ITV were in a right state in 1993. The franchise changeovers at the start of the year had brought discontent and the suspicion that the companies involved had spent too much on the licensing and, maybe consequently, not enough on entertainment. A recession had struck down advertising spend, an area where ITV often didn't make their best profits in good years despite the seasonal bump in viewership as it's a day when shops aren't open and the general tone advertisers look to exploit is caught between presents and food for the big day and the sales and holidays of the post-Xmas period. The previous year a lot of ITV's biggest shows had seen their internally made festive specials scheduled either side of the big day and that was apparent in 1993 with not just three episodes of Corrie bridging the 25th but Gladiators, Poirot, Dame Edna and a Les Dawson all-star tribute, all surely light entertainment suitable for a family audience, collapsed around the living room from overindulging, packing out Boxing Day instead. So John Birt's first Christmas as BBC DG and Alan Yentob's first as BBC1 controller - he'd accidentally told a press briefing "Christmas is a BBC institution", which might go to prove that old maxim about revealing slips of the tongue - saw them have the field practically to themselves, but little did we anticipate how little effort there would be at times.
In these 24 hour broadcasting times we're used to most channels kicking off early with the usual palette of kids' entertainments, which on ITV means a morning of the GMTV service Rise And Shine and Saturday Disney with Stuart Miles pre-Blue Peter and Carmen Ejogo very pre-True Detective, featuring Rosie & Jim, Muppet Babies, Count Duckula, The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Chip 'n Dale and Darkwing Duck, plus Bad Boys Inc somewhere along the line. BBC1 put Philippa Forrester in charge of the Children's BBC suite and sent her to the Czech Republic, illustrating how them lot celebrate the season in between linking Henry's Cat, 1987 Australian doll-comes-to-life tale Candy Claus, Mythical Magical Creatures - a series that had been running throughout the period putting traditional animal stories to song - Felix the Cat, Fox series Peter Pan and the Pirates (with Tim Curry as Captain Hook!) and The Flintstones. Channel 4 meanwhile fling everything they have in the pile at it, namely The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Heathcliff, Bobobobs, what seems to be an adaptation of festive song Up On The House Top, 1991 Canadian special The Boy Who Dreamed Christmas, moving version of Toronto comic strip For Better Or Worse, Melchoir tale White Camel, and before those last two a hardy perennial of this feature, not least this year - yes, it's Ziggy's Gift, the newspaper column turned by Richard Williams with the aid of Harry Nilsson into life. Sad news, however, as after exactly a decade this is the sixth and last time, all but one on the 25th, where it will go out on British TV.
BBC2 rise at 7am and buy themselves time, and try to win a few childless and ageing viewers, with a double bill of John Wayne western Rio Lobo - strange day and time for it - and the one that wasn't Holiday Inn, White Christmas. Channel 4 meanwhile make a gesture at keeping the youth onside with an episode of Saved By The Bell, then give up and stick The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery on. That, you suspect, is because the Saturday morning programmes, that being the day of the week, have arrived, and bravely Live & Kicking On Christmas Day has taken up the Noel mantle by going out live (apparently, we have no direct evidence of this) and dragging Take That in, unbilled in advance for reasons we'll come back to, as well as Eternal which seems weird given half of them are devout Christians. In contrast to useful it starts at 8.30am and lasts ninety minutes, after which the winning trio of Roger Royle, Bernard Hill and Sally Ann Matthews drag a thousand people into a tent in Liverpool and call it The Giant Nativity Festivity, wherein carols are sung and the greatest story ever told is told by circus performers. ITV meanwhile hold their horses with a first thing (well, 9.25am when GMTV hand the reigns over) Morning Worship from Cathedral Church of St Peter, Bradford and fill out ten minutes with Disney Cartoon Time before a very different cartoon studio tie-in, What's Up Doc? The oft forgotten series had actually been winning the ratings battle for the time being, possibly doing so today too despite only lasting fifty minutes as BBC1 were giving another appropriate airing to the Albert Finney Scrooge, and not yet having been gutted of its production team and menagerie of characters following a dispute with their STV paymasters, Andy, Pat and an about to go on maternity leave Yvonne were joined by... Take That. And, er, Gary Glitter.
