“I’m the king of the world!”

The first Christmas Day of the 21st century harked back a few decades, with the main attraction being a blockbuster movie premiere. James Cameron’s Titanic was the BBC’s big deal this year, the most long awaited film premiere since, perhaps, ET 10 years before. It seemed obvious that the film would be screened on Christmas Day, although it was far from an ideal slot – the feature was over three hours long, therefore asking a lot of the audience and limiting the amount of new programming the BBC could show. Scheduling it in the mid-evening also put it right in the middle of “mince pie time”, a slot when it’s hard to give TV your full attention. Some critics took issue with the screening, as “everyone has already seen it”, but ITV’s showing of The Full Monty a few weeks before, another film “everyone’s seen”, got 11 million viewers. As we’ll see, then, the schedules for both BBC1 and ITV revolved solely around the doomed ocean liner.

BBC1 started earlier than ever before this year, at 5.30am – although technically, of course, they don’t close down anymore, simply opting in and out of News 24, so there was nothing really stopping them opening up even sooner. In any case they were able to present four and a half hours of children’s entertainment, probably the most ever, including the premiere of two new animations, Santa’s Special Delivery voiced by Rik Mayall, and better still, Spike Milligan’sBadjelly the Witch. Then it was time for religion, and the service from All Saints Church in Daresbury – the birthplace of Lewis Carroll, so the service was able to adopt a theme.

There was a disappointing morning, though – the early film was neither new nor an established classic, instead being a re-screening of Disney’s The Santa Clause, the live action movie with Tim Allen, which was admittedly topical, but not much fun for anyone over the age of 10. This was followed by a repeat of last year’s Hooves of Fire at 12.40pm – not that different a slot to last year, so most people watching TV at that time would probably have seen it before. At least there was Top of the Pops at 1.10pm, Jamie Theakston in charge again, this time joined by Richard Blackwood and Sara Cox, despite the latter having only presented one edition before. Then there was a change to the schedules – Noel Edmonds had gone, never to return, but the social action continued with the unlikely face of Jim Davidson stepping in. He joined servicemen on HMS Invincible for a special variety show under the title of Homeward Bound for Christmas – although it was all for charity and was actually introduced by Prince Charles, so it had some sort of useful purpose – if nothing else, it got Jim Davidson out of the country for a bit.

Meanwhile GMTV kicked off the third channel’s day at 6am, with the usual schedule in place – cartoons followed by the Rev Steve Chalke. Then the ITV network took over at 9.25am, but alas nothing could match up to last year’s SM:TV special - CITV instead introducing a repeated episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and then another new animation, this time voiced by Sir Nigel Hawthorne, probably not as popular among kids as Milligan or Mayall. My Favourite Hymns was the main religious programme of the day again, this time at a more appropriate 10.45am slot, and with Michael Barrymore picking the hits. A dreadful film followed, Home Alone 2 again, and it’s hard to tell who’d actually want to see this – most kids who enjoyed it at the time probably having grown out of it along with Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles. It also meant that for 30 minutes at lunchtime all five channels were showing repeats. At 2pm there was another screening for the Pride of Britain Awards, a ceremony first shown six months before, with Carol Vorderman and the obligatory “host of celebrities” honouring unsung heroes – a similarly treacly programme to what BBC1 were offering at this time.

After the Queen the BBC went for a new film, The Borrowers – quite an odd choice for Christmas afternoon, as it hadn’t been a massive hit, and again not quite action-packed enough to appeal to a general audience. The same couldn’t have been said for what followed at 4.35pm, mind; a new edition of Walking with Dinosaurs. This was the first science programme ever to go out on BBC1’s Christmas Day, but really that wasn’t why people were watching – they wanted to see the expensive animation and hear the overblown narration. The original series managed to make inroads into the chart of BBC1’s top 20 most popular programmes ever (though admittedly with the help of a same-week repeat) and though this special probably wouldn’t get anywhere near that, it was still guaranteed a sizeable audience. This would have been passed on to what followed, the first of two episodes of EastEnders, and then the main event – at 5.45pm, we were invited to take our seats on the Titanic.

Three hours later, as the nation made its way to the bathroom, the BBC were then able to concentrate on home grown programming. Auntie’s Bloomers had gone, though – there were two programmes on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day instead, though the latter was up againstCoronation Street. Instead we got the second episode of EastEnders, then it was comedy all night, as usual – Victoria Wood had a special programme at 9.20pm. The pull of Wood is something comparable to Morecambe and Wise, perhaps, as this special featured an impressive guest list of Alan Rickman, Pete Postlethwaite, James Bolam, Richard E Grant, Derek Jacobi and others, all ready to make a joke about gypsy creams or a reference to retractable bollards. Eric and Ern would have approved. Then at 10.10pm was this year’s Royle Family special. One thing noticeable about this year’s two big comedy specials was that both were ostensibly Christmas-themed – Wood’s show being based around a series of parodies of Christmas traditions, and the Royles settling down to watch the festive Animal Hospital. The ’90s tradition of Birds of a Feather in Majorca or the Trotters in Miami seemed to be over.

After the news Angus Deayton made his by now traditional Christmas Day appearance, but this year later than ever at 10.50pm. At least he was the only man this year behind a desk (well, the only man who wasn’t a newsreader) as They Think It’s All Over had been moved from 25 December, instead going out the day before – still, it had a good run for such an unfestive programme. Some interesting scheduling at 11.30pm saw another screening for a sketch fromFrench and Saunders‘ 1998 Christmas show parodying a certain film about some ship or other, perhaps in an attempt to remind viewers what they’d enjoyed that night. A double bill of comedy movies followed, and this year they were both great - The Naked Gun 2½, followed at 1.15am by the majestic Carry On Camping.

ITV’s day was also dominated by Titanic, the film casting a shadow over the line-up and the schedules being adjusted accordingly. This meant that this Christmas Day on ITV was a mess, programmes being shunted to awkward slots and no attempt made at a coherent, memorable line-up. Compared to last year’s aggressive scheduling, where programmes had gone out at user-friendly times and the channel had seemed supremely confident, this was a real step backwards. The main part of the day began at 3.10pm with, oddly, a Bond film - Octopussy, probably one of the oldest things ever shown in this slot. This was the start of a season of five 007 movies shown every afternoon during Christmas week, but it’s a shame they didn’t shuffle them around so an acknowledged classic such as Goldfinger (Boxing Day) or Thunderball (27 December) filled this slot, instead of a mediocre late period choice. Still, good to see Bond back where he belonged, and this was probably the best thing ITV had shown here since, well, the last time they showed a Bond film. Perhaps the movie was chosen purely for reasons of timing, as it finished at 5.35pm, thus allowing for a news bulletin before attempting to beatTitanic. Emmerdale was, of course, drafted in, although this year the usual hour-long instalment was split into two halves. At least they had a wedding storyline to help out, though, the first part including the stag and hen nights. Then at 6.15pm it was this year’s ITV panto,Aladdin. This was not great scheduling – seemingly it returned to Christmas Day after the success of the previous year’s instalment, although that had gone out on a Sunday night. Hard to imagine this one beating the other side, despite an impressive cast including Patsy Kensit, Martin Clunes and Griff Rhys Jones.

Then it was back to Emmerdale at 7.45pm where time had passed incredibly quickly because it was already the wedding – could this have involved two distinct episodes going out on the same night rather than two specially written episodes? With half an hour of the film to go, ITV then scheduled You’ve Been Framed at 8.15pm, one of three festive episodes that week. This meant the third appearance of the day for Lisa Riley, who’d already been in the panto and, of course, there’d also been two episodes of her erstwhile series Emmerdale as well. Odd to seeYou’ve Been Framed in such a big slot, though – the current series had fallen victim to “experiments with the schedule” and had only gone out about four times in three months. Then at 8.50pm, exactly when Titanic had finished, was the first of the night’s two episodes of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and it was becoming obvious that ITV’s plan for this Christmas was to try and repeat last year’s schedule, only much more half-arsed. Thus Corrie followed with an hour long episode at the unmemorable time of 9.20pm, much later than usual, as ITV attempted to avoid both Titanic and EastEnders, then there was a second episode of Millionaireat 10.20pm, which was pretty pointless – they may as well have scheduled a single hour-long edition. Besides, the series was not quite the draw it had been 12 months before – a change to the schedule meant that instead of the programme running for consecutive nights over a period of about a fortnight, it was now running three or four times a week constantly. This seemed to make it slightly more missable than in the past, as it seemed to be always there.

At least there was a decent film at 11pm, Sleepless in Seattle, but all in all this ITV schedule was a pale shadow of the previous year, with programmes all over the place and none of them were really very distinctive at all. Whereas BBC1 scheduled a series of one-offs and specials, ITV offered up the usual old rubbish – as always there’s far too much soap, and this time there’s far too much Lisa Riley.

Meanwhile the minority channels were as idiosyncratic as ever. BBC2 made a change to the usual opening routine, though, as instead of the old movies, we were treated to 150 minutes of … Breakfast! Yes, the usual mix of news, weather and sport went out as it did every other day on BBC1 – the idea, of course, is that as a News 24 co-production, the programme is made seven days a week no matter what, and thus it was going to go out on News 24 anyway. But it’s odd how BBC2 took the programme as well – who wants to see two and a half hours of news at 6am on Christmas Day? Normal service was resumed at 8.30am with two Laurel and Hardy films, Stan and Ollie making a return to the 25th for the first time in over two decades. The morning was devoted to the usual “improving” programming – such as Classic Challenge, where musicians were given a week to compose a new work, and to replace the Royal Institution Lectures, which had defected to Channel 4, a contractually-obliged Gary Lineker fronted a new three part series, Are You Superhuman?

We entered the afternoon with the films High Noon, The War Wagon and Casablanca – a classic-heavy schedule interrupted only by the now traditional Simpsons at 2.55pm. The evening saw another heat of Choir of the Year, a repeat showing of the period drama The Woman in White and a documentary about the pianist Alfred Brendel. But the main part of the evening was devoted to Clint Eastwood, with the second part of an Arena profile followed by the movie Play Misty For Me. Note there was no opera again, for the third year running, although there was one the following afternoon. And, shock horror, we saw the return of the Beatles film after a lengthy absence – a restored version of Yellow Submarine took pride of place on the afternoon of New Year’s Day.

At Horseferry Road, Channel 4’s schedule was as ropey as ever - The Big Breakfast returning at 8am, followed by a new film, Paws, which starred Billy Connolly as the voice of “a computer-literate Jack Russell terrier”. Hmm. Then it was repeats for most of the daylight hours – the previous week’s Scrapheap Challenge special, the adaptation of Merlin, Father Christmas, another Raymond Briggs animation (not the Snowman though, that was at 4pm on Christmas Eve), and the final of Fifteen to One, repeated from last Friday. The only new programme between 11.35am and 4.45pm was the Alternative Christmas Message, again moving back to comment rather than comedy, and delivered by Helen Jeffries, mother of 14 year old CJD victim Zoë – but this was only five minutes long. But there was new stuff in the evening – the final ofCountdown, a documentary on Joan of Arc, and opera from Glyndebourne – this was La Bohème, a production performed, as the composer wished, “without make-up or sumptuous costumes and sets”. Merry Christmas to you too. At 9pm was a 4-financed biopic of Jacqueline du Pre, but again it was a dull Christmas on Channel 4, which never fails to disappoint. Given that C4 have attempted, in the past, to innovate and produce exciting new programming (Queer as Folk, Big Brother), why is every Christmas Day devoted to tedious films and opera? At least we had Christmas Top Ten at 11.15pm, repeated from last year, enabling viewers to round off the day with nostalgia, reminiscence and the enticing prospect of hearing narrator Bernard Cribbins say “piss”.

