“Elliot has a new friend.”

“There are some terrific films on over Christmas … But wouldn’t it be great if the films were of the same standard all year round … On BSB, six nights a week, you’ll be able to see films never before shown on British television.”

This advertisement, from the 1989 Christmas Radio Times, is comic now, but at the time, it seemed to herald the start of a new age of Christmas television. The new channels provided by BSB and Sky offered brand new films and many more channels, and it was thought that the usual Christmas fare of films and specials offered up by the BBC and ITV would become a thing of the past – the family audience fragmenting to such an extent that 20 million viewers wouldn’t sit down in front of a heavily edited film or overcooked entertainment special recorded in mid-August.

So as we entered the new decade it seemed obvious that Christmas television would soon be devoted to the same old soaps, sitcoms and movies we’d seen all year round. These portents of gloom seemed not to concern the networks in 1990, and both managed to produce much more lively and varied schedules than they had for many years. In retrospect, they don’t look very good, but without the gift of hindsight, there’s much more family-friendly new programming. That said, many aspects of the ’80s continued, so this is the final year when you had to buy both the Radio Times and TV Times – and the magazines ran true to form, with the Radio Times featuring a festive illustration on the cover and features on all the family programming, while TV Times featured pregnant Coronation Street characters Sally Webster and Gail Platt on the cover showing off their ‘bumps’, and inside they were interviewed in character.

And most of the BBC1 daytime schedule varied little from the previous years, with just a difference in timings. Children’s BBC started the day off at 7am, this year presented from “Santa’s Grotto” with the A-team of Simon Parkin, Andi Peters, Phillippa Forrester and Edd the Duck. That said, it was slightly repeat-heavy this year, with the same episode of Playdays as the year before (“The Christmas Tree Stop”) and an old festive-themed Wizbit kicking the day off. This was followed by The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie – also a repeat, but great fun nonetheless. This took us up to 9.30am, then it was time to be reminded why we were celebrating, as we were whisked off to St Francis’ Church in Birmingham to Shout For Joy!

Noel Edmonds found himself giving out his Christmas Presents earlier than usual, at 10.30am – this time accompanied by Frank Bruno and David Essex. Then it was time for the Christmas Comedy Cracker – another two hours of enjoyable classic comedy. ‘Allo ‘Allo! started off the fun at 11.30am, then The Two Ronnies at 12.05pm and Dad’s Army at 12.55pm. All good fun, but once more, had they nothing newer to put on? Well, they did have Top of the Pops, this year presented by Mark Goodier and Anthea Turner. A difference this time was interspersing the clips with archive footage of past Christmas hits, predating the mid-’90s nostalgia boom by some time. It’s hard to think of a time when seeing old clips of Slade or Wizzard perform had some sort of fascination, but at this point they did. The BBC seemed to be walking backwards this Christmas.

The festive Pops found itself at 1.30pm this year, and the reason for all the programmes being shunted forward was to allow the festive EastEnders to go out at 2.30pm, way out of prime time. Even though the series attracted bumper ratings in 1986, it was not seen as the main point of the day for some time. It was as if they had lots more programmes to fill the slot, and still at this time, if Christmas Day fell on a day where the soap wasn’t usually on, it wasn’t on. So despite the Radio Times highlighting previous Christmas cliffhangers, it’s not hard to imagine most of the regular fans missing it.

Over on ITV we started the day, as ever, in the company of TV-am and their own curious selection of entertainment. As the endless diet of Batman and Flipper during the long strike in the late ’80s proved, there seemed to be little quality control exercised over the channel’s bought-in programming, so at 6am, Cartoon Carnival featured such old favourites as The Herbsand Portland Bill getting further outings. At 7am Mike Brosnan hosted the kids’ game show Top Banana, but never let it be said that TV-am shirked their public service commitments, as they found a whole three minutes at 7.57am for a Thought for Christmas Day. They did, however, manage to entice the day’s number one, Cliff Richard, into Eggcup Towers for an hour of entertainment from 8am, where he’d “sing, tell the Christmas story, show clips from his latest tour and introduce the Choirboy of the Year”. One suspects any kids who had tuned in for Top Banana would switch to Bugs Bunny instantly, so who knows who was still around at 9am when they abruptly switched back to cartoons, with Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The ITV network started their Christmas at 9.25am with some Cartoons at Christmas – basically, three Tweetie Pie shorts. Then whilst the public may have been pleased that there wasn’t another edition of The Other Side of Christmas, ITV still pointed out how socially aware they were, with updates on the outcome of the year’s two appeals, the Telethon and Find a Family. The regular “host of stars” appeared on both occasions, but the two programmes between them lasted over an hour, surely non-plussing the viewers. Then at 11am it was time to head for the All Saints Church in Fulham for the Family Communion.

With all the public service obligations out of the way, the rest of the day offered up rather more fun. At noon The Disney Club team headed off to Aspen in Colorado where they were joined by Dannii Minogue and the band Breathe to introduce some cartoons and festive features. Then at 1pm we stayed in America with Ronn Lucas. The ventriloquist was at that point a popular face on British TV (despite being almost totally forgotten now), introducing a series of variety shows, both under his own name and in The Hippodrome Show, for Thames, with his puppets Scorch the Dragon and Buffalo Billy. Alas, here he was back in the USA and in cabaret for a special first shown on American television, so no doubt full of cultural references that the kids at home couldn’t be expected to get. More home-grown entertainment was offered up at 2pm when Torvill and Dean hosted a “spectacular ice gala” from Nottingham Ice Rink, but at the end of the day, this was hardly Albert Square.

After five minutes with the Queen, BBC1 proved there was life in the old dog yet by managing to scoop the world television premiere of ET – it seems amazing now that it took eight years for the film to move from the cinema to the TV, but this was the case, and provided the BBC with a big hitter to kick off the main part of Christmas Day. Opposite this, ITV’s screening ofMoonraker seems an effort in damage limitation, rather than an attempt to keep up a tradition. Then it was family fare all night – BBC1 offered up a 75-minute Only Fools and Horses from 5.10pm to go with the turkey sandwiches, while on ITV Michael Barrymore was joined by a group of kids for a special junior edition of Strike It Lucky, no doubt hoping to give families a warm glow inside.

After this, Thames went into overdrive with Ken Dodd Live at the London Palladium. Fresh from his recent sell-out season, TV Times boasted, he returned with a special festive show. Doddy went right opposite Bruce Forsyth’s Christmas Generation Game, as the BBC provided some proper festive entertainment to fill up the gap left by Russ Abbot’s demotion to Boxing Day. The BBC seemed to be pinning their hopes on this series, as it had only returned to BBC1 in September after a long absence, but Brucie provided all the family fun you could possibly need on 25 December.

While now they’re the epitome of bad television, new, extended episodes of Bread and Birds of a Feather were eagerly awaited by a lot of people, and they were the big comedy specials on BBC1 - Bread this year moving to a much more user-friendly slot of 7.30pm. Birds of a Featherstarted a long stint on Christmas Day, and those who could stomach an hour and a quarter of bad accents and tasteless jokes would have had a great night, especially as Bread had offered up a very similar blend. However, after the news, a slightly weak film, Baby Boom starring Diane Keaton, at 9.45pm rather spoiled the evening. Better comedy could probably be found in the repeat episode of Yes Minister at 11.30pm – the “Party Games” episode was fast becoming a festive staple, as the previous year it had gone out on BBC2 on Boxing Day. As familiar was the late movie, The Quiller Memorandum, dragging out Christmas Day until 2.20am.

On the other side, Coronation Street was at the usual time of 7.30pm, then Beverly Hills Cop IIwas a half decent movie, if one that was hardly very appropriate for Christmas Day. Thankfully the film buyers had taken the opportunity to cut as much out as possible. It was only an extended episode of the abysmal French Fields in the unlikely slot of 10pm that drags down their schedule, and it’s hard to decide what the most unnerving fact is – that it was considered good enough for Christmas Day, or that another series went out in 1991 (the last, thankfully, although at the same time as the final series of Never the Twain). Even more boringly, the late film at 11pm was the ancient What’s Up Doc with Barbara Striesand.

The minority channels stuck to their usual patterns – BBC2 started the day with the moviesSummer Holiday (with Mickey Rooney) and Watership Down at 9.30am, although whether they’d want to scare a nation of toddlers switching over from Bugs Bunny is debatable. Then there was an odd mix of obscurities, ranging from an episode of long-forgotten US “dramady”The Famous Teddy Z, to the nature film Drift the Mute Swan, to Henry Moore and Landscape, billed as “a study of the relationship between sculpture and nature”. BBC2 headed towards the more mature end of the audience later in the day, paying tribute to Joyce Grenfell, broadcasting the opera The Cunning Little Vixen, and premiering the French film Jean De Florette. Seemingly out of place at 10.20pm was an Amnesty International Benefit Concert, with acts such as Peter Gabriel, Sinead O’Connor and, er, New Kids on the Block. Hitchcock’s Notorious was the late movie at 11.30pm.

Channel 4 offered an almost identical line-up, though at different times – for movie classics they started a WC Fields season and, of course, scheduled The Snowman at 6pm. From the US we saw a special edition of A Different World, the Cosby spin-off. They paid tribute to Max Wall, with an unusal film in which the comedian met a group of art students and they produced artwork based on what they had learnt about his life. There was the predictable “what’s the point?” programme, Talking Turkey, where Barry Took was in the chair while Warren Mitchell and Nina Myskow “laid into the festive season, with contributions from John Noakes and Frank Sidebottom”, amongst others. In the evening the second part of a series profiling “charismatic clergymen”, Carmen on Ice, and music from Nigel Kennedy, plus, at 11.15pm, a terribly tedious-sounding hour where “pastor and television producer Ian Mackenzie connects the Christmas story with moments in his own life”. The channel did broadcast, though, the two most appealing programmes from a 2000 perspective - The Coronation Street Birthday Lecture, in which Roy Hattersley (yeah, alright) talked about what made the series so great, and showed some archive clips, and best of all, at 5.55pm, The Further Adventures of Billy the Fish.