And, well, that's about the size of the effort ITV put into it. If you think just sticking the regular suite of morning shows is lazy now you ain't seen nothing yet. The (ITV) Chart Show did always have an end of year special... but this isn't it, that's the following week. This is a plain standard edition revealing the week's chart and so forth. Even more egregious what what followed at 12.30pm, namely an edition of Movies, Games And Videos, in which Steve Priestley voiced over a package of film clips and EPGs intended as nothing other than filler, this edition cycling through some of the recent cinema offerings and a few things expected in early 1994 with very little acknowledgement of the season. And they kept it in place.
At least BBC2 didn't have to pretend to be offering a major channel's service when it filled an hour with highlights from the summer's athletics world championships, though that was followed by a preview of the actual highlight of their week, Inside The Wrong Trousers, the latest Wallace & Gromit adventure (remember that, it may come in useful later) premiering at 5.20pm on Boxing Day. A reminder follows of the evil outside world in The Way Of The Cross In Sarajevo - "in the devastated city, a remarkable Mass is held as two priests follow a contemporary road to Cavalry" - before dropping the hammer on the family's emotion limits by showing The Railway Children. Channel 4 for their part come back from St Trinians into another early 90s favoured filler, the first part of The Third Genius, a two-part profile of Harold Lloyd. The Pete Smith Specialities cupboard must have been bare. It continues into the afternoon with the curiously titled animation Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus, traditional seasonal music in Christmas In Rome, and more black and white memorialising in The One, The Only Groucho.
But do you really want something big when the turkey and trimmings are in? BBC1 didn't think so for a lot of the 90s and into the 00s, hence the Christmas Comedy Cracker, putting together some light festive fun from previous years, in this case the 1985 Two Ronnies, the one that ends with the musical Alice In Wonderland set-piece, and the turkey dinner Dad's Army. 5.6 million watched. That's why they keep repeating it. Top Of The Pops follows as traditional at 2pm, but the warhorse is lame and struggling at the moment as this was the only full year of the Year Zero revamp, Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin by now the only presenters on the roster, introducing studio performances from West End featuring Sybil, 2 Unlimited, Snow, the Bluebells, Ace Of Base, Gabrelle, Take That, Bitty McLean, M-People and Meat Loaf via satellite, all of course building up to the Blobbified number one. BBC2 offered their own big pop star in parallel with an episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. ITV for their early afternoon pre-Queen part fill 55 minutes with a Bugs Bunny double bill followed by Six Little Angels, Phillip Schofield catching up with the Walton sextuplets, just like someone from ITV would every three weeks or so.
So The Queen has her usual things to say, mostly about the hope of world peace (clearly passe, the speech losing a total of five million viewers compared to 1991), and BBC1 follow as they often did, with the fifth Noel's Christmas Presents - this is the one where the Hollies play in someone's garden. With Bond being saved for the Licence To Kill premiere on 3rd January, ITV's follow-up is The Never-Ending Story, not a premiere but also the first demonstration that, news aside (Libby Weiner taking the ITN rota short straw), there will be one actual programme between the message to subjects and 11.40pm. Something else notable this year is, as part of a Christmas In New York themed season, Quentin Crisp became the first person to give Channel 4's Alternative Queen's Message, as it was then known, in the days where they were brave/man enough to run it at 3pm, though they do run the actual speech much earlier than usual at 4.15pm maybe just in case. Theirs lasts longer too, right through to 3.15pm and Christmas Star, a rigorous investigation into the Star of Bethlehem. BBC2 diverts itself to paying tribute to Rudolf Nureyev, who died six days into the year, firstly with a documentary tribute involving colleagues, then his 1966 ballet verson of Romeo And Juliet.