The fact that Channel 5 scheduled National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at 9pm probably tells you all you need to know about their schedule. On the whole, it was another weak day on the commercial channels, proving once more that ITV simply cannot find a consistent and successful formula for Christmas Day viewing.

And OTT’s conclusion? Another BBC victory and a Christmas completely in tune with the conventions of festive television.

“Home for Christmas”

Lorraine Heggessey became BBC1 controller in early 2001 and before she’d even adjusted her swivel chair to the correct height she held an inquest on 2000’s Christmas Day schedules. They just hadn’t worked out - Titanic had performed less well than anticipated, Walking with Dinosaurs wasn’t much of a draw, and the papers were referring to the line-up as one of the weakest Christmas schedules of all time. Heggessey therefore asked the staff to pull crackers while reviewing the programmes that went out, so they could see what was missing. This elusive ingredient was, apparently, “big events”.

Fortunately, by the time 25 December 2001 came around, BBC1 were feeling rather more confident. Throughout the autumn they’d been performing equally as well as ITV as the commercial channel’s very public failures had coincided with BBC1’s surge thanks to smart scheduling and extra money diverted to programming by request of Director General Greg Dyke. Over the previous few months they’d found some long-awaited mainstream hit shows and thus went into Christmas Day with renewed vigour.

The Beeb were also helped by the return of Only Fools and Horses. The series had apparently ended in 1996, with the sort of conclusion that should have stopped anyone questioning whether it would ever return – the long-term ambition of the characters finally achieved. Since that final instalment, Buster Merryfield had died, surely putting paid to that definitely-the-last-ever reunion. Still, some critics (Garry Bushell) continued to lobby for another edition, arguing that Christmas couldn’t be Christmas without it. Every so often, there was a rumour that a new episode was in the pipeline, only for this to be scuppered by the cast’s availability or, according to the press, the BBC’s alleged stupidity and bureaucracy. But then in 2001 everyone seemed to be available, and that long-awaited reunion was ready to go.

Pencilled in for Christmas Day, there were still a few problems to iron out. Firstly, the cast and crew’s schedules meant that the script wasn’t complete until the beginning of December, and filming then went on until just before Christmas. Apparently the editing suite had been booked right up until Christmas Eve. Secondly, John Sullivan’s script included a sequence where Del would appear on Who Wants to be a Millionaire – a scene that would have featured Chris Tarrant on the set of the actual series. Understandably, ITV were concerned about a BBC series using one of their hot properties as an integral part of the plot, and therefore asked for the rights to repeat the edition – with the bill for repeat fees footed by the Beeb. The BBC didn’t think this was a very good idea – cue various newspaper headlines announcing that the special had been “ruined” thanks to the broadcasters’ inability to co-operate (couldn’t imagine the Sun and Mirror working together, though). In these reports, John Sullivan said that he thought “the channels could put ratings to one side for the day” – hardly a realistic situation on Christmas Day.

A fictional game show having been created instead, John Sullivan and David Jason then found themselves possibly facing opposition from themselves. This began when Sullivan started writing the BBC’s adaptation of David Copperfield, broadcast on Christmas Day 1999. Various disagreements led to Sullivan quitting the project, to be replaced by Adrian Hodges, and instead approaching Yorkshire Television with the idea of writing a drama based on Mr Micawber from the book. This then went into production with David Jason in the title role, and it automatically became a big event – the nation’s favourite actor in a series written by the nation’s favourite author based on one of the nation’s favourite novels. ITV thought that this would make ideal Christmas Day programming, perhaps at 9pm opposite Only Fools and Horses. Thankfully, common sense prevailed (Jason apparently had it written into his contract that they couldn’t be shown simultaneously) and Micawber appeared on Boxing Day.

Only Fools and Horses was such a big occasion that the Robin Reliant even made its way onto the BBC1 Christmas ident this year. But there were other programmes on BBC1 this Christmas. Good ones, too. Deciding that last year’s line-up wasn’t a success, 2001’s schedule most closely resembled 1999’s popular combination, and found the Corporation pulling out all the stops.

The morning kicked off with the mediocre animated film We’re Back! at 5.45am, then all the usual festive fixtures were present and correct - CBBC at 6.50am, followed by the service at 10am. No Eric’n’Ern this year, though, they appeared on 23 December – and with a normal non-festive episode too – but The Two Ronnies got an outing at 11am. Lazily, though, this was simply a rerun of the compilation shown on Christmas Day 1997. Casper was the family film at 11.45am. Into the afternoon we got Top of the Pops at 1.30pm, with Jamie Theakston and Sara Cox presenting, then at 2.30pm, remembering the success of Robbie the Reindeer two years ago, BBC1 showed a new animation, Hamilton Mattress, an adventure about an aardvark. This took us up to 3pm when Liz did her stuff.

Then it was time for the new programming. The first show wasn’t that new, though - Rolf’s Merry Christmas saw Harris joined by Gaby Roslin to arrange surprises for people who deserved them. Sounds familiar? Imagine the presenter several inches shorter and with a tidier beard and you’ve got the BBC’s former festive staple. Another familiar face showed up straight after, Terry Wogan returning to Christmas Day to present another selection of Auntie’s Bloomers. The news followed, then at 4.40pm it was time for this year’s big movie premiere. Toy Story was the first fruit of the BBC’s deal with Disney which would see many of their most popular films appear on terrestrial TV for the first time. The film was a better choice for Christmas Day than last year’s Titanic – unashamed family fun, and all wrapped up within 75 minutes.

Into the evening the first of the traditional two episodes of EastEnders was shown at 5.55pm, then it was the first part of The Lost World – a two-part dramatisation of the novel, adapted by Adrian Hodges who’d seen success with his take on Dickens two years ago. The usual all-star cast was in place (Bob Hoskins, Peter Falk, Robert Hardy) and the team behind Walking with Dinosaurs put together some impressive special effects. The second part followed on Boxing Day. 7.40pm saw some mainstream comedy arrive for the first time in many years, with Alistair McGowan making the most of his billing as “the new Mike Yarwood” by filling an almost identical slot that Harold Wilson’s fave did 25 years previously.

The news was got out of the way at 8.20pm before the night’s second visit to Albert Square, and then Only Fools and Horses, making it onto our screens by the skin of its teeth at 9.05pm. Unsurprisingly, this was the most popular programme of the day, attracting more then 20 million viewers – some five million more than the number two programme (fortunately for the Beeb, that was EastEnders). Angus Deayton was back at 10.15pm for a new episode of Before They Were Famous, then the day’s second movie premiere was Sliding Doors at 10.55pm. It’s noticeable that the Christmas Day films, at least on BBC1, seemed to have moved back to the “family entertainment” vibe instead of the non-festive fare such as Coming to America and Baby Boom that had filled this slot a decade or so ago. Sending the viewers off to bed were the movie version of Steptoe and Son Ride Again at 12.35am, then a very odd choice indeed – a second outing of Louis Theroux’s encounter with the Hamiltons, first shown two weeks ago. This time, though, it was shown with sign language, simply as Tuesday was the night that signed programmes were shown. BBC1 then handed over to News 24 just after half past three.

How did ITV fare against these big guns? The morning was as amiable as the BBC equivalent – GMTV providing cartoons and Steve Chalke, followed by more animation from Children’s ITVwhen the network opened up. At 11am religious matters were dealt with by Russell Watson, singing festive songs while turning on the Christmas lights in Regent Street. Then at 12 noon Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland was unspooled again. It was the afternoon when things started going a bit wrong.

At 1.30pm there was a repeat screening for Britain’s Brainiest Kid, a general knowledge contest first shown in August and lasting a grim 90 minutes. It did however mean that Carol Vorderman had appeared in this slot two years running. After the Queen, three hours was devoted to showing … The Great Escape. Comedy writers in the past used to get a lot of mileage out of the joke that this was screened every Christmas, but research by OTT has shown that it had never been screened on the big day, nor indeed anywhere near the festive period for about two decades. Probably the oldest thing ever screened in this slot, ITV seemed to be conceding defeat almost immediately this Christmas.

A news bulletin was followed, as expected, by hour-long editions of Emmerdale and Coronation Street. If ITV were going to beat the Beeb at all this Christmas it was most likely to be in these two hours. While guaranteed a sizeable audience, two hours of soaps was a fairly unoriginal and repetitive block of programming. Then from 8.30pm, two of ITV’s light entertainment warhorses - You’ve Been Framed and Stars in Their Eyes – were enlisted to provide token opposition to the dynamic duo on BBC1. So convinced were the commercial channel that the viewing figures here would be tiny, Stars in Their Eyes was repeated just five days later. A news bulletin – pointlessly heralded as News at Ten, as if it was a normal weekday – was followed by Who Wants to be a Millionaire, with celebrity contestants playing for charity. A mediocre film choice, While You Were Sleeping, rounded off the unspectacular evening. This year ITV seemed to be harking back to the unappealing LE-fests of the 1980s instead of trying to create an appealing alternative to the Beeb’s opposition. There wasn’t even a Bond film over the holidays.

A better attempt to recreate the family Christmas of the past came from BBC2, who put aside their usual festive fare of endless opera and dull foreign films to schedule an evening of nostalgia. White Christmas was shown again at 5.50pm, then, after the Queen, over three hours were devoted to Arena’s “Night of Entertainers” – three brand new profiles of Eric Sykes, Charlie Drake and Max Bygraves. This was followed at 11.15pm by a repeat of a classicPorridge, then I Love 1973 at midnight – part of a rerun of all the I Love the Seventies series over the holiday fortnight. Still, if you wanted ballet, there was plenty to be found, BBC2 devoting almost the whole of the daylight hours to it. Kicking off at 10.45am with another screening of The Red Shoes, there were also two performances from the Royal Ballet, lasting from 12.55pm until 5.05pm with just a 20 minute break for The Simpsons in between. Of course, BBC2 couldn’t do without their ratings winner for the day, and so The Weakest Linkadded some sourness to the day in the afternoon.

A fairly rotten day on Channel 5 was enlivened only by the premiere of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, rather thrown away opposite the Trotters. Channel 4’s 20th Christmas Day wasn’t much different to the preceding 19 – repeated children’s programmes (includingBagpuss), The Big Breakfast (thankfully it’s last ever outing on Christmas Day) and Father Christmas were all there in the morning, followed by a fairly charmless 1990s remake ofPinocchio. Annie and Oliver! got airings during the afternoon, sandwiching the Alternative Christmas Message, this year delivered by a survivor of the World Trade Centre attacks. Oddly, the “official” Christmas message didn’t get an airing on C4 today. In the evening we had theCountdown final, followed by dancer Matthew Bourne taking a personal look at the art’s history, labouring under the punning title of Bourne to Dance. Portrait of a Lady was the channel’s movie choice, then at 11pm there was a fairly abrupt switch in the intended audience – last week’s So Graham Norton was repeated, followed by a double bill of horror films.