Only Fools and Horses gained the highest audience of the day, and despite the BBC bagging the most viewers, there was enough in the ITV schedule to please the family audience. Alright, looking back, there’s much to scoff at – the weak sitcoms (on both channels), the social action. But ITV’s performance here was stronger than in most of the other years of the decade, as we shall see.

“Continued after the Queen.”

If a viewer had been out of the country for a whole year, a look at the Christmas Day schedules would usually illustrate what had been happening in TV over the past 12 months – the hits of the year receive special editions and the big stars of the moment make appearances. In 1991 there was another pointer to the year’s events – some ITV companies had lost their franchise in October, and the parts of the ITV schedule that relied on these companies looked pretty hopeless. The three and a half hours that made up TV-am that Christmas morning were possibly the worst ever to go out under the banner, an entirely bought-in schedule of cartoon repeats, from the tolerable - The Chipmunks, Mr Men – to the tedious - Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible – to the absolutely dire – of all things, The Osmonds filling up nearly an hour from 8.30am.

From such a dreadful start, ITV brightened up a little, starting with the Morning Service live from Bristol Cathedral, followed by a Bugs Bunny short. Then there was cartoon fun, with another outing for The BFG, first shown on this day in 1989, and the first Thames production of the day. This was to be their last full Christmas Day – the following year 25 December fell on a Friday and thus LWT took over in mid-afternoon. The children’s entertainment continued with a Christmas episode of the drama Children’s Ward at 12.15pm, which seems a rather late slot for a series with a young audience, and it had not broken through into the mainstream like Grange Hill or Byker Grove. Then at 12.45pm, a new animation, Brown Bear’s Wedding led into a Disney classic, Pinocchio – a film that had amazingly only premiered the year before.

Meanwhile the BBC maintained a model of consistency - Children’s BBC kicked off the day at 6.55am, with Playdays (a different episode, thankfully), Pingu and the film Yogi’s First Christmas. Then at 10am we headed up to St Philip’s Church in Edinburgh for the service, this year called A Christmas Gift, and then Noel was in charge at 10.45am with the usualChristmas Presents show. This year he even managed to rope the Prime Minister in to oversee a reunion. Christmas Day TV is unique, perhaps, in the way that such prestigious programming is happily flung out in mid-morning, a slot, certainly at this point, given over the rest of the year to repeats of Going for Gold and the like.

The Christmas Comedy Cracker was opened again at 11.45am, this time offering up festive installments of Hi-De-Hi!, The Two Ronnies and Dad’s Army. Then at 2pm it was time for Top of the Pops, this year bearing the rather pointless sub-title “Christmas 1991″, just in case the viewer thought it might refer to another year. The usual format was in place, but we’d now entered some dark days for Pops – Mark Franklin, Tony Dortie and Claudia Simon were presenting, and we could spend our Christmas Day cringing at Dannii Minogue failing to hit the high notes while singing live.

One thing missing from the BBC1 schedule was EastEnders. As it was a Wednesday, the soap went out on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, but not Christmas Day – a world away from its dominance in the latter half of the decade (much like most soaps, as Emmerdale hardly got a look-in over Christmas at this point, not even allowed on Boxing Day). However, Coronation Street did go out on 25 December in 1991, and it was this that was the major talking point of an otherwise uninspiring afternoon and early evening schedule. Two episodes were scheduled, one in the usual 7.30pm slot, and the other at 2.50pm. According to press reports at the time, ITV wanted to get a large audience for the Queen’s Speech, so 10 minutes into the episode, Alf Roberts sat down, turned on the television, and watched Her Majesty with us, returning to the episode at 3.05pm. An interesting publicity stunt, maybe, but it’s questionable how many stuck around for For Your Eyes Only at 3.35pm.

Meanwhile, the BBC fought back with two episodes of Only Fools and Horses, following the Trotters on holiday to Miami. The scene-setting was carried out in a normal 50 minute episode the previous evening, and the 90 minute edition following their exploits went out at 3.10pm on Christmas afternoon. Oddly, though, some three million fewer people tuned in than had done for the Christmas Eve showing, perhaps because of the effect of Coronation Street on the other side, maybe because the episode was a bit below par, or possibly, 3.10pm is not a time on Christmas Day when people are ready to sit down and concentrate on a programme such asOnly Fools. It’s instructive that this was the last year when big entertainment specials went out in mid-afternoon, and the BBC then concentrated on films and programmes like Auntie’s Bloomers and Noel’s Christmas Presents that viewers could dip in and out of. The Generation Game also had an early start, at 4.40pm, though it did perhaps let the very young see it.

This was followed by the film Batman at 6pm – exciting enough, perhaps, but maybe not worth the peak slot of the year where you may expect to see home grown entertainment. Sadly, these were pretty dog days for comedy, with only Birds of a Feather (an episode set in Majorca) and Keeping Up Appearances being deemed worthy of a special on Christmas Day. Then we had another film, and Eddie Murphy seemed to be on his way to becoming as much a part of Christmas as Santa, as he starred in Coming to America at 9.30pm. There was the usual dose of old comedy round midnight, but this time “old” meant just under a year, as we had a repeat of the previous Christmas’ In Sickness and in Health. In 1989, this series had gone out on Christmas Day, but the whole concept was running out of steam as the 1990 special – the one we were seeing – was relegated to 10pm on Sunday 30 December. The Likely Lads followed at 11.55pm, but this was the slightly below-par feature film version.

Meanwhile ITV had a demoralised Thames supplying the programming. This Is Your Lifereceived a Christmas Day placing, at 5.55pm, and then at 6.30pm, the mediocre sitcomWatching was the rather unusual choice to fill the primest of prime slots. Early reports suggested that The Darling Buds of May, ITV’s big success of the year, would get pride of place on Christmas Day, but in the event, it was moved forward to Sunday 22 December. This was perhaps less to do with the quality of the programme, or any fears that ITV had about it’s prospects, but more to do with the fact that on 22 December, there were still two shopping days to go until the Big Day, and so advertisements could still have an effect. On Christmas Day, the viewer would have already bought their Christmas presents, so there was less need for the advertiser to get a large audience. It was also this reasoning that saw ITV show Big, one of the biggest film premieres of the year, early in December rather than at Christmas.

After the second episode of Corrie, though, everything went rather odd. Granada offered up the premiere of Crocodile Dundee 2 at 8pm, and after a brief news bulletin, a festive Minder went out at 10.15pm. However, in London, Thames broadcast Minder at 8pm, and then wrapped around the news was a second showing of Top Gun. Other regions followed one of the two patterns, so while viewers in Birmingham got to see Paul Hogan, viewers in Leeds had to wait. It’s hard to understand why this happened, unless Thames were upset at Minder’s late scheduling. Even so, this doesn’t explain the non-appearance of a film premiere. Sadly, no regions opted out of Police Academy 4 premiering at 11.15pm, nor Police Academy 5premiering just three days later.

BBC2 offered up a mish-mash of a schedule throughout the day, as if to offer something for everyone. So White Christmas was screened at 8am, then we had the premiere of an Asterixfilm before an Ingrid Bergman film in French. Then Small Objects of Desire, looking at false teeth, was followed by a 90 minute piano recital. This took us up to 3.10pm where BBC2 made an occasion of it and screened The Wizard of Oz. This was immediately followed by The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de Bargos. Things evened out after 5pm though, with a series of programmes that were lengthy, upmarket and mostly in a foreign language. We went to Broadway first for an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, then after the Queen at 8pm we hardly heard any English, apart from the continuity, until Weatherview at 12.30am. A Mozart opera in Italian was followed by two French films from the 1930s.

Channel 4 offered up a slightly more populist, but just as badly organised, schedule. In the morning Linda Rondstadt and Los Lobos spent 90 minutes retelling the traditional Mexican Christmas story. We got a bit more familiar with episodes of The Wonder Years and The Cosby Show, before an afternoon of idiosyncratic amusements including Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, a “plasticine-animated musical set in post-perestroika Russia”. In the evening we got The Snowman at 5.25pm before Jonathan Ross presented some highlights from his ill-advised Wogan-wannabe chat show, Tonight. Then it was Brookside, rather earlier than usual at 6.30pm, followed by a documentary tracing Status Quo’s attempt to play four gigs in 12 hours. From one extreme to the other, this was followed at 8pm by highlights of Pavarotti in Hyde Park, then at 10pm an “extraordinary musical” directed by Malcolm McLaren, The Ghosts of Oxford Street, which featured The Happy Mondays and the Rebel MC. Exactly who would watch all three of those music programmes? After that; Archaos performing their “innovative circus without animals”, though it’s hard to tell how innovative they were when Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil also performed a “circus without animals” earlier that afternoon.

This was the first we’ll see of ITV almost “opting out” of the festive period – while there’d been bad programmes on the year before, at least they were making the effort. Only Fools and Horses remained the most popular programme of Christmas ‘91, with 14.9 million, but this was down on the previous year’s total. Would pre-Christmas now become the battleground?

“At Christmas, Freddie is disillusioned.”