BBC1's big family film premiere, which has to wait out until the oddly late seeming time of 4.05pm, is Back To The Future III, though you imagine there'd be some generational battling over the remote twenty minutes in when Channel 4 let The Snowman loose, though they'd be switching back when it was superceded by - again, happy Christmas, Ange - the Brookside Omnibus, though a repeat of A Grand Day Out on BBC2 in advance of tomorrow's evil penguin capers would have to cut a substantial audience away from the last twenty minutes off of Seamus McFly and co. We can't imagine many were invested in the one actual TV programme ITV deigned to let interrupt their movie schedule, Beadle's Daredevils, a one-off of Beadlebum introducing 'death-defying' stunts.
John Humphrys does the BBC news which we imagine he was delighted about, followed on BBC1 by, ten years after its first outing on the 25th, Only Fools And Horses. Now two years on from the final regular episode of the show, this is the last special before the "final" Christmas trilogy (not to be confused with the final FINAL Christmas trilogy), John Sullivan bemoaning to Radio Times that he could easily write a new series immediately but David Jason was making Frost and with Nicholas Lyndhurst entering his time travel era he wouldn't be able to get anything on in 1994. Fatal Extraction is a curious one to go out on regular Trotter travails, given Raquel leaves Del over his drinking and Del dates a dental receptionist who he thinks then starts stalking him and accidentally starts a riot, reputedly with Aled Jones among its participants. 85 minutes is far too long for the plot and it's justly overlooked as the one between Peckham Spring and Batman & Robin, but it's obviously a national event and with a day best of 19.59 million viewers - albeit half a million less year on year - trounced ITV's premiere of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, with the Northern Ballet Theatre's version of A Christmas Carol holding up the classy end for BBC2 and Christmas With Luciano Pavarotti, recorded in Mexico's Notre Dame Cathedral, likewise on Channel 4.
Eastenders famously set out to deliberately ruin people's Christmas Day with a set of divorce papers and that's what they came to live by as this time around Phil Mitchell embarks on an affair with his green card wife Nadia and Aidan threatens to throw himself off the top of a block of flats. None of that put off 17.4 million people, fourth highest for the day. At the same time BBC2 debut the underrated Michael Palin Englishman abroad bringing his troubles (Connie Booth) back with him film American Friends, while Channel 4 similarly premiere Cousin Bobby, Jonathan Demme's 1992 documentary film about his Episcopalian minister cousin. Films? Yeah, ITV have them out the wazoo and another to offer at 8pm, Kevin Costner's building/coming baseball fantasy Field Of Dreams, ITV's most watched programme of the day with 5.8 million tuned in, which placed it ninth on the day. BBC1 also exhibits big American dreams of a different kind, Birds Of A Feather going to Hollywood when they come to believe the father who put them up for adoption might be George Hamilton. He and George Wendt play themselves, a young Amma Asante doesn't. 19.4 million watched, running Only Fools close for the day honours (One Foot In The Algarve the next day topped both for the festive week) Does a half hour short count as a film premiere too? Sod it, Channel 4 called Swan Song one at 8.30pm, the Kenneth Branagh directed Chekhov two-hander starring John Gielgud and a beardy Richard Briers having an Oscar nomination to wield as proof.
By now it's 9pm. Channel 4 go back to their roots with Placido Domingo in Puccini's wild west opera La Fanciulla del West and BBC2 string together the Queen with BSL, the latest in five minute verite series Christmas In Sarajevo and Selected Exits, a Bookmark dramatisation by Alan Plater of comic writer Gwyn Thomas' autobiography starring Anthony Hopkins and his daughter Abigail Harrison on screen together for the first time. Somewhat more populist is Ghost, the day's actual big film premiere on BBC1 capturing 18.5 million, certainly a lot more than ITV's final first look of the day, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan neo-noir D.O.A.