2001, then, saw BBC1 rally again to victory while BBC2 was interesting, ITV was charmless, Channel 4 was dreary and Channel 5 was an irrelevance. Little, then, that deviated from the established pattern of festive viewing that looks set to continue for the foreseeable future.

“I’m sure we watch TV, but I just don’t remember it.”

Turn back the clock a decade and soaps play but a small part in the Christmas Day schedules. In 1992, we simply got the regular half-hour episodes of EastEnders andCoronation Street. The following year, we didn’t get a Corrie at all. This is odd because they’ve always been a hugely important, and popular, part of the schedules but somewhere in the following 10 years something changed, and so Christmas Day 2002 saw the two main channels serve up over three hours of soap between them. It makes perfect sense – it’s the time of year when more people are watching TV than usual, so extended episodes of regular favourites are bound to pull in a huge audience.

As is fast becoming a Yuletide tradition, this year we got two episodes of EastEnders on BBC1, while ITV1 countered with an hour-long Emmerdale and a whopping 70 minutes ofCoronation Street. The soap block on ITV1 obviously gave it the upperhand in the early evening, and helped salvage something from, as ever, a fairly unappealing schedule for the rest of the day. It makes sense, though – those two hours or so would have given them a guaranteed audience of over 10 million viewers, and bumped up the audience share for the evening. Even if the rest of the schedule was underwhelming, ITV would probably have been happy if viewers simply switched on for those two hours, then turned off again.

And indeed the schedule seemed to be based entirely around those Emmerdale andCoronation Street. The rest of the day’s ITV1 line-up had a festive air about it, but there was little that would have got the nation gathering around their sets in anticipation. GMTV kicked off the day as usual, but for a change the Reverend Steve Chalke was nowhere to be seen. Instead the breakfast station simply offered three and a half hours of non-stop animation; probably correct given the likely audience. That was followed by similar fare from ITV itself – a 90 minute animated film, The King’s Beard, with Maureen Lipman and Jim Broadbent on voice duties, and it in turn was followed by two religious cartoons. Indeed we didn’t see a real live human on screen until the news at 12.50pm.

The afternoon was the usual blend of fillers – a repeat outing for the fluffy documentary on The Waltons – After They Were Famous was followed at 2pm by a repeat of the previous night’sWho Wants to be a Millionaire. Not great festive viewing, but probably more fun than the rotten repeats (Britain’s Brainiest Kid et al) that had filled this slot in previous years. Then it was time for The Queen – and for the first time this year, Buckingham Palace had gone to the extent of producing a trailer to promote the speech in advance. It seemed to work, too, as 9.3 million people turned into watch (between the two channels, of course), an improvement on recent times. Then at 3.10pm it was time for the now-traditional old film, and Bond was back with another outing for Thunderball. An unimaginative choice, perhaps, but it was an amiable way to pass a few hours.

After the news at 5.30pm it was onto the light entertainment, and there must have been few surprised to see You’ve Been Framed back there. What was more surprising, however, was an appearance for Blind Date – a series which seemed to be on its last legs. Perhaps taking into account what BBC1 were showing at the same time – the first of two episodes of EastEnders – explains this scheduling. This was your standard Christmas episode, though – the usual format with a twist. Hence Big Brother’s Alex and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson sat in the chair to pick a date, and a second programme at 9.05pm (yes, opposite EastEnders again) showed us how they got on. Between the two were Emmerdale at 6.55pm followed by Coronation Street at 7.55pm. Then at 9.35pm we got the day’s second helping of Chris Tarrant, bullying more celebrities in Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The news followed, then Jaws, a decent enough choice for a movie to fall asleep to.

There’s nothing in the ITV1 schedule that screams “Christmas” at you – most of the day’s programmes could really have gone out on any day of the year. But an evening of tried and tested hits at least meant that the third channel wasn’t completely humiliated during the day. Indeed, compared to some of the awful schedules ITV have offered up on Christmas Day in the past, it’s an almost magical line-up.

But for your festive perennials, you had to look at BBC1. As ever, you could almost guess what they were going to show before the schedules were actually published. Hence we got children’s programmes from 6am, before the service from St Peter’s Church in Bolton at 10.15am. Then it was a welcome return to Christmas Day for Eric and Ern, whose 1973 Christmas show got another repeat airing. Yes, most people could probably recite the script along with the duo, but there was something almost comforting about seeing the magnificent two do their stuff. Almost as familiar, but less welcome, was The Santa Clause, the Tim Allen movie appearing on Christmas Day again – it had previously filled an almost identical slot in 2000. Then it was Top of the Pops, back in the pre-Queen 2pm slot for the first time since 1994, and with Richard Blackwood and Lisa Snowden in charge. After the Queen was a new animated adventure forRobbie the Reindeer, his first since 1999’s Hooves of Fire, and so far, all the familiar aspects of a BBC Christmas were present and correct.

But then there was a change – there were no family reunions or dreams coming true on Christmas Day for probably the first time in nearly 20 years. Of course, Noel Edmonds had long since been chased out of Television Centre, but there wasn’t even a similarly-themed replacement for his Christmas Presents show, à la Rolf Harris in 2001, or Jim Davidson the year before. Instead, and perhaps not surprisingly, there was a special edition of Bargain Hunt. David Dickinson had already started the transition from student cult to family favourite when the antiques game show had moved from daytime to peaktime earlier in the year. Now he made his debut on Christmas Day with the show’s experts facing off each other.

The second big change came at 4.20pm, when Paul O’Grady introduced Outtake TV. This meant that there was no appearance for Terry Wogan on BBC1 anywhere around Christmas, after 25 years when he’d become a regular over the festive season, from Blankety Blank, through Wogan, and onto Auntie’s Bloomers. But Bloomers had been revamped with a new name and a new host; O’Grady linking the corpsing and the pratfalls instead. Normal service was resumed with the family film (Chicken Run at 4.50pm) and then the evening’s first visit to Albert Square following the news at 6.20pm.

Then BBC1 had to fill in the two hours while most viewers would have switched over to ITV for the soaps. So we got a festive edition of My Family at 6.55pm. Despite at best indifference and at worst hostility from critics, the show had managed to pull in a large audience throughout the year, a rare feat for a new sitcom. And at least, with an episode set on Christmas Day, it was a fairly appropriate choice. Less good was the hour of Ground Force that followed – yes, it was a popular series and yes, it was Alan Titchmarsh’s final show, but as with Changing Rooms in 1998, did the audience really want this sort of thing on Christmas Day? Thankfully some proper family fun followed at 8.25pm – Alistair McGowan returned, but in the preceding 12 months, his partner Ronni Ancona had taken equal prominence in his show, and hence it now went under the name of simply The Big Impression.

Just five minutes of news at 9pm was followed by the night’s second instalment of EastEnders, then at 9.40pm was the big event – a new episode of Only Fools and Horses. This was, technically, the second of the three new episodes heralded by last year’s Christmas show, but thankfully, the production of this instalment was not quite as rushed as the last one; by all accounts, it was even quite good. Then at 10.55pm, another BBC comedy favourite – a Christmas Day outing for French and Saunders. Before They Were Famous, the normal accompaniment to the biscuit assortment, had shifted to Boxing Day. BBC1 rounded off the evening with the Adam Sandler vehicle The Wedding Singer and then, as is virtually a tradition, the British comedy film - Steptoe and Son making their second consecutive appearance on Christmas Day, at 1.10am. News 24 followed at 2.50am.

The other channels put out an as-expected line-up of programmes. After Breakfast, BBC2 showed festive episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Simpsons (the new episode opposite The Queen was missing this year, though). Then every episode of the documentaryQueen and Country, a series on the monarch’s 50 years on the throne, was shown back-to-back from 10.45am. Unsurprisingly this was followed by ballet (Swan Lake at 2.45pm), the profile of a film star (a tribute to Bing Crosby at 5pm) and then, inevitably, It’s a Wonderful Lifeat 5.50pm. Classicial music followed at 8pm with Lesley Garrett and her guests at the Harrogate Centre, and then at 9.05pm it was the lengthy film premiere – Mike Leigh’s biopic of Gilbert and Sullivan, Topsy-Turvy. At 11.40pm there was an abrupt change in tone, with a number of repeats that were screened each night over the holiday fortnight - The Office, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, I Love the Eighties (which had reached 1984) and music showRe:Covered – before closedown at 2.40am.

Channel 4 had the bonus this year of not having to kick off with The Big Breakfast, nor indeed its replacement RI:SE, which was on a hiatus pending another revamp. Instead we got a stack of children’s programmes, including at 8.05am a documentary celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Snowman (which C4 showed on Christmas Eve). A repeat outing for the recent Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party and a TV movie version of A Christmas Carol took us up to 3pm, and Sharon Osbourne delivering The Alternative Christmas Message. Then Peter Ustinov appeared in the old film Death on the Nile and there was a repeat outing for the drama Shackleton, first shown the previous Christmas. C4 had a rather unfestive Christmas night, though – a 90 minute portrait on John Osborne was followed by two episodes of The Osbournes (do you see?) and a repeat of Sharon Osbourne’s message. Then at 10.55pm, The Real Derek and Clive paid tribute to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s comedy in perhaps the most expletive-packed programme ever screened on Christmas Day.

Five devoted most of Christmas Night to repeated documentaries and films about World War II. More fun was the following evening, where they raided the ITV archives for an evening of classic comedy including The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show from 1981 and Tommy Cooper’s show from Christmas Day 1973. The type of thing they just don’t make anymore? Maybe so, but on the same day as the Cooper show originally went out we also got the nun-based movieWhere Angels Go, Trouble Follows – and given the choice, most people would probably opt forGround Force Goes Festive above that.

“Del Boy and family face eviction.”

It’s always very easy to hark back nostalgically to Christmases past and suggest that television on 25 December isn’t what it used to be. Yet OTT’s survey of the past three decades illustrates that this has always been the case. Look back at 1991, for example, when Birds of a Feather and Keeping Up Appearances – probably two of the least-loved sitcoms of the ’90s – were the only new British programmes on peak-time BBC1. Or1988, when light entertainment was represented by Bread and Russ Abbot. It seems as if the actual standard of festive television is still remarkably high.

However, Christmas Day 2003’s schedules inspired the Daily Mail, a few weeks beforehand, to splash on their front page the “news” that there were more repeats on the big day than ever before. Yet of course, this really isn’t surprising. Compared to a decade ago, we’ve now got five terrestrial channels, four of which are broadcasting 24 hours a day and as such the expansion in broadcasting hours is always going to be inexorably linked to the expansion in repeats. Indeed, one obvious reason for the increase is that in the early hours ITV1 showed a number of short cartoon repeats for 90 minutes, rather than one old film – hardly an incredible story.