The schedules for the early part of Christmas Day by this point had settled into a predictable pattern. Children’s BBC would kick off the day, this year at 6.50am, and include Tony Robinson’s retelling of the Christmas story and Edd the Duck’s pantomime (Edd the Duck’s Megastar Trek). Then we’d get a service – this year, Follow That Star, from Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in London. But this time, the usual fare of Edmonds/comedy repeats/Top of the Pops was broken up somewhat. At 10.30am, Anne Diamond and Nick Owen replaced Noel, who was seemingly concentrating on hisHouse Party. Their programme seemed to hark back to the old Telecom Tower shows, being broadcast live and including reunions and a phone-in “sing-a-long”. But much like their daily show was no match for Richard and Judy, on Christmas Day they were no match for Noel, and by the following year they had already become less popular at the Corporation and weren’t allowed anywhere near The Big Day. Another notorious programme followed at 11.30am, Eldorado, by virtue of the fact that Friday wasEldorado day. After the disastrous launch in July, the series was practically treading water until it was taken off, and this was about as good a slot as it could have got – by this point, the episodes on Bank Holidays were already relegated to mid-afternoon.

At least we still had the Christmas Comedy Cracker at noon, but there were just two programmes this year, Hi-De-Hi! and The Two Ronnies, to make way at 1.35pm forNeighbours. Famously, episodes were shown 18 months after Australian transmission, so it was midsummer in Ramsey Street. However, they seemingly had a spare 25 minutes this year, although there was no early evening repeat, and it’s hard to imagine who could remember to make a date with the series on this day. Top of the Pops followed at 2pm, helpfully reminding us it was “Christmas 1992″, and with the gruesome twosome of Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin in charge.

Alright, it’s hardly a great schedule, but at least the regular aspects were present and correct. ITV never had such a strict pattern, but this year devoted a large amount of the pre-Queen period to similar repeats - Get Some In and Nearest and Dearest received unexpected revivals (the former being a landmark as the last programme made by Thames to go out on ITV on Christmas Day). This half-heartedness seemed to filter down to the rest of the day – TV-am, with less than a week to go before they closed down, continued in much the same way as the previous year (with the same cartoons in some places), but at least attempted to make a day of it with original programming - Top Banana and a Timmy Mallett special as well as the return of the Thought for Christmas Day. Then the ITV network took over with the Morning Worship – from St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh – then the elderly Disney film Candleshoe, before the mass of sitcom repeats.

Then, following the Queen at 3.05pm was the film Supergirl – receiving its umpteenth showing on ITV (alas, no Bond this year, although the other family fave Flash Gordon got an outing on 28 December). Going into the evening, Coronation Street was cast adrift slightly at 5.20pm, followed by festive episodes of Blind Date and Barrymore. This was all done by 7.50pm though, so when the really big audiences turned on for the main part of the evening, they were treated to the mediocre films Three Fugitives and the undistinguished Youngblood – a forgotten ice hockey drama with Rob Lowe.

After a shaky start, things improved on the BBC after the Queen had done her stuff. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was a useful film for mid-afternoon, followed again by theGeneration Game and EastEnders, this time at a more realistic 6.25pm. Then there was a triple bill of hour-long comedies, with Only Fools and Horses at 6.55pm, then Birds of a Feather- yet again – and a new Victoria Wood show at 9pm – in an attempt to generate a big budget special in the vein of Morecambe and Wise, perhaps. Another decent film, Shirley Valentine, followed at 9.50pm, and this all added up to a comfortable win for BBC1, with the Trotters victorious again, and this time with 20 million viewers.

Of course, BBC2 and Channel 4 went their own merry way – BBC2 had a slightly more mainstream schedule than before, though, including the film Top Hat, a profile of Nigel Mansell, a repeat outing for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert first shown in April, and Reindeer Rock, a wry look at the history of the Christmas single. The main events were slightly more accessible too, with the premiere of Dangerous Liaisons and the ballet of Romeo and Juliet, and they found space at 11pm for a festive Likely Lads followed by the Hitchcock classic Rear Window.

Channel 4 started the day with The Big Breakfast – the series having begun in September of that year. For the rest of the day, we saw a tribute to Charlie Chaplin, a Christmas concert from Carnegie Hall and, of course, The Snowman at 6.25pm. The evening offered up Brookside flung rather artlessly between a documentary about Malcolm Muggeridge and Derek Jacobi in the lengthy period drama The Fool. There was an all-star tribute to Bob Dylan at 11.15pm from Madison Square Gardens to end the day, though this was probably less fun than Radio 1’s broadcast of the same event where DJ Neale James expressed regret that Dylan wasn’t alive to see it.

The BBC’s victory, though, was not as comfortable as it would be next year, when ITV seemed to lose interest in the idea of Christmas Day programming altogether.

“An ITV/Diet Coke Movie Premiere.”

The fact that advertisers were not really interested after the pre-Christmas spending spree tailed off began to tell this year. ITV went hell for leather in the autumn, leaving virtually nothing left for the festive season itself. There wasn’t even a Coronation Street. The 1993 ITV Christmas Day schedule is not just the worst Christmas schedule, but maybe the worst schedule ever, full stop.

Things started reasonably well with GMTV, and their first Christmas Day, which consisted of seasonal episodes of their regular series Rise and Shine and Saturday Disney. At 9.25am we saw the traditional worship (from St Peter’s Cathedral in Bradford), but then the third channel just stuck to its usual Saturday schedule - What’s Up Doc was at 10.40am, followed by The Chart Show at the usual time of 11.30am and at 12.30am, unbelievably, Movies, Games and Videos, the epitome of all cheap filler television. This was followed at 1pm by two musty oldBugs Bunny TV specials, and it wasn’t until 2pm that we saw some vaguely festive programming, as Phillip Schofield interviewed the Walton sextuplets.

Following the Queen was the bank holiday staple, The Never Ending Story (Bond was back inThe Man with the Golden Gun – seemingly Bond’s most persistent film at Christmas time – at 4pm on Monday 27 and, better still, the premiere of Licence to Kill on Monday 3 January), and then at 5pm, the only new, British programme in peak time was Beadle’s Daredevils, wherein Jeremy introduced a series of death-defying stunts. Then from 6pm til near midnight it was just back-to-back movies - National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Field of Dreams and DOA, with just a brief news bulletin at 7.50pm offering respite. The problem was not just that the schedule on the biggest TV night of the year was full of films, but also that they were mediocre films. It’s perhaps only Field of Dreams that anyone was really desperate to see, and all would really not seem out of place on a bog-standard Saturday night schedule. Then at 11.40pm we saw aSouth Bank Show special on Irving Berlin, a world away from the big budget entertainment of the past.

The BBC, therefore, had a great day. CBBC kicked off earlier still this year, at 6.20am, and as it was a Saturday, there was a festive Live & Kicking at 8.30am, with Andi Peters, Emma Forbes and the legendary John Barrowman. Then at 10am, we saw a return visit to that old Christmas Day staple, the circus tent, although thankfully just for a carol concert introduced by Roger Royle. Anne and Nick were gone, and so Albert Finney’s version of Scrooge was offered up to fill the mid-morning slot from 10.45am. Then at 12.35pm we opened up the Christmas Comedy Cracker with two all-time greats, The Two Ronnies and Dad’s Army. Top of the Pops(“Christmas 1993″, of course) was still pretty bad though, with Franklin and Dortie in charge again.

Noel’s Christmas Presents returned and was moved to 3.10pm – seemingly Noel was now a big star after his success with House Party, and this was inoffensive enough. Back to the Future IIIwas the family film in the afternoon, then it was hit after hit well into the evening – a 90 minuteOnly Fools and Horses at 6pm, billed as possibly the last ever, then EastEnders had a free run at the 7.30pm slot that Coronation Street decided not to contest. Birds of a Feather was still there at 8pm, then at 9.10pm was the big film, Ghost – a more worthy Christmas Day movie than any of ITV’s offerings. The BBC even broadcast the 1977 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show at 11.10pm, as if to emphasise that Christmas Day meant BBC1.

Indeed, so popular was this schedule, that at various points of the evening, both BBC2 and Channel 4 had no viewers at all – or at least, a viewing figure of only a few thousand, rounded down to zero. That night, very few people were watching BBC2 when they were broadcasting Alan Plater’s dramatisation of Glyn Thomas’s autobiography in Selected Exits – a special edition of Bookmark, while on Channel 4 John Geilgud starred in a low-budget, one act play directed by Kenneth Branagh, no doubt delighting the handful who bothered to tune in – they were probably also happy with the three hour Italian opera broadcast afterwards. Still, at least they had The Snowman, at 4.25pm, and BBC2 screened Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Day Outas well.

In 1993, BBC1 seemed to have hits to spare, and Boxing Day was perhaps even more successful than the day before – extended episodes of Keeping Up Appearances and Casualty, followed by the excellent One Foot in the Algarve at 9pm crushed ITV’s schedule of an oldPoirot repeat, a Dame Edna special recorded for American television some two years previously and a Hale and Pace compilation. Indeed, One Foot in the Algarve got the highest audience of the whole festive period, but on Christmas Day, Del Boy et al took the spoils with 19.6 million viewers. Well, given the choice between that and Chevy Chase…

“An unashamedly sentimental festive offering.”

ITV’s failure in 1993 did not go unnoticed by the press or the ITC. They may have been correct to not try very hard on Christmas Day, but a failure to gain viewers on possibly the biggest night of the year doesn’t look good. Network Centre were told to try harder the following year, and it was this decision that made Christmas Night perhaps more competitive than at any time in the past decade or so. It wasn’t hard to imagine in 1993 that ITV would “opt out” of Christmas Day altogether for the foreseeable future, but that schedule was so badly received that they had to start trying again.

So this year ITV tried harder than for many years – though seemingly nobody had told GMTV who stuck with their usual tedious Sunday line-up. Thus at 6am we had a round up of the week’s news signed for the deaf, then at 7am the odious Alistair Stewart presented “highlights” of his Sunday Programme, including the long-awaited second chance to see “Neil and Glenys Kinnock present their first TV show”. At 8am they did finally realise the vast majority of the audience was under 10, and Richard Orford and Phillippa Forrester (having left CBBC that summer) were dispatched to Disney World’s Christmas parade for a Disney Adventuresspecial.

