame Barbara Cartland is In The Psychiatrist's Chair, The Wizard Of Oz's production is the subject of the series Going To The Pictures, harpist Osian Ellis gives a recital and Dr Alan Maryon Davis explains what DNA is.
-It's 1991 so we have a Radio 5, which has Cliff Morgan on the breakfast beat once again introducing clips of festivities past, breaking for Liz at 9am. The children's slot Take Five has taken a turn as it's being presented by Gorden Kaye and Carmen Silvera in character, incorporating Judi Dench reading Papa Panov's Special Christmas. Then the station puts its feet up for a while, simulcasting A Festival of Nine Lessons And Carols with Radio 3, BFBS Worldwide and the World Service for five hours in total. The evening is for the kids with a repeat of the summer's Children's Prom, a playlet of Peter Pan, Barbara Windsor reading Dick Whittington, a history of and performance by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra with Johnny Dankworth sitting in and, er, a version of Paul Theroux's London Snow. Right at the end Scrawn and Lard save the day with a Hit The North special.

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