As it happened, there were few surprises among 2003’s festive schedules. It certainly wasn’t the repeat bonanza that the press may have led you to believe – only two programmes in peak time had been shown before, one each on BBC2 and five. But undoubtedly the channels wheeled out the obvious big guns, all hoping to play to their strengths on Christmas Days past. The most obvious example, of course, was BBC1, where the schedule has become almost as traditional as the glory years of the 1970s.

If we’re talking statistics, though, one notable aspect of 2003 is that BBC1 perhaps featured more live programming on the day than for many years. Most of this was thanks to Breakfast, the daily news programme, swapping slots with the children’s programmes and going out on BBC1 on Christmas Day – something not even Frank and Selina did in their heyday. This ran from 6am to 9am, and then after an hour of cartoons, there was more live television with the traditional service, The Joys of Christmas, broadcast from Milton Keynes.

After all this excitement, though, it seemed as if the Beeb decided to put their feet up for the rest of the daytime. 11am saw a repeat of Hooves of Fire, the cartoon starring Robbie the Reindeer first shown on this day in 1999. Perhaps the BBC are trying to find a festive staple along the lines of The Snowman, wheeled out every year without fail and a part of the festive season for families nationwide? Something that definitely seems to have taken up this role is Morecambe and Wise, and as expected, they were back on our screens with more classic sketches – albeit this year in a compilation of their festive shows from 1975 and 1976. The premiere of The Tigger Movie at 12.40pm was an obvious choice for the family film slot, and at the very least meant The Santa Clause wasn’t on again.

The recently relaunched All New Top of the Pops, with Tim Kash now the sole presenter, filled the 2pm slot that more or less all the previous incarnations had in the past. Another slight variation on a familiar theme followed the Queen’s speech - Dear Father Christmas saw Dale Winton making dreams come true for deserving children. Obviously, Dale was doing almost exactly the same job Rolf Harris had done here two years ago, and more famously Noel Edmonds throughout the ’80s and ’90s. If this was all a bit predictable, it did at least make for an agreeable diversion to take us through the post-turkey period. Outtake TV followed, in more or less the same slot as in 2002, only with a different host, Anne Robinson, and a special show made up entirely of clips from The Weakest Link. Taking us into primetime at 4.25pm was this year’s big film premiere, and for the third consecutive year, it was an animated film - Stuart Little, ironically 24 hours after the sequel had been premiered on Sky Movies.

At 6pm we inevitably got the first of two 40-minutes episodes of EastEnders, before another Christmas Day outing for My Family. Finally at 7.10pm it was something a bit different, though still reliably familiar - Christmas Night With the Stars. A programme with this name had, until1972, been perhaps the centrepiece of the Beeb’s festive schedules, bringing together almost all the BBC’s light entertainment output in specially-recorded mini-episodes of familiar series. However this 80-minute special was more akin to Des O’Connor’s show on ITV back on Christmas Day 1996.

Here, Michael Parkinson hosted a show that was billed as “a cross between Comic Relief and the Royal Variety Performance”. What this actually meant was comedy routines with the likes of Jon Culshaw, Ricky Tomlinson and The Kumars, and music from Emma Bunton, Will Young and Busted – as well as the day’s second appearance of Victoria Beckham, having already appeared on Top of the Pops earlier, let alone a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the Beckhams on ITV1 the previous evening. Parky’s show perhaps wasn’t the most imaginative programme the BBC had broadcast, but the miscellany format meant it was ideal for dipping in and out of between the turkey sandwiches, and allowed BBC1 to combat Coronation Street without throwing away one of its stronger offerings.

The news at 8.30pm was followed by the second EastEnders, then at 9.20pm Only Fools and Horses, the third of John Sullivan’s new episodes of the ratings juggernaut. This year Sullivan was wary about describing it as “the last ever”, given that he’d said this in both 1993 and 1996 and been proven wrong. Inevitably this was the most watched programme on the 25th, with 15.5 million viewers – lower than the two previous installments, but way ahead of anything else broadcast on the day. This is despite the fact that more or less everyone had admitted that theprevious two installments had been disappointing – perhaps appropriately for this day, the public seemed willing to indulge Del and Rodney based on affection for the pair that went back a long way.

The evening was rounded off by the third annual appearance of Alistair McGowan and Ronni Ancona, with a special Posh and Becks-themed edition of The Big Impression at 10.35pm – perhaps one of the few programmes on this day without an appearance from the real Victoria Beckham, and in fact higher-rating than all of those. Then as usual BBC1 bunged out two movies before packing up – Pierce Brosnan’s remake of The Thomas Crown Affair then, after a brief epilogue, Airplane II: The Sequel, handing over to News 24 at 2.35am.

What did ITV1 come up with this year to combat the BBC’s big guns? As is seemingly traditional, the channel seemed to take several hours to awaken from its slumber, with a particularly dull morning. GMTV pumped out cartoons until 9.25am, before over two hours of religion – twice as much as BBC1 was offering. This involved a repeat of the animated Christmas story, A Small Miracle, followed by Tony Henry going in search of the Nativity story, and then at 11am, a repeat of the episode of My Favourite Hymns shown on Christmas Day 1999, with (the by now late) Dame Thora Hird selecting her favourite carols. Some unashamed entertainment followed, though, with the first showing of the animated Doug’s First Movie at 11.30am, then after some cartoons and the news, at 1.20pm came the ancient buddy-doggy movie Turner and Hooch.

The third channel finally got into gear after the Queen’s speech with, as in previous years, a Bond film – a newer one this time, though, Tomorrow Never Dies. The first of two celebrity editions of Who Wants to be a Millionaire followed at 5.15pm, and then after the news came a festive installment of the animation Creature Comforts – at only 15 minutes long, this was probably the best thing ITV had shown on the 25 December for years. Inevitably, the main part of the early evening was devoted to hour-long episodes of Emmerdale and Coronation Street – as usual smartly scheduled to avoid the offerings from Albert Square on the other side.

ITV1’s big idea this Christmas followed at 8.40pm; World Idol, a mass sing-off between 11 Pop Idol winners from around the globe. Heavily promoted and hugely expensive, ITV1 had high hopes for this show – but inevitably, opposite Alfie Moon and the Trotters it had no chance, and only managed to pick up some 4.5 million viewers. Then, less than four hours after its first screening, it was a swift repeat for Creature Comforts. After the news came the second of the night’s Millionaires, before a mediocre film to round the evening off, Fierce Creatures at 11.35pm. Overall it was a fairly anonymous day on the commercial channel, once more illustrating that, Corrie, Emmerdale and Chris Tarrant aside, they have little in the way of a festive staple that can pull in the viewers year after year.

Even BBC2 have more festive regulars than ITV1 – the prestige operas, the classic movies, the foreign films. All were present and correct this year, with My Fair Lady during the afternoon followed by Die Fledermaus from Glyndebourne, and the premiere of the acclaimed French movie Belleville Rendez-vous at 7pm. In the evening, the only repeated programme in peaktime was the Natural World documentary on the nature of Highgrove, followed by the third part of a series on predators, Wild Battlefields. Unusually, there was new entertainment on Christmas Day as well, with a festive edition of the moanathon Grumpy Old Men at 10.20pm. As last year, the late evening was devoted to repeats shown daily throughout the festive period - Room 101,The Fast Show, Red Dwarf, TOTP2 and Later with Jools Holland running until 2.20am.

All the regulars were present and correct on Channel 4 too – kids programmes all morning (RI:SE having been axed the previous week), and Muppets From Space at 1.25pm was a much better choice of family film than ITV1 were offering at the same time. The Alternative Christmas Message, delivered by two of the “stars” of Wife Swap, was shown as usual at 3pm, before two films from Christmas Days past in Oliver! and Some Like It Hot. Like BBC2, there was a foreign film – the premiere of Amelie at 9.15pm – and if the Beeb had the opera, then C4 had the dance – The Firebird at 8.15, performed by The Canadian National Ballet. Even five seemed to have found a consistent pattern for Christmas Day viewing – military documentaries all afternoon and the umpteenth screening for National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

It seems bizarre that, after nearly 50 years of trying, ITV have yet to find a memorable and successful format for Christmas Day viewing. It’s especially strange given that, on an average evening, their long-running soaps, dramas and entertainment shows normally manage to defeat all-comers. Yet this is perhaps one of the best things about Christmas Day telly – viewers forget the rest of the year and look forward to something really special and out of the ordinary, something it seems only the BBC can provide. Long may it continue.

“Loved and loathed in equal measure.”

For those who are fascinated by Christmas television, one of the main attractions is finding out what the Big Film is going to be. The idea of having a massively successful, popular movie premiering on Christmas Day goes back many years – to an era when the television screening was the first time you would ever be able to see it outside the cinema, and many years after its original release. Now, even though DVD, video, satellite and pay-per-view television have made the terrestrial premiere of a film obviously less of an event, there is still normally a major movie getting its first screening on TV on the big day.

The quality and type of film has varied over the years, though. In the early 1970s, what was important was that it was a big, popular offering – hence the premieres of such things as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or Airport. These weren’t particularly festive but certainly pulled in the viewers. In later years the post-Queen slot on BBC1 was the most prestigious – here’s where the legendary movies like The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz made their first appearances.

Come the early 1990s, though, the Big Film on Christmas Day seemed to lose its lustre somewhat, with many years seeing the appearance of movies that, while undoubtedly successful, seemed rather inappropriate for the prime slot of the year. The most obvious example is ITV’s 1993 Christmas Day, when the likes of Field of Dreams and DOA were wheeled out – the sort of thing you could expect on a bog-standard Saturday night, not December 25. While the Beeb tried harder, such things as Coming to America in 1991 and, especially, Indecent Proposal in 1995 hardly seemed the best choice for a time when the family customarily watches together.

However in recent years, the BBC have put the onus firmly back on family entertainment. Partly this is thanks to the larger stock of post-watershed homegrown programming that fills the slot which used to be home to the film, meaning they now go out in the late afternoon and early evening. If the premieres themselves aren’t going to be a major excitement – with the vast majority having appeared in several stockings in Christmases past – then they should at least make for agreeable post-turkey viewing. Hence in 2004, BBC1 wheeled out two premieres - 102 Dalmatians at 3.55pm and the phenomenally popular Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stoneat 6.05pm; the latter of which was a particularly expensive acquisition. Both made for perfect family viewing.

However the rest of the BBC1 schedule seemed slightly more threadbare than usual. It all started in standard form, with Breakfast making another appearance at 6am, followed by children’s programmes, including a new animation, The Tale of Jack Frost. That’s said, it’s a shame the usual Saturday morning programming, Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow, was screened only on the CBBC Channel, with analogue viewers getting to see it two days later. The boys’ anarchy would have made for a great start to the morning. Instead, at 9.50am was the traditional service, this time entitled Crackers for Christmas! and broadcast from Coventry.

Indeed, the appearance of Dick and Dom may have shored up a disappointing morning on BBC1. A screening for the Disney film Aladdin at 10.50am was fair enough – it was a popular and entertaining movie and along the same lines as previous occupants of this slot. Yet this was followed at 12.05pm by Santa Claus – the ancient Dudley Moore vehicle, first shown on this channel in 1988 and always wheeled out during the daytime somewhere over Christmas. This was its first appearance on the big day itself, bizarrely, and it surely didn’t deserve such a plum slot. It was a step down from the classic comedy and new animation that had been screened over lunchtime in recent years.