ITV started their day with a 50 minute Scooby Doo special, then the normal weekly instalment of the disability magazine Link. As it was a Sunday, contractual obligation was brought into play next and the usual two-hour marathon Sunday Matters, with Sue Cook examining “current events from a religious and ethical perspective”. Merry Christmas to you too, Sue. At least the programme included the morning worship, from St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham. Things livened up at 12.40pm with a new animation, Mole’s Christmas, based on The Wind in the Willows (always a fave with animators, as we’ll see) and voiced by Richard Briers among others. To take us up to the Queen, though, was an unknown Disney TV movie called The Christmas Star with Ed Asner. Still, things could only get better …

On the other side, Zoë Ball and CBBC kicked off the day at 6.45am with the usual mix of festive cartoons – some enjoying their umpteenth screening, the main event being Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, an hour-long cartoon narrated by Fred Astaire, surely boring the child audience. This took us up to 10am, and while in 1988, the last time Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, Songs of Praise was given a peak time slot, this year it was relegated to mid-morning – they pushed the boat out, though, with Pam Rhodes introducing the programme live from All Hallows Church in London, a link-up with 1000 carol singers in Blackpool and Marti Caine visiting Lapland. Oh, and Don Maclean held a house party.

There was film fun at 11am with the premiere of Jetsons: The Movie, a fairly charmless piece drenched with many songs by Tiffany, but at least we had a Tom & Jerry short at 12.20pm to look forward to. Then there must be something about the preserving effect of a Sunday, as another unfestive programme seemingly couldn’t be moved from its regular slot – theEastEnders omnibus went out at 12.30pm. Later on, too, we saw a repeat of the previous night’s Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush on Channel 4. At least we didn’t get Country File. Top of the Pops followed at 2pm, but with a new producer in charge we could at last look forward to some unashamed miming and guest presenters Take That arsing around in silly hats. Also, as it was a Sunday, the programme had the honour of announcing the Christmas number one – presumably recording several announcements and showing the correct one, as opposed to dragging Gary Barlow away from his dinner.

ITV started to improve during the day, but 3.10pm saw the regions show either The Empire Strikes Back or Mary Poppins (interestingly, exactly 10 years after BBC1 had shown it), which was not quite what viewers may have expected for such a strong slot, nor was the Bugs Bunny TV Special that filled a 20 minute gap afterwards. Bond got a Boxing Day placing this year, although it was only the “unofficial” Never Say Never Again at 4.20pm. But from 6.05pm the schedule was much better – starting off with Sleeping Beauty, the Disney film which was made in 1959, but only then receiving its TV premiere. Disney seem very sparing with their films, though, and many of their most popular films have never been shown on terrestrial television, so this was a bit of a scoop. Coronation Street followed, as it should, at 7.30pm, then Blind Dateand Heartbeat were popular, if predictable, choices. These were followed by a programme from the In the Wild series, where Robin Williams was taken to meet dolphins, then Kiri Te Kanawa and guests performing carols in Coventry Cathedral.

Yet BBC1 remained the victors with another strong schedule. Things livened up after the Queen with Noel Edmonds followed by a special Animal Hospital at 4.10pm – following on from its successful week-long series the previous August. The news was followed by The Wrong Trousers – not the first showing, though, that had been on BBC2 the previous Boxing Day, but it had already been established as a favourite thanks to many screenings, and no doubt gave BBC1 a large family audience. Indeed, the premiere of A Close Shave on Christmas Eve 1995 would generate an audience of over 10 million on BBC2. Keeping Up Appearances followed at 5.25pm, then at 6.15pm was EastEnders – seemingly earlier than usual so the BBC could show the big film, Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves at 6.45pm, useful scheduling for families with slightly older children. Then after the watershed it was comedy, with One Foot in the Gravepromoted to Christmas Day (Birds of a Feather at last shifting to Christmas Eve) and then another Victoria Wood special at 9.40pm. The schedule seems to finish rather early, though, with Morecambe and Wise, this year from 1971, at 10.40pm and Eddie Murphy (him again!) in the repeated movie Trading Places at 11.30pm. But Victor Meldrew was the victor, even againstHeartbeat, with 15.1 million viewers.

BBC2 this year seemed to be aimed specifically at the elderly, starting off the day with the MGM compilation film That’s Entertainment at 8am, then Rex Harrison as Doctor Dolittle before a double bill of documentaries marking World War II and that year’s D-Day commemorations. In the afternoon there was a repeat outing for the drama Hard Times, a production made for schools TV, but with a cast list including Alan Bates, Bob Peck and Richard E Grant, it deserved an outing on adult TV. In the evening there were repeat showings for the Carpenters in concert and the best of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, and a celebrity edition of the tedious panel game Today’s the Day. The channel livened up in the evening, though, with an opera (this year Aida) and Demi Moore in The Butcher’s Wife.

Channel 4’s programmes were aimed at a younger audience, but one suspects that anyone under the age of 60 may have found BBC2’s schedule a bit old-fashioned. A festive Big Breakfast at 9.25am and Take That in Concert got it off to a youthful start, followed by a vibrant gospel concert. Things went a bit off then with a double bill of Danny Kaye movies, awkwardly sandwiching The Alternative Christmas Message from the Rev Jesse Jackson. In the evening, that Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush repeat came between a Zig and Zag Special (the excellentEntertainment Cops) and The Snowman, this year at the later slot of 7pm. Then opposite the opera on BBC2 was … an opera! But someone noticed and rescheduled Turandot to an earlier slot. They still showed the Queen’s Speech at 9.40pm though, the same time as BBC2. In the evening we had music from Harry Connick Jr followed by The Woman in Black, Nigel Kneale’s adaptation of a ghost story by Susan Hill, first shown on ITV on Christmas Eve 1989. Yes, ITV – the same channel that in the same slot on Christmas Eve 1994 offered us another showing of Goldie Hawn’s Wildcats.

“The first of tonight’s two offerings from Albert Square.”

1995 was when things got dirty, as both channels battled it out over the soaps.Coronation Street and EastEnders were now being thought of as the most important aspects of the festive season – there was normally a big storyline reaching a crescendo around the festive period where lots more people were watching television. In 1995, ITV planned to show an hour-long Coronation Street, back in the days when this was an unusual occurrence, and scheduled it for 7pm. However, according to reports at the time, Alan Yentob decided to schedule two episodes of EastEnders that evening, one of which was to be at the same time. ITV cried foul – seemingly forgetting that 18 months ago they scheduled an hour-long Coronation Street to go up against the second Monday EastEnders – and it was thought that both soaps would go out at the same time.

In the event, they didn’t - Coronation Street began at 6.30pm, then the first episode ofEastEnders was transmitted at 7.30pm. ITV seemed to get the worst out of the compromise, though, as it meant that viewers switched over to BBC1 at 7.30pm, hung around until the second episode at 8.30pm, then stayed there the rest of the evening.

After many years of varying start times, BBC1 finally begun at 6am sharp, so CBBC was allowed a whole four hours of programming – much of it, of course, was the same old rubbish, but we did get a special edition of John Barrowman’s quiz, The Movie Game, with the usual set of school-age contestants replaced by celebrities – or at least, “celebrities” in CBBC terms like Toby Anstis and Mark Curry. Then at 10am, regular as clockwork, we had religion, and the accurately-titled On Christmas Day in the Morning with Don Maclean and his guests – such TV religion regulars as Harry Secombe and Ruth Madoc – at Lord Montagu’s Beaulieu estate. The family film in the morning was becoming a staple, but it was a real disappointment this year, as the Never Ending Story switched channels and appeared for the second time in three Christmases. Then at 12.25pm, it was Neighbours again – it seemed to be totally random if the series got a placing on the 25th, but this year it did so again, but once more there was no teatime repeat.

Then Top of the Pops, a victim of declining viewing figures, went out at 12.55pm, perhaps the earliest it had ever been – still the usual hour of the year’s pop hits, mind, and an excellent choice of presenters in Björk and Jack Dee. This great new double act led into the classic comedy, back after a year’s break and now in a new pre-Queen slot. Just the one classic, this time – a repeat of the 1992 Christmas Only Fools and Horses, to make up for the series’ non-appearance this year.

As ever, ITV started badly, although GMTV had made up for their high-faluting (in Christmas terms) schedule the previous Christmas by showing a morning of programmes introduced by Mr Motivator and a Power Ranger. Joining the Mighty Morphin’ ones were faves like Barney andGalaxy High, probably attracting more kids than McGee and Me and The Flintstones on BBC1. Then at 9.25am the Christmas worship came from Arundel Cathedral, but this then made way for a terrible morning – a mediocre animation, The Little Train That Could, followed by an oldBugs Bunny TV Special, then the ancient film Herbie Rides Again, meaning that for 45 minutes around noon all four channels were showing repeats. In the afternoon, Granada scheduled a second Bugs Bunny Special, while other regions went for the even less festive option of repeating the previous Friday’s Coronation Street. There was at least some fairly smart scheduling at 1.55pm when viewers having just seen Take That on the Christmas Top of the Pops could enjoy them in concert at Earls Court for another hour.

Thereafter, there was another victory for the BBC, although the schedules seemed more evenly matched than ever. After the Queen ITV went as usual for another crappy old film, this timeGhostbusters II, at the same time BBC1 had Noel Edmonds. At 4.30pm BBC1 put out its strongish film premiere, Spielberg’s Hook, while ITV, commendably, tried to grab a family audience with a new (and British) feature-length animated version of The Wind in the Willows(yes, another one), voiced by an all-star cast. This was probably better than what the BBC were offering, but how many kids would prefer it to some big budget Hollywood effects and Robin Williams arsing about? Probably very few, and so America won out. This can be seen from the fact that the sequel to the Willows, with the same highbrow cast and quality production values, went out the following year on Boxing Day afternoon, not such an exposed slot, where it could quietly charm family viewers – it couldn’t cope on Christmas Day.