As people begin to slope off for the night, BBC1 finishes off with - of course - the 1977 Morecambe & Wise which still pulled in 10.4 million viewers to put it seventh for the day, "contemporary meditation for Christmas Day" Watching Flocks for the usual late God slot and the 1958 Cushing/Lee The Hound Of The Baskervilles. BBC2 dredge up a three year old episode from French & Saunders' first series, Bunuel classic Belle de Jour and a horror for the night, 1945's Hangover Square. Channel 4 repeat Quentin Crisp's words, then repeat Robin Williams Live at the Met, start a horribly timed Marx Brothers season with Monkey Business and, for some reason at 2.15am, the LA Law episode in which the accused in an assault case only speaks through a ventriloquist's dummy. As for ITV, there's a very late South Bank Show produced tribtue to Irving Berlin which of course is called Dreaming Of A White Christmas and then we're into regional variations valhalla in which most regions take Airport '77, some Wet Wet Wet In Concert, Central a series of films no other part of the country bothered with and on LWT another clips and VO job, Cinema Cinema Cinema. Somehow those together say more about this day in ITV history, when their audience share of 21.7% was a full forty down on BBC1's to the IBA's open criticism, than we ever could.
In what seems a bit like nobody else would make the commitment Lynn Parsons does breakfast on Radio 1 right through to midday and the usual inhabitant throwing Simon Mayo's Christmas Lunch. But never mind them, there's bigger fish following at 2pm with The Take That Christmas Take-Away - archived by the estimable Andy Walmsley - "with all your Christmas messages and all their favourite records, eating a Christmas curry and having a great time." You know, Christmas curry. You get the impression someone thought of a clever title and then worked backwards in the wrong direction. The natural follow-on to the lads is of course Johnnie Walker, reviewing a year of his show for four hours until the necessity strikes for religious content which leads to God In The Flesh, Glasgow Christian community the Late Late Service writing and performing songs for "a contemporary, hard-hitting religious experience that takes a look at what Christmas means in 1993", followed by Simon Bates' Whitney Houston Gospel Special. Bates had actually left Radio 1 in October after resigning so presumably made an incredible pitch to Matthew Bannister. That just left John Peel, playing the entire Festive 50 from 10.30pm to 2am.
After Roger Royle does the early shift Don Maclean takes his usual Radio 2 breakfast position, except this year he's live from Manger Square, Bethlehem, as he "celebrates the new-found peace in the area and talks to some of those involved in the agreement, including Yasser Arafat". *sucks air through teeth* Ken Bruce and Michael Aspel share mid-morning duties as per 1992 with The News Huddlines' White Christmas taking up the late lunch half-hour up to, oh my, Chas & Dave's Christmas Knees Up, with guests including Marti Caine, their old mate Albert Lee and, in a battle of the novelties, the Barron Knights. Christmas Concert Classics is the vague title for the afternoon light music with Young Musician of the Year, violinist Yuri Zhislin, and the BBC Concert Orchestra, followed by Gillian Reynolds picking her favourite Christmas radio. The Daniel O'Donnell supremacy is just beginning to leak into British cultural spheres which is why they have one of his concerts to block out an hour from 5pm. Again for the second year running we're forced to confront the mental image of Alan Titchmarsh's Christmas Glow, a series of readings and traditional song from Hagley Hall. There really does seem to be an obsession with the way things used to be, which may well be par for the course of Radio 2 in the years immediately before its hip revamp, but half an hour of memories entitled Christmas Past at 7pm is stretching it far. Things are immediately taken back down a gear by David Jacobs and the BBC Big Band, then David Mellor predicting his radio future with favourite classical music and the 11pm sudden switch to Gloria Gaynor's Christmas Concert, a gospel concert recorded at the Hippodrome, with Alan Dedicoat and his delicate voice seeing us into the night.
It's fair to say Radio 3 went right in on branding the day, what with A Christmas Stocking to open, the last door of an Advent Calendar, an 8am Mass for Christmas and Spirit Of The Age, "a selection of lighthearted early music to accompany Christmas lunch" following the seemingly irreplaceable Record Review. This lunch must have been very early because it ends at 1pm and is followed, in Table Talk, by a discussion on the act of roasting right before A Festival Of Nine Lessons And Carols. Into the afternoon with some BBC Symphony Orchestra cuts, Christmas Music Old and New, Jazz Record Requests and the supposedly annual but we couldn't find it in the last couple of years Christmas Quiz, hosted by the acclaimed critic Jeremy J Beadle (actual Jeremy Beadle's middle name is also a J but leave that be) before the station goes Live From The Met for a Barber Of Seville production sung in in Italian, "in association with the Texaco Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network". While they're in America there's the first of five John Cheever Stories, the short story writer brought to life by William 'Porkins' Hootkins. Forward an hour and in a great break with the seasonal choral tradition, it's the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded at Royal Festival Hall to close the day.