Thankfully we were back on form at 2pm with the 38th consecutive Christmas Day outing forTop of the Pops, with the current regular presenters Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates as hosts (Tim Kash having been dropped earlier in the year). However it’s possible this could have been its last appearance in the traditional position, with the programme to be rescheduled to Sunday evenings on BBC2 in early 2005. We’ll have to wait and see what effect this has on our longest-running festive fixture. Just as traditional was what followed the Queen’s speech - Dear Father Christmas, Dale Winton’s second year, and the BBC’s umpteenth, of distributing special presents to people who deserved it. This took is into the first big film of the day, 102 Dalmatians.

Then it was the first primetime Christmas special which came at 5.35pm with another festiveBig Impression from Alistair McGowan and Ronni Ancona – returning to a sketch show after last year’s excursion into sitcom. It’s good to see the BBC still has a comedy series that can play to family audiences rather than only appear after the kids have gone to bed. Harry Potterfollowed, the longest film in this slot since Titanic in 2000, lasting nearly two and a half hours and adding to a surprisingly large total of acquired programming on BBC1 this time around.

After several years of topping and tailing the schedule, EastEnders was back to a more traditional hour-long episode. Despite the programme suffering from appalling publicity in 2004, with endless newspaper reports of some of the cast’s off-screen exploits and critical derision for apparent poor storylines and characters, somehow the residents of Albert Square were celebrating after pulling in the biggest audience of the day – 11.8 million viewers. That said, it’s questionable how much was down to the quality of the show and how much was down to the favourable placing slap bang in the middle of peaktime.

It’s interesting how every time a major comedy show ends on BBC1, something else is always found to take its place. Hence when Only Fools and Horses finished up, apparently for good, in the mid-’90s, One Foot in The Grave was able to take on the mantle as the nation’s favourite sitcom, which in turn was superseded by Men Behaving Badly, The Royle Family and, in 2001,Only Fools and Horses again. Now the Trotters had taken their leave – apparently for the last time ever, although we’d all heard that before - The Vicar of Dibley was back to fill the prime 9.25pm slot. Earlier in 2004, the Dawn French vehicle had been voted third in BBC2’s Britain’s Best Sitcom poll – something of an achievement as, thanks to the huge demand for the cast and crew on other shows, only 16 episodes had ever been made, mostly for special occasions – the last of which was five years ago. Nevertheless the team had managed to get together for two new episodes, one on New Year’s Day and one for the big day itself. The 11.3 million audience even managed to beat Coronation Street to become the Christmas 2004’s second most watched show.

After French came Saunders, with a special episode of Absolutely Fabulous at 10.30pm. Incredibly this series had been running since 1992, and despite constant pledges that there really wasn’t going to be any more for most of that time, it was still making fairly regular returns. This was the first time it had ever appeared on Christmas Day, though if most people thought it was running out of steam in 1994, come 2004 it had turned into more or less a pantomime – so this was perhaps appropriate scheduling. The final new show of the night was a return to Christmas Day for Before They Were Famous at 11.10pm, then it was onto repeats with George Clooney film Out of Sight getting another airing at 11.50pm. David Suchet introduced a short epilogue at 1.45am, before a dramatic leap into the film Young Frankensteinand a repeat of the previous night’s Jonathan Ross show leading to a handover to News 24 at 4.40am.

Could ITV1 top a lacklustre BBC1 line-up? Well, it started solidly, if boringly, with the regularGMTV cartoons and then, at 9.25am, the regular Saturday morning series Ministry of Mayhem, with it’s half-arsed mess and dull features coming across as a pale shadow of the SM:TVspecial that had filled this slot five years previously. The day’s religious content – some two hours later than BBC1 – came in the form of Don’t Drop Baby Jesus at 11.45am, a documentary looking behind the scenes of a nativity play. We went up to lunchtime with the premiere of a mediocre family film, A Simple Wish, at 12.55pm, then a new animation, The Little Reindeer – charming enough, but rather twee and pedestrian for a big audience at 2.30pm. Interestingly, compared to the Beeb, ITV showed comparatively few films during the day, with the Queen followed, not by the usual action or comedy movie, but instead a rerun of the Martin Clunes-starring period drama Goodbye Mister Chips.

The evening entertainment started at 5.15pm with You’ve Been Framed, a slightly better proposition in recent years thanks to the presence of new host Harry Hill linking the clips in his own unique style. Then at 5.40pm came the by-now-traditional celebrity edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Though not the ratings juggernaut it once was, it was still in robust health, and the chance to see Paul McCartney and Heather Mills pondering over the options surely lured in a few viewers. At 6.55pm it was onto the usual soap block. Oddly there was only 30 minutes at Emmerdale this year, though Corrie got the full hour, where a blockbuster episode involving a wedding and the imminent departure of popular character Karen McDonald did comparatively poorly – perhaps suffering from Harry Potter’s popularity, but a rare example of something going the cockneys’ way this year.

As usual the Weatherfield soap finished at the exact moment EastEnders started up on the other side, but those left on the third channel could enjoy a new episode of Midsomer Murders. John Nettles’ series had been a consistent hit for ITV over seven years, although inevitably this special wilted in the face of the BBC’s opposition. At 10.30pm came Parkinson, who had of course defected from the BBC this year – the first time since Morecambe and Wise in 1978 that the same programme had appeared on different channels in successive years. Sadly for Parky, headline guest Elton John pulled out and he found himself chatting to Joe Pasquale instead. Bob Hope must have seemed a long way away. A couple of films then took us through the night from 11.45pm.

One major change on the minority channels was that, like Parky, The Simpsons had left the BBC and found a new home on Channel 4. To mark this change, they were afforded the honour of delivering C4’s Alternative Christmas Message this year – the first time the producers had made an episode, albeit under five minutes long, for a non-American broadcaster. Such was the channel’s excitement at this, not only was it screened at 3pm, but also 4.05pm, 6.10pm, 8.25pm and 10.35pm, along with two repeat episodes in the afternoon.

Overall it was a rather more mainstream C4 line-up this year - The Snowman returned to Christmas Day for the first time since 1996, and was screened at 2.30pm, while it was also part of the countdown of The 100 Greatest Christmas Moments, first screened the previous night and repeated at 4pm. The Pink Panther and the acclaimed music documentary Buena Vista Social Club topped and tailed the evening, though at 8.30pm was a typically C4 enterprise – Robert Beckford’s two-hour examination of Who Wrote The Bible?

BBC2 went back to basics this year with the films Little Women, White Christmas and Great Expectations in the afternoon, while Lesley Garrett trilled songs from the shows in the early evening. Kiss Me Kate at 7.10pm meant BBC2’s 40th anniversary Christmas included a new version of one of its opening night shows, while the expected Arena documentary at 9.40pm was a tribute to launch a season of programmes on Dennis Potter.

Meanwhile, five performed as well as could be expected, with a number of films, includingSingin’ in the Rain in the afternoon, and repeats of their hit shows CSI and Law and Order in the evening. We’ll draw a veil over the scheduling of Columbo at 5.10pm.

On the whole, Christmas 2004 was home to sturdy if unspectacular line-ups on all five channels – they all had good moments but there was nothing that really stood out. It seems that, if BBC1 is off form, the whole day falls a little flat. However, this is surely testament to the main channel’s continual hold over our imaginations during the festive period.

“And it’s a Happy New Year from him”

It always used to be said that people judged the quality of their Christmas by the standard of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show – testament to the importance of Christmas Day telly to our national heritage. Certainly, it’s a day that seems to come under the microscope more than any other, with everyone permanently comparing it to the legendary festive line-ups of the 1970s and ’80s. And indeed, much of 2005’s Christmas TV seemed to owe a lot to the traditions of the past.

BBC1’s Christmas Day started much as expected, with the now-familiar three hours ofBreakfast, followed predictably at 9am by some children’s animation – in this case, a new adaptation of The Snow Queen. Christmas Day fell on a Sunday this year, which in the past would have meant a commitment to religious programming in peak-time, as was the case in1977, 1983 and 1988. However with the “God slot” no longer enforced by the broadcasting authorities this wasn’t the case. There was a surprisingly large amount of religion this morning, though, BBC1 following up a service from Clifton Cathedral in Bristol with a special edition ofSongs of Praise from the Royal Albert Hall – making up nearly two hours in total.

At 11.45am came something quite surprising – an episode of Blue Peter, the first time in a long while a children’s show had received such a high-profile slot on the big day. This was a special edition where the team met kids who had done something outstanding and organised surprises for them, including the awarding of a prized BP gold badge. Basically, it was simply another variation on the format that Dale Winton, Rolf Harris and most famously Noel Edmonds had essayed in the past. The biggest low of the day followed, though, when The Santa Clause was unspooled on Christmas Day for the third time this decade.

Following this at 2pm was Top of the Pops – now its only appearance on BBC1, with the regular weekly show having been demoted to BBC2 earlier in the year. Seemingly, compared to the hit-and-miss nature of the regular chart, the guaranteed big acts the Christmas show promised were enough of a draw to allow it to return to the main channel in its familiar slot, and Shane Richie joined regular hosts Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates to add a bit of glamour to proceedings. As it was a Sunday, too, the programme also had the honour of unveiling the Christmas number one before anyone else.

After The Queen, it was, as now seems to be traditional, on to an animated film. Intriguingly, though, Shrek wasn’t a premiere, having been shown first the previous Christmas Eve. Ironically it actually pulled in a slightly larger audience than the film that followed, shown for the first time.Toy Story 2 at 4.30pm meant it was one of the rare occasions where both the original film and its sequel had both been premiered on Christmas Day – the former did so in 2001. Although two films back-to-back may have seemed a bit of a lazy option, put together they still lasted under three hours, compared to the epics like Titanic and Harry Potter in previous years, and left peaktime free for new, original British programming. Indeed there was substantially less time devoted to films today than in previous years.

So we headed into the early evening and at 6pm, BBC1 once more managed to fish something from their increasingly shallow pool of mainstream comedy hits, and screened a special edition of My Family. This was amiable enough, but not really that spectacular. Something that certainly was, however, followed at 7pm – a special edition of Doctor Who, making its first appearance on 25 December since 1965. With the relaunched series proving hugely successful earlier this year, illustrating how the right kind of show can get families watching telly together again, it seemed a dead cert for a Christmas Day slot. The fact that David Tennant would be making his first appearance as the Doctor ensured this was a genuinely special Christmas special, as the audience of just under 10 million viewers – drawing level with Coronation Street – proved. It was probably the best, most welcome sight on Christmas Night for years.