Coronation Street followed at 6.30pm on ITV, while BBC1 found a useful opponent in Auntie’s Bloomers. This series, while of course obviously derivative of an ITV concept, was a popular hit for the Corporation, and almost always gained massive audiences – the previous programme, on New Year’s Day 1995, gaining the biggest audience of that week. It lost out to Coronation Street, but gained credible ratings nonetheless, and in any case served as a useful bridge into the mid-evening, able to appeal to adults and children. Besides, it cost bugger all to make anyway. Then the BBC delivered its first half hour of EastEnders while ITV presented a special programme devoted to Robson and Jerome – perhaps the channel’s “crown jewels” at the time, given that they’d had a massive media profile, and two enormous hit singles, while appearing in an ITV drama. Yet this special was not, as viewers may have expected, a big-budget entertainment special, but a bog-standard pop profile, where the boys were interviewed about “their amazing year”, interspersed with clips that most of their fans had seen several times before.

8pm saw a head-to-head battle between the BBC’s Keeping Up Appearances and ITV’s big film,Sister Act. That year, Keeping Up Appearances had achieved what many thought was impossible for the BBC – it got viewers to watch on a Sunday, opposite ITV’s massive triple bill of Heartbeat, You’ve Been Framed and London’s Burning. Also, it had the gift of being sandwiched between the two episodes of EastEnders, so some 15 million viewers sat through it while waiting for more from Albert Square. Then at 9pm, it was hardly worth any of those turning over to ITV because Sister Act was already halfway through, and besides, BBC1 had an hour-long One Foot in the Grave, publicised with a gravestone of a “Victor Meldrew” which caused many people to presume it was to be the last one ever. It wasn’t, but it was still a fantastic hour of comedy. Then at 10pm, how many viewers were tempted over to watch a special edition of ITV’s whimsical cricketing comedy Outside Edge, followed by Scenes from a Mall with Bette Midler and Woody Allen, when BBC1 were about to show Demi Moore and Robert Redford in Indecent Proposal? Not very many. The BBC won again, with 17.8 million the high water mark, though this was for One Foot in the Grave – the soaps were not the big occasion. This year, amazingly, there was Bond on both channels – ITV, 007’s normal home, had The Spy Who Loved Me in mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve, but in the previous 12 months BBC1 had managed to grab the rights to Never Say Never Again, and they scheduled it at 6pm on New Year’s Day. Then in 1999 it appeared on peak-time ITV again.

BBC2 went down the aged route again, with the early morning films being a black and white version of A Christmas Carol from the 1930s, then 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (that said, it had been on early evening BBC1 18 months before). Documentaries on the National Trust, The Sound of Music and the 50th anniversary of VE Day led up to 3pm when we had the obligatory opera - La Bohème, although this was a modern version by the film director Baz Lurhman. Then it was another tedious edition of Today’s the Day, before Julie Andrews introduced an American celebration of Oscar Hammerstein. At 7pm there was a repeat showing of the Screen Twoadaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, one of the acclaimed programmes of the year since it’s first showing in April, and this screening had the advantage of following on from the Pride and Prejudice-mania earlier that Autumn. At 9pm we saw Alan Bennett make an appearance, starting off a prestige series going behind the scenes of Westminster Abbey – the other episodes going out the following two evenings. Then Farewell My Concubine was premiered, as part of 1995’s “BBC 100″ season, screening the 100 “most significant” films from the first century of cinema. Thus those who wanted to escape the soaps and sitcoms were probably tuned into this prestigious but slightly dull evening.

Channel 4 came up with the worst schedule of the day, with The Big Breakfast, now in an alarming decline, offering up two hours of badly researched, ill thought out “entertainment” from 8am. It was a set of repeats until lunchtime, then a special programme at 12.30pm visiting some Christian Raves – just right for Christmas lunch. At 3.15pm we saw a repeat of Heroes of Comedy – the 150 minute documentary which launched the popular series of appreciations, first shown in 1992. In a way, this was fun afternoon viewing, as you could relax to an array of classic comedy, which was more than could be said for Coping with Christmas which followed. This series, featuring the Central Junior Television Workshop, came from the makers of the classic ’80s kids series Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It, but here the budget was too small, the jokes too laboured and the kids too inexperienced to entertain. The Snowman followed at 6.30pm, then into the evening we saw Glenda Jackson in the film Turtle Diary, followed by a three hour drama on the life of Henry Purcell, with Michael Ball, Simon Callow and Letitia Dean in the cast list. This wasn’t as bad as Channel 4’s Welsh counterpart S4C, though, who scheduled a special Michael Jackson TV concert at 10pm, due to be recorded a week before and shown in the rest of the UK a few days earlier – it was cancelled at the last minute because Jacko was ill and S4C had a big hole to fill…

“Don is consumed by despair.”

After all their good attempts, ITV seemed to crumble again in 1996, with another pretty comprehensive BBC victory. ITV’s big idea this year was Christmas with the Royal Navy, where in short, 10 – 20 minute inserts throughout the day from 10.30am, Anthea Turner would broadcast live from HMS Belfast and talk via satellite to servicemen throughout the world. All very worthy, yes, but it seemed a flashback to the children’s hospital visits so beloved by Christmas Day TV some two decades before. It is, however, perhaps the only programme made by Westcountry TV to ever be broadcast in peak time.

This old fashioned air seemed to permeate the whole day on the third channel. GMTV kicked the day off with a 90 minute review of the year, then just one hour of kid’s stuff until the Rev Steve Chalke and – surprise! – Anthea Turner wished us A Merry Christmas. Then the network offered up the regular carol service (this year, from Leiston in Suffolk) before Ms Turner made her second appearance of the day, and her first on HMS Belfast.

After that, there was animation with Percy the Park Keeper, then a film out of the top drawer -Alice in Wonderland. After the news and Anthea, there was a film out of the bottom drawer – a mediocre TV movie called The Man Upstairs starring Katherine Hepburn and Ryan O’Neal. Then at 3.10pm, seemingly not learning from the previous year, was a two hour adaptation of E Nesbit’s The Treasure Seekers – the usual all-star cast in place, although perhaps few meant a great deal to the family audience, such as Peter Capaldi and Ian Richardson. After more Anthea, ITV served up the mediocre film Dennis, than just half an hour of Coronation Street at 7pm.

This was another of ITV’s big mistakes, as the main plot in this instalment was the attempted suicide of Don Brennan. A significant storyline, maybe, but they’d seriously misjudged what the family audience wanted to see on Christmas Day, and this was overtly grim. It didn’t help that the Street had just moved to a four-day-a-week pattern to a pretty frosty response, many people wondering if the series was running out of steam. Basically, 1996 was a bad year for Corrie, and it ended with 9.5 million – enough to get it to seventh place in the Christmas Day chart, but its lowest figure for many years.

Following this was another old-fashioned concept as Des O’Connor introduced his Christmas with the Stars. This wasn’t a revival of the legendary BBC Christmas offering, but basically an everyday episode of Des O’Connor Tonight, just extended a bit and with Christmas trees on the set. The guest list, including Julio Iglesias and Diana Ross, emphasised the old-school flavour, and while Des’ programme worked as a way to pass an idle hour on a Wednesday night, it was hardly what you’d look forward to on Christmas Day. Anthea made her last appearance straight after, then following a quick news was Heartbeat at 9pm – again, a programme unstoppable on its day, but not quite good enough for Christmas night. It was, however, unfortunate that it had to face the most popular programme of the day on BBC1. Rounding off a poorly chosen schedule was the film The Remains of the Day – a good movie, but it didn’t finish until 12.30am, long after most viewers had gone to bed, and perhaps not quite action-packed enough to inspire a large mainstream audience to watch.

The BBC therefore managed to broadcast eight of the top 10 programmes that day (Des and Corrie sparing ITV’s blushes, with Heartbeat failing to chart), although one of those was the Queen’s Speech. The rest make up a pretty impressive schedule, one which looks surprisingly strong even four years later. CBBC started the day off at 6am, then at 10.20am it was time for carols, this time presented by Diane-Louise Jordan from the Wintershall estate in Surrey and with guests including Enya and Christopher Timothy. At 11.20am, smartly scheduled opposite ITV’s classic family movie, was an even better classic family movie, The Wizard of Oz. At 1.05pm it was Top of the Pops, with the Spice Girls on hand to not just present but perform all three of their hits to date, along the way adding a welcome touch of anarchy to the show. The biggest low of the day followed, as the “classic comedy” this year was Keeping Up Appearances from 1994.

Noel Edmonds stayed at 3.10pm, then a new Brambly Hedge animation was an agreeable 25 minutes. Animal Hospital and Auntie’s Bloomers, from 4.50pm, both managed to top 10 million, amazing figures for that time of day. 6.30pm saw Jurassic Park, disproving the theory that film premieres could no longer get massive audiences, although happily for the BBC, two home grown programmes topped the dinosaurs’ figures - EastEnders at 8.30pm was followed by the jewel in the crown, the beginning of the Only Fools and Horses final trilogy. With 21 million viewers, it was a triumph, though a real once-only occasion (or thrice-only, if you want). The following year, Garry Bushell harangued the BBC, saying that “a Christmas without Del Boy is like a day without sun”, seemingly forgetting that there hadn’t been any episodes for three years previously, and it was made clear that there wouldn’t be anymore. The Vicar of Dibley followed and kept most of the audience, though at the surprisingly late time of 10pm. Then the Beeb were in the holiday mood, and pumped out classics till late into the night – the 1970Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show at 10.55pm, after the previous year’s excursion to Christmas Eve, followed by the film Revenge of the Pink Panther, then at 1.40am, rather than closing down, we had another movie – the feature length version of Please Sir!, 25 years after it had been part of ITV’s Christmas Day schedule. The channel finally called it a day at 3.25am, one of the latest ever.