John Walters! As we've said before his is a name that should be far more celebrated these days for many reasons, the latest of which is that Radio 4 gave him the morning for John Walters' Xmas Fayre, seemingly live and advertising "four mystery time zone guests, some literary consequences, and radio's first ever crossword of the air". Things get back to normal once comfortably clear of 9am, which Christmas Day Morning Service coming from a Crisis shelter and linking up with Don Maclean in Bethlehem, which is a neat signpost into It Was Christmas Day In The Empire, Harry Thompson delving into the archive of festive radio greetings from around the world. Sue Townsend has penned a new Adrian Mole short story, Mole Cooks His Goose, for the occasion and we're delighted to see it was produced by John Tydeman. The Michael Rosen helmed children's book programme Treasure Islands goes seasonal - Christmas Treasures, of course - with guests Martin Jarvis, Rachel Billington and Helen Lederer, and then a "did we have to be there?" moment occurs in Pick of the Week That Wasn't, where "Father Christmas looks back at some seasonal broadcasts that might have been". The only name attached is the producer's, who we don't know, but it makes a neat combination with the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue Christmas Special, featuring a Mornington Crescent nativity, and the compilation News Quiz Of The Year. The Queen and news interrupt at 1pm but can only hold the fascination at bay for so long before another programme we really want to hear right now, The Discreet Charm Of The BBC, "a celebration of BBC radio at its worst", and then The Masterson Inheritance Christmas Special, the Comedy Store Players' improvised historical drama. In the 2.30pm drama slot begins a season of plays set in 1920s theatreland, Christmas At The Ritz, which is followed by Laughter And Hope And Sock In The Eye, sadly not an oblique playlet based on Stephen Tin Tin Duffy's Kiss Me but a repeat of a documentary about Dorothy Parker. There is, as you can tell, a lot going on on this day, and we're only just up to 4.45pm and What A Difference A Day Makes, an "aural snapshot of the days of the week". At least we're on surer footing with With Great Pleasure, baritone Thomas Allen picking his favourite prose, then after the 6pm news Fourth Column, Simon Hoggart's version of a broadsheet diary, Quote Unquote and a 1988 production of The Taming Of The Shrew with Stephen Tompkinson and Robert Glenister down the cast list. Music In Mind, sometime King's Singer Brian Kay's music show, really doesn't look at home on Radio 4, let alone taking up space on this night. Three different Liverpool-based religious figures consider the season on Ten To Ten, then after the news is Humbug!, a repeated documentary about the lasting appeal of A Christmas Carol, Famous For 15 Minutes talking to people who were just that - Bernie The Bolt tonight - Personal Records sifting through a notable's record collection and a dramatisation of F Scott Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby's Christmas Wish to finish.
Radio 5, in its original tricks-performing mongrel form, already knew it would be onto its final Christmas Day, and it only had four as it was. Cliff Morgan opens up the morning with the prosaically titled We Wish You A Merry Christmas, then the children's show Get Set takes requests with Steve Johnson off Motormouth. Children's Christmas Carols bisect midday, followed by a Christmas edition of Talking Poetry, two hours of BFBS and a simulcast of Nine Lessons And Carols. Then we're into the readings that the station made some of its original name with, namely a series of kids' stories about astrological signs Spinning Stars, Philip Schofield reading Joseph And His Coat of Many Colours and one of Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes. Then at 6pm is the Christmas Extravaganza of what we reckon is the most obscure show in the Mark & Lard canon, Cult Radio, a ramshackle series of road trips loosely related to cult concerns in which uniquely Marc Riley was the superior figure. That lasts a full hour and a half, up to Afropop Worldwide Caribbean Christmas Special. Le Top, the weekly European chart, kept its place, then after the regular airing of US detective series Nightbeat the most forgotten of the stripped Big Noise At Night shows, The Way Out, from Birmingham fights the Medium Wave late night interference.
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