The same couldn’t be said, alas, of the next programme. Everyone had seemed to resign themselves to the fact Only Fools and Horses was now definitely not coming back ever again, but some of its spirit did live on as, earlier in the year, Sullivan had scripted a spin-off series about the adventures of Boycie and Marlene. The Green Green Grass was a medium-sized success, and clearly the show’s predecessor made a Christmas Day slot the most obvious home for its festive special. What it did mean was the show enjoyed a particularly swift promotion to the big time, getting a huge slot only four months after its opening episode. However it was hard to imagine even the most ardent fan of Del and Rodney suggesting this was in the same league as its parent show, and it seemed to win this prime slot on their reputation alone. Where a Christmas special of The Green Green Grass would be placed at Christmas 2006 would perhaps offer more of a clue of its genuine success.

Inevitably we got an hour-long episode of EastEnders at 9pm, after ITV1 had transmitted their soap juggernauts, and for a change they’d manage to rustle up a fairly happy story for Christmas Day. The departure of Alfie Moon was enough of a draw to ensure it pulled in the highest audience of the day with 10.4 million viewers.

Next up was another show that owed a lot to Christmasses past. Earlier in 2005, The Two Ronnies Sketchbook saw Messrs Barker and Corbett reunite to show again some of their classic sketches, interspersed with new jokes and reminisces from the pair. The series proved very popular – as well as being pleasingly cost-effective – and as such a special Christmas episode was commissioned. With Ronnie B in poor health, however, it was recorded very early in the year and, sadly, had to be shown posthumously, topped with a special introduction from Ronnie C. As the last thing Ronnie B ever did on television, it was something of a special event, hence the Christmas Day placing, though with all the goodwill in the world, it’s hard to imagine a compilation of old Two Ronnies clips being particularly exciting Yuletide viewing in any other year.

Another disappointment came with the final new programme before BBC1 screened the usual selection of movies into the small hours. This year’s Before They Were Famous was not a new episode as such but instead a compilation of clips from previous editions of the series, interspersed with interviews with some of the participants. Overall, then, while the BBC1 Christmas schedule hit the heights at some points – most obviously with Doctor Who – there seemed to be a lot of padding and a lot of repetition, as if they were trying their hardest to replicate the winning formulas of the past.

What did ITV1 offer against this line-up? Things started familiarly enough with GMTV, cartoons and a special programme, Help! It’s Christmas, where the Reverend Steve Chalke, a familiar sight on ITV Christmasses in recent years, was challenged to put on a nativity play relying on people’s goodwill. Then at 11am Disney’s Alice in Wonderland was shown again, as it was on this day in 1996. A documentary detailing Chris Tarrant’s experiences with polar bears followed, then the two hours up to The Queen were easily filled with a screening of The Railway Children- so far, so normal Sunday telly.

After the speech ITV1 repeated the festive Creature Comforts from 2003, and then combated BBC1’s repeated film with … a repeated film. Specifically, Jim Carrey’s version of The Grinch, which was the sort of family entertainment the Beeb normally filled up the evening with. After this, at 5.30pm, was another episode of Creature Comforts, but this one brand new, and with the Plasticine animals allowed a whole half hour rather than the usual 10 minutes – excellent fun.

The festive Emmerdale and Coronation Street episodes, both an hour long as usual, were smartly scheduled opposite the weak spots in BBC1’s line-up - My Family and The Green Green Grass respectively – and hence recorded healthy viewing figures. In between, at 7pm, came the usual celebrity edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. This wasn’t the smash hit it once was, as could be seen by the fact it was screened opposite the long-awaited Whospecial, but it was still a reliable ratings-grabber for ITV1 and surely the sight of Terry Wogan in the big chair must have lured some viewers over.

At 9pm came The Booze Cruise 2 – the follow-up to a comedy drama that had proven particularly popular. The antics of Mark Benton, Neil Pearson and Brian Murphy weren’t the most cerebral viewing, but as a good-natured romp it was probably amiable enough through a Baileys-induced haze. It also meant it was a very merry Christmas for writers Paul Minett and Brian Leveson, with the veteran comedy scribes having also scripted the episode of My Familyon BBC1 earlier. The last show of the night on the third channel was The South Bank Show, but as befits the day it was a rather more accessible edition than usual, with Melvyn Bragg looking behind the scenes of Little Britain. It perhaps says a lot about ITV’s comedy prowess that an hour on Christmas Day was devoted to little more than an advert for one of the BBC’s hottest shows.

Overall it seemed a more equal battle between the two channels on the big night than in some years, and it’s not hard to imagine a lot of channel-changing going on in households throughout the evening – the complementary scheduling meant both network’s crown jewels (Who andEastEnders for the BBC, Emmerdale and Coronation Street on ITV1) faced minimal competition and both could enjoy huge audiences.

As usual the other channels had a few bright spots in amongst the more highbrow fare. BBC2 screened ballet in the afternoon and were also able to repeat the morning’s Songs of Praise at something more like its usual hour. As ever there was an Arena for Christmas Day, the arts strand paying tribute to comedy writing legends Ray Galton and Alan Simpson with a 90-minute profile and, later, a classic episode of Steptoe and Son. The Rupert Everett-starring version of The Importance of Being Earnest was their choice of film, while later, in amongst the usual comedy reruns (Dead Ringers, Never Mind the Buzzcocks), was the first part of The Unique Dave Allen, a series of repeats running through the week paying tribute to the comedian who, like Ronnie Barker, had also died this year.

Channel 4 spent much of the daytime screening repeats of The Simpsons – there was nothing new from Springfield this Christmas, alas, as in fact there hadn’t been here since February. The Snowman was present and correct at 2.30pm and Jamie Oliver gave The Alternative Christmas Message, while Singin’ in the Rain was screened at 3.40pm – exactly one year since five had shown it. Inevitably the evening was home to some more challenging material, including a new opera and a two-hour documentary on the religious response to the Tsunami. At 10pm, however, an abrupt change saw them screen the film Jerry Maguire.

five relied on films for most of the day, including The Big Sleep, Casablanca and all three-and-a-bit hours of Dances With Wolves, while inevitably National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacationgot another run-out. In between all this at 8pm was Greatest TV Comedy Moments, a repeated clip compilation hosted by Richard Wilson, which probably made use of much material first seen on Christmas Days past.

Overall, Christmas 2005 seemed to see a consistent effort by all the broadcasters to replicate past glories with similar kinds of programmes – and in some cases the same programmes. It would be wrong to say it was a failure, however, as there was a sizeable amount of decent stuff on. And with Doctor Who alone, there was enough magic and excitement in the air to make it really feel like Christmas.

“Life really doesn’t get much better”

One of the reasons why Christmas Day television remains so important and unique in the telly year is that it remains more or less the one day when the traditions of the past continue to be observed. The TV is normally switched on around lunchtime and stays on all day; the family tends to watch as one instead of everyone going off to different channels on different TVs; and BBC2 and Channel 4 return to the self-consciously “alternative” remits that they took up some 20 or 30 years ago.

Time was it was also one of the few days of the year when BBC1 would lord it over ITV1, who would baulk at the idea of wasting big shows when all the shops were shut and there were hardly any adverts, and so simply make a token gesture to compete. Throughout 2006, however, the commercial channel had suffered poor ratings and dreadful publicity, and so a BBC1 victory on the big day was no longer that unique.

Christmas Day 2006 saw ITV1 put out most of the same type of fare as they had in previous years – a grab-bag of films, repeats and the odd original show, along with the big soaps, to give the impression of competing while having already shown the really good stuff in the more profitable period earlier in the autumn.

The channel started the day with the usual burst of cartoons from GMTV, followed by religion ,with the next part of their continuing documentary looking behind the scenes of Canterbury Cathedral which had been running on Sunday mornings. Something new followed at 10.30am, however, with Christmas Cooks, part of a spin-off from Antony Worrall Thompson’s Saturday morning culinary feast that was running every day over the holiday period. After the excitement of brand new programmes in the morning, however, lunchtime was filled with Alice in Wonderland and The Grinch – both of which were being screened for the second consecutiveChristmas Day on ITV1.

After The Queen came yet more repeats, as Phillip Schofield counted down the Best Ever Christmas Films, as he had done on Christmas Eve in 2005. Then, to see the channel through until the evening, Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone – just two years after it had been the big Christmas Day film on BBC1. This mass of repeats – which, excepting the news andThe Queen, totalled seven hours – was a rather half-hearted offering from ITV1, but at least it was all festive enough and allowed them to fill up the daytime without wasting any of its top drawer offerings.

Indeed, it’s likely that the first time most people watched the channel on this day came at 7pm, where as expected Emmerdale and Coronation Street both got their usual hour-long outings. After they’d finished, most people probably switched back over again, and ITV1 probably didn’t mind. At 9pm there was a special episode of Doc Martin, which like The Booze Cruise andMidsomer Murders in previous years was a hugely popular series but hardly the most sparkling attempt to pull in a massive audience against the Beeb’s crackers. After the news at 11pm came a repeat of last year’s Creature Comforts – surely not a time when the target audience would be about – and then a load of old films to the small hours.

For the first time in a long while, there was no episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire on Christmas Day. With the series not quite the draw it once was, Chris Tarrant asked the questions on Boxing Day instead. So as ever, ITV1’s festive line-up revolved entirely around the big soaps, with the channel seemingly happy to concede the other 22 hours to BBC1 – which they certainly did.

BBC1 began in the by now familiar way with Breakfast, kids’ shows (including an hour-long episode of regular Saturday morning show TMi) and religion. To take us up to lunchtime, a previous Christmas Day big film, Babe, was dragged out again at 11.20am. Then at 1pm came a special edition of Doctor Who Confidential, which covered the recent concert at the Cardiff Millennium Centre featuring the music from the series – a useful way to promote one of the Beeb’s big guns coming up later.

Earlier this year, Top of the Pops had come to an end as a regular weekly series after 42 years. However viewers were assured that the show would live on through its Christmas episode which, thanks to having the entire year’s records to choose from, meant it was able to guarantee a stellar guest list. Hence the festive institution continued to appear at 2pm, entering its fifth decade as a fixture on the big day – followed, of course, by a word from the boss at three.

Reviewing the line-up on Christmas Day 2005, OTT remarked that it wouldn’t be until 2006 that we could see how The Green Green Grass would fare when the Only Fools connection became more of a distant memory and it had to stand on its own two feet as a series in its own right. Sure enough, from last year’s 8pm slot, Boycie and Marlene now found themselves in the middle of the afternoon – not something Del and Rodney had to put up with very often. Still, it made for amiable post-turkey viewing, as did the day’s film premiere, Monsters Inc – continuing the trend for an animated film to take pride of place on the 25th. A solid if unspectacular afternoon was rounded off by another festive outing for My Family at 5.20pm.

Still, there were plenty of top shows to wheel out when the really big audiences turned on. At 6.30pm, the Christmas Day EastEnders moved back to being screened in two parts, topping and tailing the evening and – of course – staying away from its rivals on ITV1. Then at 7pm cameanother Christmas Day Doctor Who. It’s perhaps remarkable to remember that just two years ago nobody had a clue as to whether the revival of the series would be a success or not, but now it had truly established itself as a festive staple – and this instalment with special guest Catherine Tate had enough stardust and spectacle to make it worthy of the prime slot for a second year.