BBC2 might have been going for a younger audience this year, if the repeat of The Simpsonsand a special edition of The Sunday Show (on a Wednesday) in mid-morning were any indication. But the rest was as old-fashioned as ever, with two Fred Astaire movies at dawn andCasablanca in mid-afternoon and between the two, a round up of the year in aviation plus a three-hour long documentary going behind the scenes at the American Ballet. In the evening we got the first heat of the Choir of the Year competition, yet another boring edition of Today’s the Day (though at least Bill Oddie and Tim Brook-Taylor guested), then the usual “culture” in the evening. Simon Callow continued his series re-enacting the public readings of Dickens, then there was the predictable triple bill of opera (Handel’s Ariodante), the dramatisation of an author’s life (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) and the prestigious film premiere (Glengarry Glen Ross). On the whole, then, a typical BBC2 schedule.

Channel 4’s schedule was again the worst of the day, though they did have the good sense to cut The Big Breakfast (during its “it’s going to be axed tomorrow” stage, with the abysmal duo of Sharron Davies and Rick Adams presenting) down to just one hour at 9am. Then there was a morning of reruns, including The Snowman at 12.55pm, the earliest it had ever been, and an oldHome to Roost special at 1.25pm, after the success of C4’s reruns of the ITV sitcom that year. At 3.15pm it was another opera, Faust, which lasted a whopping three and a half hours, but smartly finished exactly at the time BBC2’s opera began, allowing buffs nearly seven consecutive hours of entertainment. After that the evening was seemingly modelled on ITV’s 1993 schedule, containing almost back-to-back movies – the mediocre Peter Sellers vehicleBattle of the Sexes (kicking off a season), Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder and the premiere of the sci-fi thriller Roswell. Between them all was Brookside, which Channel 4 excellently scheduled – right opposite EastEnders. Smart thinking, guys.

Only Fools and Horses was so powerful that the by now traditional Christmas Day fare of One Foot in the Grave was shunted to Boxing Day, although this was hardly a relegation – it could either have gone on late on Christmas Day or in a peak 9pm slot on Boxing Day, and David Renwick could have very few complaints with the compromise, the programme getting even larger figures than it had achieved the previous year. Admittedly, though, it did find itself opposite a terrible TV movie on ITV, who were seemingly giving up hope – the BBC had two more episodes of Only Fools and Horses to go. The second part of the trilogy, on Friday 27, had 20 million, and the final part, on the Sunday, achieved an all-time record of over 24 million. It was opposite this that ITV showed the Bank Holiday Bond - The Living Daylights, probably the least successful programme at 8pm on Sunday ITV in decades.

“A day spent lying in front of the telly in a self-induced coma.”

ITV by this point had seemed to have hit upon a pattern on Christmas Day – mid-afternoon would be mediocre, there’d be a rally in the early evening, then later in the evening they’d put on some ill-judged or badly scheduled programmes and let BBC1 take all their viewers. You can see this happening in 1997. GMTV sorted themselves out with cartoons from 6am, then the Rev Steve Chalke made another visit at 8.30am with some “heartwarming stories” from the recent Get Up And Give appeal. Then, however, we had a change, as the Morning Worship had gone. Instead, Carol Smillie talked to some primary school kids about Christmas, which, at an hour’s length, was probably worse TV than a straightforward service. At least we had a reasonable film at 10.25am, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, then a fun animation, Father Christmas and the Missing Reindeer – notable as David Jason swapped channels to narrate (see, he was still here, Bushell!) The afternoon was pretty weak – the TV movie Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and then Play it for Real where three members of the London’s Burning cast joined real-life firefighters.

At least they sorted out 3.10pm – no old films or whimsical dramas this time, just family fun with the premiere of A Muppet Christmas Carol. Perhaps it was a bit too early, though, while viewers were having their dinner, as it failed to make it into the top 10, and neither did Spice Up Your Christmas at 4.45pm, an hour of highlights from the Spice Girls’ concert in Istanbul. While they were certainly the sensation of 1997, and number one on the day, they were around a lot that Christmas – they’d been on Top of the Pops a few hours before, and the previous evening they were on two channels at once, as they appeared in a Top of the Pops Special on BBC1 whilst Channel 5 (which started transmissions this year) went behind the scenes of their film, which was released on Boxing Day. (This was Channel 5’s most successful programme of the festive season, and while Broadcast magazine had warned them to “brace themselves for some tiny audiences”, figures weren’t that bad – although they didn’t bother competing on Christmas Day, and stuck on some films, some too bad to show when anyone was watching.)

The early evening was rather better, as Emmerdale, long established as one of ITV’s most popular programmes, was finally allowed on Christmas Day, and did quite well with an hour-long special. Coronation Street followed at 7pm, as in 1996, but by this point the series had recovered from its shaky period 12 months before and managed to beat EastEnders, coming in at number three in the Christmas Day chart, better than the third channel had done for years (the Boxing Day showing failed to match up, although ITV were probably to blame for moving it to 8.20pm to make way for a rerun of the unpopular film Forever Young). But then it went all downhill with Home Alone 2 going out at 7.30pm – quite an old film to be premiered (it was made in 1992), and while big at the time, it was now not remembered with much affection. Figures were reasonable – about eight million – but it failed to crack the top 10. Then it got much worse, with Chris Tarrant introducing Starting Blocks at 9.45am, a Before They Were Famous-style clip show featuring sports stars in their early days, a Sunday afternoon filler surely. Then at 10.20pm, around three million watched The Bare Necessities, a repeat of a one-off drama shown two years previously, which had a similar storyline to The Full Monty. Alright, they’d thought of it first, but this second showing appeared to be of interest just to media students who could compare the two. Demi Moore’s Mortal Thoughts was a terrible choice of late movie as well. There wasn’t even a Bond this Christmas either.

Unlike ITV, where just one programme was broadcast in both 1996 and 1997, BBC1 stuck to what seemed to be a “winning formula”. CBBC at 6am, of course, but a rather better line-up than before with a new panto-style show, The Demon Headmaster Takes Over TV, full ofCBBC regulars, and best of all, the Teletubbies at 9.40am. Then at 10.05am we headed down to the Castle Museum in Kirkgate (25 years after ITV had done the same) for the carols, this year fronted by Fern Britton, with a decent guest list of Gary Barlow and the Archbishop of York. This was followed by another great choice of mid-morning movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Something odd followed at 12.40pm, though – ballet. This was not, thankfully, one of the epics favoured by BBC2 or Channel 4, though, but The Royal Ballet School’s 30 minute production of Peter and the Wolf. It’s still ballet, though …

Top of the Pops followed at 1.15pm, with another new producer in charge, and a return to DJ presenters for the first time in seven years – Zoë Ball, Jo Whiley and Jayne Middlemiss holding the gold mikes. Alas, there was no Morecambe and Wise this year, but The Two Ronnies did make an appearance in the pre-Queen slot, in a special compilation show of their Christmas episodes from the past. Noel Edmonds was irremovable at 3.10pm, though he didn’t do as well as the year before – the decline of the House Party in viewers’ minds, perhaps? The Flintstoneswas the first film premiere of the day, at 4.10pm, which was amiable enough, then the usual double header of Animal Hospital and Auntie’s Bloomers now seemed to be a Christmas tradition.

The rest of the schedule was a more-or-less straight copy of the year before, with just a few changes; so for Jurassic Park read The Mask, the movie premiere at 6.50pm. Then at 8.30pm it was EastEnders, then the double bill of comedy consisted of One Foot in the Grave and Men Behaving Badly – the latter getting the highest audience of the day, although it isn’t certain whether this was due to the quality of the programme or the terrible opposition from ITV. An unusual occurrence, though, was the placing of They Think It’s All Over at 11.05pm – a popular programme, certainly, but was the style of the show (blokes sitting behind a desk) or the level of the humour (notoriously laddish) right for Christmas Day? 12 million people thought it was, an incredible figure for nearly midnight. Comedy continued into the night with the great Airplane!at 11.45pm, then a Carry On movie, one of a season, but alas it was only the mediocre Carry On Loving. There was a further change to tradition at 2.40am though, as now BBC1 weren’t closing down but handing over to the new News 24 channel in the small hours, so we could close our festive viewing with nearly four hours of hard news.

BBC2 kicked off, as ever, with the usual double helping of black and white movies (this year, Dickens adaptions), then at last they had the good sense to move crappy old Today’s the Dayto a mid-morning slot, and it went out at 10.15am. Then it was the usual erratic schedule, ranging from the war film Mrs Miniver, to repeats of Shooting Stars and The Simpsons, to the usual old movie at 3.10pm - White Christmas. In the evening there were two foreign films – one, at 5.20pm, the premiere of Madame Butterfly, saving them the bother of commissioning a new opera themselves. There was an Arena documentary about “the story of the cigar” and, for the second year running, Simon Callow as Dickens. Amongst all this was a programme calledCardigans at Christmas, a wry look at the rise and fall of the Christmas light entertainment spectacular, including clips from Val Doonican, Christmas Night with the Stars, and so on. Amusingly, it managed to be the most popular BBC2 programme on Christmas Day for years, with around three million. Who’d have thought that from the second channel 20, or maybe even 10, years before?

Channel 4 started the day with The Big Breakfast, as was their wont, although this year it was in much better shape, with Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen in the house. Then came Rex Harrison in Doctor Dolittle, making its second Christmas Day appearance of the decade, but now on a different channel. As 1997 saw the death of Diana, it was obvious that one network would pay tribute on Christmas Day, and C4 took on the mantle by repeating an obituary that was shown four times on the morning of her death, expanded to include her funeral. The fact the programme was shown without commercial breaks emphasises the channel’s thoughts about Christmas Day. The rest of the schedule was all over the place – Pavarotti appeared in Verdi’s Requiem from 3pm, then there was a special edition of Countdown- after Christmas seasons on race, animals and New York, C4 this year decided to celebrate itself for their 15th birthday, and one of the special programmes saw William G Stewart put Richard and Carol through their paces in the words and numbers game. The classic movie Kind Hearts and Coronets was followed, inevitably, by an opera - The Damnation of Faust, for two and a half hours – then another celebratory C4 programme, looking back at the first 15 years ofFilm on Four. Nicely, we then continued the “Blood Lust” season with two vampire movies. Sleep tight, everyone.

But there’s something missing - The Snowman! After umpteen years on 25 December, the programme still went out in 1997, but on Christmas Eve. And a part of Christmas tradition disappeared.

“Contains violence, swearing and sex scenes.”

1998 saw ITV make similar mistakes to before, but the early evening was the best for absolutely ages.

From 6am, GMTV offered up the usual kid’s stuff, then from 8am a special show with Jane Asher cooking, some carols and an update on the Get Up And Give appeal. At 9.25am it was time for another attempt at making interesting religious television, as Judi Dench narrated a Christmas story performed by disabled and able-bodied children in the familiarly-titled On Christmas Day in the Morning. Children’s ITV made its debut on Christmas Day afterwards, the service had been relaunched earlier in the year with new presenters Stephen Mulhern and Danielle Nicholls, and they made an appearance to introduce a special edition of Sooty & Co, adding some much-needed entertainment to the day. Then, unfortunately, the heart went out of the schedule with a triple bill of repeats - Percy the Park Keeper, first shown on this day two years ago, then a further animation, then The Willows in Winter, the sequel to 1995’s The Wind in the Willows animation, again two years old. This meant three of the past five ITV Christmas Days included animations featuring Mole, Toad et al – another great Christmas for the Kenneth Grahame estate, then. After a surprisingly long news bulletin (15 minutes), it was another Spice Girls concert, only this year with one less member and a little closer to home, at Wembley. Rotten scheduling, though, meant that they were also appearing on Top of the Popsat the same time on BBC1.

Over at the Beeb they kicked off again at 6am with the usual burst of cartoons, at least one of which (PJ’s Unfunnybunny Christmas) had gone out on most of the Christmas Days that decade. At 10am Deborah McAndrew invited us to Celebrate Christmas, the usual religion-based entertainment, although this year seemingly coming from a studio – perhaps they couldn’t book anywhere. A decent guest list including Lesley Garrett, Charlotte Church and Ladysmith Black Mambazo made up for the lack of locations. At 11am it was time for the family movie, and the premiere of Miracle on 34th Street, the Christmas fantasy starring Richard Attenbrough made for appropriate, if a little sugary, programming. Top of the Popsfollowed at 12.50pm, Jayne Middlemiss was joined by Jamie Theakston and Kate Thornton to run down the hits of the year. At 1.55pm the BBC were able to combine the lunchtime classic comedy and Morecambe and Wise, by screening Eric ‘n’ Ern’s 1973 special in time for Christmas lunch.

Then ITV entered the traditionally ropey early afternoon, with Suggs introducing Disney Time at 3.10pm – the programme was normally a BBC fixture, which always seemed a bit odd as ITV had the rights to most other Disney material. Now ITV had it at last, but considering it was quite an old-fashioned concept (it had stopped being a part of BBC1’s Christmas Day some 25 years before), it seemed bizarre for ITV to place it in such a strong slot – but no, an hour of clips from the likes of Dumbo and The Jungle Book was part of TV’s biggest day. This was followed at 4.10pm by Jack and the Beanstalk, a pantomime with an all-star cast, written by sitcom writer Simon Nye (whose Men Behaving Badly had topped the ratings the previous year), and recorded in a theatre in front of an audience. The cast was very strong, with stars such as Neil Morrisey, Denise Van Outen and Paul Merton appealing to all ages, but it didn’t really work – possibly because it was on too early, again at a time when people can’t concentrate on TV. Indeed, the following year, another pantomime from the same team (this time, Cinderella) was broadcast at 6pm on a Sunday, and was much more well-received. The panto now seems to be an ITV festive fixture.

From 6pm, ITV cranked it up and delivered an impressive looking schedule. Both Emmerdaleand Coronation Street received hour-long episodes, but while they could both guarantee figures of over 10 million, it did mean that non-soap fans (fathers, children) had to look elsewhere, andEmmerdale was still not in the same league as Corrie or EastEnders. You’ve Been Framedwas at 8pm, surprisingly on Christmas Day for the first time ever, despite it being a hit series for most of the decade. This was followed by Who Wants to be a Millionaire – its first seasonal special after the first series that September. Oddly, though, it didn’t make it into the Top 10, possibly as it was a one-off, so there was no outstanding contestant from a previous episode to pull people in, nor the chance of any roll-overs into another episode creating tension. Or maybe it just didn’t get a loyal following until people started winning really big money in the second series.

All this good work, though, was ruined by ITV totally misjudging the late audience withChristmasses from Hell at 9.30pm – a grammatically-suspect hour of disastrous festive seasons captured on video. It didn’t take a genius to figure that the last thing you want to watch on Christmas Day is people having a really crap time. This was followed by a bizarre film choice - The Godfather Part II was a classic, but very old, and hardly a mainstream choice. It was also so long that viewers would have to stay up to 2.20am to see the end.

BBC1, therefore, had little to fear in the late evening, but it was closer than usual early on. Edmonds was still thought worthy of the 3.10pm slot, then we had Animal Hospital on perhaps rather too early, or perhaps the programme was running out of steam, as it failed to make the top 10. This was followed at 4.45pm by another animation, The First Snow of Winter. The adventures of a young duck, this was no doubt charming, but one suspects that most kids would rather have seen Wallace and Gromit.

A new idea tried this year was a double header of EastEnders topping and tailing the pre-watershed schedule, so as well as the 8.30pm episode, by now a Christmas Day fixture, a further episode was scheduled at 5.25pm, no doubt trying to hook in viewers early and keep them there for the rest of the evening. This was probably a better bet than relying on an oddly weak looking schedule at that time on BBC1 - Auntie’s Bloomers there as always, followed by, of all things, Changing Rooms. This seems very unusual for Christmas Day, as although it’s a popular series, was the audience really there for DIY tips on that day? The festive edition didn’t go out on until the 27 December the following year, so that could answer the question. At least there was a decent film premiere, Babe, at 7pm, which was probably where all the kids and fathers who didn’t want to see soaps turned to.

After the watershed, Before They Were Famous was moved to the prime Christmas slot – not surprising, as the previous two editions (on Easter Monday and Boxing Day in 1997) had received enormous ratings. Indeed, this got 11 million viewers (although this was the lowest figure of its three programmes) and then the BBC had a free run on the rest of the evening. However, one could suspect that we were not in a golden age of sitcoms, as only Men Behaving Badly received a Christmas Day slot (indeed, the only other BBC1 sitcom to receive a Christmas special that year was John Sullivan’s Heartburn Hotel, and this went out at 10.35pm on Sunday 27). This was the final trilogy of Men, taking a leaf out of Only Fools and Horses‘ book, and probably hoping for similar figures. Of course, the figures didn’t exactly match, but it was still the most popular programme on Christmas Day, and the other two episodes got well in excess of 10 million watching.

They Think It’s All Over followed again at 10.35pm, then at 11.10pm was the pilot for Alan Davies’ sitcom, A Many Splintered Thing – not sold as a pilot, but as a one-off comedy. It did reasonably well with six million viewers, though it only received about half that when it made it to a series. The late evening also saw a special TV concert with one of the stars of the year,Robbie Williams – For One Night Only. The most unusual aspect of this programme was probably the late slot of 11.45pm, as it could realistically have been shown 12 hours earlier. To round off the evening was another Carry On movie, but again a weak one, Carry On Girls, and they may have been better off swapping it with Christmas Eve’s Carry On Again Doctor. There was a surprisingly early handover to News 24 as well, BBC1 calling it a night at 2am.

Both BBC2 and Channel 4 seemed unfocused throughout the day. BBC2 started, as ever, with two black and white movies, but then, oddly, went into children’s entertainment, with a Peter Rabbit animation. It was back to the old movies after that, though, with a celebration of 75 years of Warner Bros taken off American TV, then Errol Flynn in Dodge City. Then back to kids, and a documentary about the success of the Teletubbies, followed, oddly, by a brand new episode of The Simpsons slotted directly opposite the Queen. Then back to old movies, and the mid-afternoon classic this year was Casablanca. In the evening, the usual dull programming included a jazz variation on the Nutcracker Suite, the premiere of Trevor Nunn’s film of Tweflth Night, then two long arts documentaries – one on Ted Hughes, then the first half of a three hour film on Brian Epstein. The second film premiere of the day saw Gary Oldman inImmortal Beloved. But blimey, for the first time in ages – no opera.

Channel 4 did have an opera, and most of the other aspects of their Christmas Day schedule were in place - The Big Breakfast, the old movies (Swallows and Amazons, Tom Thumb) and the animations (no Snowman again, that was on Christmas Eve, but we did get the great Father Christmas) during the day, and in the evening we had “the animated story of Gibert and Sullivan”, a documentary on Leonard Bernstein, and an unspectacular film premiere,Remember Me?, a C4-financed comedy with Robert Lindsay. This was followed at 10.35pm by the fantastically apt choice of late movie – er, The Omen. There was, at least, the grand final ofCountdown adding 45 minutes of fun, by virtue of the fact it was a Friday, but C4 obviously presumed most of the regular audience would be elsewhere, and repeated it the following day.