Then at 8pm was the hugely welcome arrival of Bruce Forsyth, making his first appearance on Christmas Day since The Generation Game in 1992. Here he hosted a Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Party where the stars from previous series came back together for a final dance-off. It had been a long time since a shameless variety show such as this had been a major part of the festive viewing, but the series was a huge hit – as well as a fairly inexpensive way to combatCoronation Street, which was obviously going to be ITV1’s biggest draw (as it did indeed turn out).

At 9pm came the second visit to Albert Square, and at 9.30pm was The Vicar of Dibley. As with another festive favourite, Only Fools and Horses, Dawn French’s vehicle had only existed as one-off specials for many years. This was the first of two programmes over the holidays, with the second on New Year’s Day, which would apparently be our last ever visit to Dibley … until the next one. Shades of Only Fools again, and that show had proven that even announcements like this wouldn’t guarantee the end, – but enough people had enough affection for the perennially “nice” series to ensure that, with 11.5 million viewers, it was the most watched programme of the day.

The new shows came to an end at 10.30pm with a special episode of Little Britain – again, the first of two shows over the festive season – which completed the show’s remarkable transformation from BBC3 experiment in 2003 to cultural phenomenon. Old films took us to a closedown at half past two and a solid, successful BBC1 Christmas Day.

Of the other channels, Channel 4 made perhaps the most surprising decision by screening – gasp! – light entertainment in prime time. Deal or No Deal? appeared at 7pm, battling it out against Emmerdale and Doctor Who, while at 10pm they screened Ricky Gervais’ interview with Christopher Guest. Other than this C4 churned out most of the regular Christmas Day staples again, including The Snowman at 2.30pm, umpteen episodes of The Simpsons, The Alternative Christmas Message from a veiled Muslim woman and a lengthy religious documentary at 8pm, in this case The Secret Family of Jesus.

BBC2 concentrated on the usual opera, ballet and culture, with the recent film adaptation ofNicholas Nickleby the centrepiece of the evening at 8pm. Elsewhere, five perhaps sensibly decided that it would be just another Monday, flinging out old films, The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures and at 9pm, about the 20th screening of Greatest Embarrassing TV Moments. Well, nobody was going to be watching anyway.

As ever, BBC1 dominated the Christmas Day ratings, filling up four of the top five places withThe Vicar of Dibley, both episodes of EastEnders and Doctor Who. Once more, Television Centre had delivered the goods and produced one of the most appealing and enjoyable Christmas Day schedules of recent times. It’s good to know that some Christmas traditions remain sacred…

“Christmas is all around”

On Christmas Eve 2007, BBC2 screened The Comedy Christmas – the latest in what appears to be a never-ending series of documentaries paying tribute to the vintage Yuletide telly of the past. It seems no TV schedule is more scrutinised and criticised than that for 25 December – and, specifically, the BBC1 schedule.

Of course, with the likes of Morecambe and Wise and The Generation Game, Christmas Day on BBC1 has a glorious history – but it could also be said this is something of a millstone for the channel, with every successive December compared to the magical line-ups of the past.

However, in recent years it seems the channel has stumbled upon a fairly sturdy template for festive viewing, with the Christmas Day schedules throughout the decade proving to be perhaps more consistent than at any time since the golden age of the 1970s. Indeed, 25 December 2007 turned out to be a hugely successful day for the channel, thrashing ITV1 in the ratings.

This decade’s post-Queen line-up is perhaps now as familiar as it was when Billy Smart was calling the shots. Since 2001 there’s only been one year (2004) when an animated film wasn’t the big movie. This time we had a double bill of Finding Nemo and Shrek 2 – both great fun for the whole family, these films undoubtedly helped take the channel from mid-afternoon to early evening with a sizeable audience. Plus, they were still short enough to ensure there was plenty of time for home-grown programming.

At 6.20pm, as ever, came the first of two episodes of EastEnders, followed half-an-hour later by the now familiar Doctor Who special. It seems Russell T Davies has perfected the art of the Christmas episode – while clearly never the most cerebral or satisfying episodes of the series, with their big set-pieces and stunt casting they seem perfect turkey sandwich accompaniment. Hence the much-hyped guest appearance of Kylie Minogue in this bumper 70-minute edition was enough to earn the show 12.2 million viewers; its highest audience since 1979.

In recent years, such a rating would have guaranteed Who the day’s highest figure, but the second episode of EastEnders at 8pm performed even better, netting 13.8 million. Indeed, with the earlier episode also being seen by more than 11 million, these few hours on BBC1 were among their most successful of the decade – as well as disproving the school of thought people would be foregoing Christmas TV this year for the delights of DVDs and the web.

At 8.30pm came another Strictly Come Dancing special where recent contestants returned for a champion dance-off. Of course, with the whole show being recorded a few weeks beforehand, the viewers couldn’t vote for a winner, thus confirming the programme as simply an hour of inherently pointless but certainly entertaining niceness. Aside from Enders and Strictly being swapped around, this schedule was a straight repeat of last year’s line-up.

As in 2006, post-watershed revolved around a double-bill of comedy shows, one mainstream and one more alternative. However with The Vicar of Dibley following other festive staples likeOnly Fools and Horses and One Foot in the Grave into the archives, it was time to find another family success for Christmas Night. My Family, while popular enough throughout the year, had never quite managed to convince as a big draw – with this year’s festive special going out on Boxing Day – while the honeymoon period for The Green Green Grass had certainly ended, Boycie making a rather humiliatingly late appearance back on 30 December.

Instead the Beeb opted for something very different – a new episode of To the Manor Born. Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles had appeared on Christmas Day before, but that was in1979, and the series had ended for good back in 1981. However the enormous viewing figures it achieved at the time – over 24 million on one notable occasion – cemented it as one of the most successful comedy series of all time, and so a reunion was big news. Inevitably the new show failed to scale the heights it hit first time around (indeed, it surely meant nothing to most people under the age of 30), nor did it achieve much in the way of critical acclaim, but the novelty value alone ensured it did enough to keep BBC1’s ratings buoyant.

The final new programme of the day at 10.30pm was a Christmas outing for Catherine Tate – and rather surprisingly her first appearance on BBC1. Nevertheless her BBC2 series had been a huge success for the channel, as well as a top seller on DVD, and so most people were well aware of the antics of Lauren, Bernie and Nan. Christmas night was then rounded off, as ever, with a couple of old films, Speed and Romancing the Stone, before a 3am closedown for a solid BBC1 Christmas Day line-up – one of the most successful in recent years.

Earlier, the daytime schedules had been equally familiar - Breakfast, kids’ shows, the service (from Worcester Cathedral, which had also been home to the previous evening’s Midnight Mass) and the familiar mediocre film, in this case The Santa Clause 2. Wallace and Gromit’s A Grand Day Out enjoyed its umpteenth outing on BBC1 at 1pm, but was none the worse for that, and then at 1.30pm Top of the Pops made what was now its one and only fling of the year. There was more animation at 2.30pm with a new adventure for Robbie the Reindeer, making a third showing on Christmas Day after his previous appearances in 1999 and 2002.

So what of ITV1? It managed to match BBC1 pretty well during the morning with kids’ shows on both GMTV and ITV1 itself, then another repeat for 2005’s Creature Comforts special (at 10am, a rather more appropriate time than last year’s near-midnight transmission) and, as in 2006, Antony Worrall Thompson and his band of Christmas Cooks. Their film for the late morning,Casper, was probably more appealing than the Beeb’s offering at the same time. Things began to slide, though, at 1.40pm when the commercial channel led up to the Queen with the abysmal Inspector Gadget film.

Much like the General Election or the World Cup Final, although it’s broadcast on both channels, you’d always watch the Queen’s speech (if you were going to watch it at all, of course) on BBC1 – apart, perhaps, in 1991 when it came on in the middle of Coronation Street. However it was ITV1 who celebrated the 50th anniversary of the monarch’s Christmas message as it followed the speech with a special documentary, Lights! Camera! The Queen!, looking at how the Royal Family, and the UK as a whole, had changed since 1957. This was actually the first time Buckingham Palace had allowed clips of previous messages to be used on TV, but the programme seemed rather too worthy for Christmas Day viewing.

The channe then went into the evening poorly with a bog-standard unfestive episode of All Star Family Fortunes, and then at 5pm, they too screened an animated film – cartoons having seemingly replaced musicals as the genre of choice for Christmas Day – in this case, The Polar Express. However as an out-and-out children’s film, it offered little in the way of fun for grown-ups, certainly compared to the all-ages appeal of Shrek on the other side, while its “performance capture” animation technique seemed rather more creepy than charming.

In previous years ITV1 deployed the soaps against the weak spots in BBC1’s line-up, but this year Emmerdale was up against Doctor Who and hence endured one of its lowest audiences of the year. Coronation Street enjoyed slightly more fortune at 8.30pm opposite Strictly, and was in fact the only ITV1 show to beat its BBC opposition on the day … but only just, and with less than nine million viewers it was completely overshadowed by its London rivals. At least it stopped BBC1 getting a clean sweep of the top 10 ratings.

In between the soaps at 8pm was a welcome surprise, however, in the form of a Christmas episode of Harry Hill’s TV Burp. The show had come a long way since its early days at 11pm and was now a family favourite. It was certainly a refreshing change to see some pre-watershed comedy (or indeed, comedy of any kind) on ITV1, but inevitably it was soundly beaten byEastEnders. Fortunately it enjoyed a swift repeat a few days later. ITV1 then rounded off another in a long line of dull Christmas Days with the film Love Actually at 9.30pm, which was not a premiere, but at least had the decency to actually be set at Christmas.

The other three channels also churned out their familiar “difficult” fare on Christmas Day. BBC2’s main offerings were a profile of Andrea Bocelli and a bumper Christmas compilation ofDragon’s Den, amid a stack of repeats, while Channel 4, as usual, scheduled a religious documentary in the middle of primetime. Intriguingly, while the Alternative Christmas Messageappeared again – this time delivered by a soldier injured in Afghanistan – it wasn’t actually shown as an alternative to the Christmas Message, instead going out at 8pm. Meanwhile five, being five, devoted three hours from 9pm to perhaps the archetypal five show, Most Shocking Celebrity Moments of the Nineties. OTT are sure you can work out whether or not that will be looked back on fondly in years to come.

With BBC1 enjoying almost complete supremacy this Christmas, you can be sure the champagne corks were popping at TV Centre, especially as the success came in a year the channel lost its Controller in controversial circumstances. Three decades on from what’s generally considered to be the best ever festive line-up, it’s clear Christmas still means BBC1 for a huge number of people.

“What more do you need?”

One aspect of Christmas Day television seems to be rather rarer throughout the rest of the year – family viewing. It’s perhaps unsurprising as December 25th is the day when a wider audience is watching TV than at any other time, with clans getting together and the output aiming to cater for all ages. This was never better illustrated than in 2008 when pride of place in the BBC1 schedule went to an animated show.

The return of Wallace and Gromit in a made-for-TV special for the first time in 13 years was a big occasion, with the plasticine pair turning up in BBC1’s festive idents and on the cover of Radio Times. Their last adventure, A Close Shave, back in 1995 had pulled in 10 million viewers on BBC2, so A Matter of Loaf and Death was given a prime time outing at 8.30pm on BBC1. This may have seemed a little late to screen the show, with the youngest viewers already long in bed, but this failed to make much of an impact on the ratings, as 14.4 million tuned in – the highest rating of the year, and the biggest audience on Christmas Day for five years.