Overall, it was a rather weak Christmas Day, with ITV packing up half way through the evening and the BBC1 schedule featuring rather too many men sitting behind desks linking clips. There were also complaints about the episode of Men Behaving Badly, concerned as it was with matters sexual, and this led to a decision not to show the episode at Christmas again and Simon Nye concluding that it shouldn’t have gone out when it did. Worse still, it was followed by the normally taste-free They Think It’s All Over, and if viewers were offended they could turn over to The Godfather on ITV or The Omen on Channel 4 – just right for Christmas Day. Still, at least we got a whopping three incarnations of Bond on ITV, with Roger Moore appearing in A View to a Kill in the unlikely slot of 7.45pm on Boxing Day, extremely high-profile scheduling for such an old film. That said, Casualty and Men Behaving Badly were on the other side. BBC1’s screening of Apollo 13 was probably why You Only Live Twice got an outing at 8.30pm on New Year’s Day, while poor old George Lazenby had to make do with a mid-afternoon slot on Monday 28, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. But despite the 007-fest, 1998 saw the worst Christmas line-up for some time.

“The family gathers to celebrate Christmas.”

1999 saw a revival on both channels – perhaps they were disappointed at the distinctly average viewing figures the previous year (the most popular show getting 14 million, the lowest figure for decades), or perhaps because it was felt the millennium would mean lots more families staying at home and in the mood for some entertainment.

ITV realised now that a good Christmas Day offered up some excellent publicity, and they repeated a trick they’d used in November, where the schedule was packed with extra episodes of Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Millionaire at exactly the time of year advertisers wanted to attract big audiences. Things started quietly with the ITV tradition of a mediocre afternoon schedule - Ace Ventura Pet Detective was the old film at 3.10pm, then at 5.05pm wasGladiators. This series had been axed the previous year, but was revived for a final run of four programmes, of which this was the third. Exactly why it was scheduled for Christmas Day is uncertain, as the previous two programmes had done poor business, but at least it filled an awkward gap.

6pm was when the fun really started, with a schedule that was rather cynically weighted towards established big hits, instead of trying to produce anything special for the festive season, but was undoubtedly an impressive line-up. An episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire started the whole thing off, followed by hour long installments of Emmerdale andCoronation Street, then another edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire at 8.30pm. 9pm saw a brand new episode of A Touch of Frost, ITV seemingly remembering the art of the Christmas Special, followed at 10.30pm by a third episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Millionairewas a brilliant piece of scheduling, bringing viewers back to the channel all night.

Even the morning was quite good this year – GMTV at 6am as usual, with cartoons and, of course, the Rev Steve Chalke at 8am, before one of the best programmes of the day - SM:TV Live at 9.25am. A special Christmas Day edition of the kids TV hit of the year ran all the way ’til noon, and with stars like Steps, Five and Westlife among the guests, this was fun viewing for children and adults alike, and much better than the dreary religion or animations that had filled this slot in the past. This was followed by quite a good family film, Disney’s Pinnochio. Religion did still play a part, though, as Dame Thora Hird was invited to pick her favourite hymns, which were performed by a salvation army band. Oddly, this went out at 2pm, for an hour, but offered an amusing contrast with Top of the Pops on the other side.

BBC1 could have struggled, as most of the comedy series they’d been relying on for the last few years had come to an end, and not much new was coming through. But, as it turned out, they managed to produce a schedule that was the most adventurous and wide-ranging for many years. CBBC had the usual cartoons at 6am, but even here there’d been some freshening up, with the Blue Peter Review of the Year going out at 7.35am, followed by a special Live & Kicking (Christmas falling on a Saturday this year). Funnily enough, Westlife appeared on this as well, but the series was performing poorly at this stage, with the unpopular Emma Ledden and Steve Wilson in charge, and by finishing at 10am it left most of the morning open forSM:TV. The Beeb then opted for religion, this time seemingly more traditional than other years – called Joy to the World, and presented from “a church” (they didn’t elaborate on this) by Diane Louise Jordan with unspecified “gospel choirs and musicians” the only guests confirmed.

Then TV Centre woke up and scheduled the premiere of the film version of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach to grab the family audience. This led to Morecambe and Wise at 12.20pm, although by this point they’d seemingly run out of Christmas shows in the archives and showed one that had been transmitted a few years previously. But at least it was the legendary 1977 special, home for many of the duo’s most memorable moments. This led to Top of the Pops, this year at 1.30pm, the latest for some time – Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston were here again, with Gail Porter helping out. There was new animation at 2.30pm, but not, this time, an adaptation of a “magical” old story, but Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire, an anarchic new animation stuffed with stars like Robbie Williams and Steve Coogan on voice-over duties.

Alright, Noel’s Christmas Presents was still there at 3.10pm, and its appearance seemed ever more unusual as by now it was Edmonds’ only BBC programme - House Party having ended earlier in the year, and Noel left the Corporation on rather unfriendly terms. Still, it did reasonable business for the BBC and Noel still seemed happy to do it. The big film premiere was not very big, Jumanji going out at 4pm to a lukewarm reception. EastEnders was shown twice again, with the first episode at 5.50pm, then Auntie’s Bloomers was still hanging on in there.

Then, things got better with a programme of the type not seen on Christmas night for many years - David Copperfield was 90 minutes long, and the first of a two part dramatisation with a very heavyweight cast. It had originally been planned as a production by the entertainment department, to be written by John Sullivan, but he left the project before transmission and production was switched to the drama department. However, those fearing a dull, worthy English Literature-style programme in the middle of family viewing time needn’t have worried – enough established comedy names, like Nicholas Lyndhurst, Dawn French and Paul Whitehouse, appeared in the cast and the whole thing was very well received. Of course, it didn’t stand a chance opposite the soaps, and failed to make it into the top 10 – perhaps it was broadcast too early, and the Boxing Day conclusion was thrown away at 6.30pm. But it was still a critical, popular success.

The second episode of EastEnders was at 8.30pm, then there was some family comedy to be found - The Vicar of Dibley returning for a four-part special shown over the Christmas period, and this managed to get the highest audience of the day. Before They Were Famous followed at 9.40pm, then after the news was surprise number two of the day - The Royle Family at 10.30pm. A year before, the first series had gone out on BBC2, now a special was on BBC1 on the biggest day of the year. This was perhaps a risky move, and indeed it lost out to Millionaire, but the ratings were still very healthy. They Think It’s All Over followed at 11.10pm, later than ever, but this time ratings were comparatively unexceptional. There was a real movie classic at 11.50pm, The Italian Job, as part of BBC1’s seemingly annual Michael Caine season, and here the BBC clearly had the edge over ITV who went for Martyn Lewis continuing his series telling the news of Holy Week as if it were happening today – the type of programme the BBC had done to death a decade before – and a very un-ITV choice of late movie, Cary Grant’s 1963 filmCharade.

The strong schedules on both channels made this the tightest Christmas Day for many years, but in the end ITV just scraped through as the victor on the day, for the first time since 1984. Yet the BBC had acquitted itself well, given the risky nature of some of the programming, and David Liddiment probably got it right when he said that both channels, in their own ways, had excellent evenings. Even The Sun, a well-known BBC critic, published a leader congratulating the BBC on their Christmas Day schedule, and the Corporation got their own back within a week when 2000 Today thrashed all comers on New Year’s Eve.

BBC2 produced a textbook line-up as well, with its blend of obscurities and highbrow alternatives. Once more there were two old movies at dawn, then, oddly, a brand new episode of The Simpsons at 10am – perhaps hoping to entice kids over after Live & Kicking. Few probably hung around for A Christmas Oratorio afterwards. A repeat of the previous week’s conclusion to the period drama Wives and Daughters seemed somewhat inappropriate on this day, as did the by now traditional new Simpsons (the second of the day) opposite the Queen. And then it was more of everything – not just one classic movie in the afternoon, but two - White Christmas and Singin’ in the Rain. Not just one opera star, but two – Bryn Terfel and Cecilia Bartoli performing popular opera classics at Glyndebourne. And not just one landmark film in the evening, but two - Il Postino premiering and Citizen Kane. To accompany the screening of the latter, BBC2 could use the luxury of Christmas Day scheduling to screen a new film dramatising the making of Kane, RKO 281. And there was even more Orson Welles with their late (ie 1.40am) movie, The Trial.

Obviously C4 couldn’t compete and came up with another poor schedule. There was no Big Breakfast, as it was a Saturday, but two awful kids movies instead, Tom & Jerry: The Movie(where they spoke!) and Andre, a film about a seal. At least we had Father Christmas, although again no Snowman, that was relegated to Boxing Day. In the afternoon we did get quite a good movie, Jason and the Argonauts, followed by a profile of Ray Harryhausen, and C4 may have hoped for some viewers to mishear the name of this programme and tune in – it was calledWorking with Dinosaurs.

Ali G delivered the Alternative Christmas Message, C4 again not knowing whether they wanted to do comedy or comment in that slot. Then at 3.15pm was, of all things, a Christmas special of a regular series. Alright, it was Fifteen to One, but William G Stewart made an occasion of it by inviting back 15 of the best contestants and subjecting them to a whopping 100 minutes of questions. If that wasn’t enough brain fodder, it was followed by the final of Countdown. In the evening we saw some programmes guaranteed to make the mainstream audience turn off pretty damn quick – a tedious C4-financed dramatisation of a Thomas Hardy book, The Woodlands; the terminally unfunny National Theatre of Brent “satirizing” the last millennium; “contemporary dance”; opera; and a Terry Gilliam movie, Time Bandits.

Ah well, what would Christmas Day be without a boring Channel 4 schedule? The schedules for 1999 on the other channels were the strongest seen for many years, and it was good to see that for the last Christmas of the century, the TV companies tried hard to schedule a good selection of programming for the whole family. And who’d have thought that at BSB?