This was part of a double bill of Wallace and Gromit – at 4.30pm you could see their feature film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, on terrestrial TV for the first time. This made up the second half of the, by now, traditional double-helping of animated films on Christmas afternoon, with the post-Queen slot taken up with the premiere of Shark Tale.

In between the dynamic duo on BBC1 were the familiar Christmas night staples, and Doctor Who appeared for its fourth consecutive year. As usual Russell T Davies had managed to contrive the usual talking points around the Yuletide special, with David Morrissey appearing as “The Next Doctor”. David Tennant having recently announced his departure from the series, this was always likely to intrigue the viewer and helped it become the second most popular show of the day with 11.7 million.

At 7pm came Strictly Come Dancing, as usual facing BBC1’s toughest competition in Coronation Street. Before the festive season newspapers were reporting the Strictly brand was undergoing some tough times, with a much-publicised phone voting cock-up and The X Factor regularly pulling in around a million more viewers (albeit that the two shows were never scheduled at the same time). However the press coverage seemed to have little effect, with the final the Saturday before Christmas garnering its highest rating ever, and this Christmas Special managing to beat Corrie for the first time – by over a million viewers.

Sandwiching Wallace and Gromit were two episodes of EastEnders, which made it again the highest rated soap of the day. The second episode’s 11.5 million viewers could only take it to number three in the day’s ratings, although throughout 2008, it seemed apparent the soaps were no longer the juggernauts they once were – where previously they were guaranteed to be the top shows of the week, throughout the year various shows took a turn at number one in the ratings, including the likes of New Tricks and The Apprentice. That’s not to say they weren’t still hugely popular, though, and the antics from Albert Square continued BBC1’s dominance.

The rest of the evening followed the pattern we’ve become used to in recent years with another double helping of comedy. At 9.30pm The Royle Family made their first appearance on Christmas Day since 2000. That episode was the last in the original run, but Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash assembled the cast again for a special episode in October 2006 which proved a hit with critics and viewers alike, and the next visit to the family was a no-brainer for the prime Christmas Day slot, where it pulled in 10 million.

Then at 10.30pm came an appearance from Blackadder. A revival of this series would probably be bigger news than the return of Only Fools and Horses, but as the late slot may suggest, this wasn’t it, asBlackadder Rides Again was instead a documentary on the history of the series. Putting it above the average clip show was the fact Rowan Atkinson – a notoriously private actor – was speaking about the show alongside the rest of the cast for the first time. BBC1 then flung out some more old films – Bend It Like Beckham and Carry On Follow That Camel – before calling it a night at 3.15am.

Earlier in the day came a show that almost never happened. In November the BBC announced it had decided not to commission a Top of the Pops Christmas episode this year, feeling music would be better covered on a series of TOTP2 specials on BBC2 instead (one of which went out on the day – but at 1am!). This led to something of an outcry, including the obligatory Facebook petitions, and eventually the BBC reversed their decision, and Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates showed up at 2pm with the stars of the year and the Christmas number one.

Unsurprisingly, BBC1 again thrashed the opposition, being the most-watched channel throughout the entire day, from 6am onwards – despite a fairly anaemic morning including Breakfast, some kids’ shows, the service, the hopeless movie The Santa Clause 2 and a Two Ronnies repeat. After 2pm, though, BBC1 was on top form and once more produced a commanding schedule.

ITV1, as ever, simply waved the white flag and produced a line-up that, while vaguely Christmassy, included little that was truly special. The morning included the familiar contractually-obliged religion – here, Coleen Rooney visiting Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, not quite as adept at this kind of thing as Leslie Crowther used to be – plus Antony Worrall Thompson’s regular appearance as host of Christmas Cooks. And, of course, there were some mediocre films to take us up to The Queen – National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, previously shown as part of their notorious 1993 Christmas Day schedule, and Bean.

After The Queen, ITV1 repeated their trick of two years ago and scheduled a Harry Potter film, in this caseThe Prisoner of Askaban. As before, this wasn’t a premiere, and had in fact already been screened just a few months previously when there was advertising revenue to be had. Still, it filled an awkward gap until 6pm when Emmerdale and Coronation Street received their usual hour-long episodes. However both were beaten by their BBC1 rivals – Emmerdale plunging to under five million viewers – and it’s perhaps questionable now as to what value the former, at least, has for the commercial channel on this day.

One of ITV1’s major successes this year had been Dancing on Ice, which despite being an unashamed rip-off of Strictly Come Dancing had pulled in enormous audiences. So surely a Christmas Day outing, likeStrictly, would prove to be similarly successful? Well, maybe not – while the Strictly bandwagon was still rolling, just five days after the final, ITV’s celebs hadn’t taken to the floor for nine months, making their return seem rather less thrilling. The 90-minute special did reasonable business – especially given it was up against Wallace and Gromit – but failed to attract anything like its peak audience.

Of course, ITV1 are well aware Christmas Day is one of their weakest nights of the year, and so rounded off the evening with two cost-effective specials. At 9.30pm, It’ll be Alright on The Night made its first appearance on Christmas Day for 20 years. This was the second show under the auspices of new host Griff Rhys Jones, after Denis Norden’s retirement, but where once a new episode was a major event, now it was but one of several out-take programmes and hence rather less exciting. Then at 10.30pm came a tribute to Stanley Baxter, with the veteran comic interviewed and showing some of his best work. This was a fitting salute, though hardly a massive ratings draw – as well as illustrating that ITV1 would never make a show like his these days.

The other channels also turned out their familiar Christmas schedules. BBC2 offered the traditional blend of classic comedy – including Dad’s Army in the same slot as last year – and high art, with opera in the afternoon, and their big movie being Heath Ledger’s turn as Casanova. As ever Channel 4 devoted two hours of primetime to a religious documentary, this year The Nativity Decoded, but Five offered something a little different, and at 6.45pm screened the acclaimed period drama Memoirs of a Geisha for the first time, a genuine alternative to the brash entertainment elsewhere. However, being Five, this was followed by Most Shocking Celebrity Moments of the 21st Century.

Yet as ever Christmas was all about BBC1, who are now surely enjoying their greatest period of dominance over the opposition, thrashing all comers with an impressive schedule of entertainment. And what’s more, it really was fun for all the family – whether you were more like the Royles or the Blackadders.

“Jim favours buying an HD satellite box”

Another decade of festive television comes to an end. Anyone predicting the future of Christmas TV at the end of the1990s would no doubt have suggested a tale of continually declining ratings, with the rise and rise of digital television, but in fact viewing figures on BBC1 – the established choice on Christmas Day – stayed largely consistent in the noughties.

Soothsayers at the start of the decade would probably also feel fairly confident in predicting an end to the mainstream comedy that usually took its place on Christmas Day BBC1. Certainly in 2000, you couldn’t move for continued thinkpieces in the papers lamenting the death of the sitcom, and the BBC seemed to be relying on endless “last ever episodes” of Only Fools and Horses and The Vicar of Dibley to generate festive cheer. Yet on Christmas Day 2009, BBC1’s schedule was dominated by three comedy specials, all of which pulled in impressive audiences.

Pride of place at 9pm went to The Royle Family, for the second successive Christmas Day. There hadn’t actually been a whole series with the Royles since 2000, as, like Only Fools and Horses and Morecambe and Wise of Christmases past, the show now only existed in the form of one-off specials. Yet this ensured a new episode continued to be much anticipated, and with over 10 million people tuning in, the show which had started as a BBC2 experiment at the end of the’90s was certainly established as one of the most popular comedies of its generation.

Following the Royles at 10pm came another slice of family life with Gavin and Stacey. Again, this is a series that started in modest surroundings – in this case, on BBC3 – but through word-of-mouth had established itself as a national talking point. Unusually, though, this wasn’t an episode specially made for Christmas Day, or even Christmas at all, but instead one from the third series that just happened to be running at the moment, featuring the Shipmans and Wests having fun on the beach in the height of summer – surely the most unfestive thing screened on the 25th since the bog-standard everyday instalment of Dallas in 1981. The show was hugely popular, though, and this festive placing helped prime audiences for its conclusion on New Year’s Day.

Finally at 10.30pm came a new show for Catherine Tate, making her second appearance on BBC1 that day, having previously turned up in Doctor Who. Indeed BBC1’s Christmas Day schedule would later come under fire by the press for its over-reliance on a handful of bankable stars, with Tate joined in this special by Gavin and Stacey’s Mathew Horne, appearing in two successive shows, and the Doctor himself, David Tennant. Yet this isn’t a new complaint and every generation has had a fair number of stars TV producers can’t get enough of – look at Michael Crawford’s domination of the festive line-up way back in 1974.

This triple bill of comedy may not have stopped the nation as Morecambe and Wise and The Two Ronniesonce did, but it was a major player in ensuring BBC1 continued their now familiar domination of the schedule.

Just as familiar was the schedule early in the day, with Breakfast, the kids’ shows and the church service all present and correct. At 11.15am came another screening for the recent episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures, the Doctor Who spin-off for CBBC, which featured a guest appearance by, him again, David Tennant. But for all Tennant’s exposure this Christmas – he was also popping up between the programmes on the BBC1 ident – his departure from the role of the Doctor this year means, cumulatively he’s unlikely to appear on Christmas Day quite as much as Tim Allen, star of The Santa Clause. This undistinguished movie was unspooled at noon for the fourth time this decade – and that’s not counting the two screenings of the sequel on Christmas Days past as well, plus Allen’s voice work in the Toy Story films. In fact it could be said Allen has appeared on Christmas Day this decade more than anybody else, but would you be able to recognise him?

With none of the indecision of recent years, Top of the Pops was always scheduled for 2pm, although the BBC press office was quick to point out that both this, and the second part on New Year’s Eve, were one-off specials and definitely not part of a regular weekly series. Equally as familiar was The Queen playing her regular role as warm-up to an animated film, The Incredibles. The diet of animation led us into teatime, firstly with a screening for Shrek The Halls, the made-for-TV half-hour first screened on the Beeb a few Christmases ago but only now making an appearance on the day itself, holding a family audience during an awkward slot, and then a new adaption of the much-loved children’s book The Gruffalo.

In between all his other TV appearances, David Tennant had found time to appear in a series called Doctor Who, which made its fifth consecutive Christmas Day outing at 6pm. This was Tennant’s penultimate ride in the TARDIS before he bowed out on New Year’s Day, and although an audience of 10 million was highly impressive – and placed it again among the highest rated shows of the year – this was slightly down on the ratings-busting efforts of the last two years, possibly due to it being very much an appetiser to the really big episode seven days later.

The familiar successes continued to be wheeled out during the evening, with Strictly Come Dancing at 7pm filling its usual role as stooge to Coronation Street. The venerable series had not enjoyed its greatest year in 2009, with The X Factor dominating the Saturday night ratings and the papers gleefully reporting all manner of cock-ups both on- and off-stage, although regular weekly ratings of eight million-plus are not to be sniffed at. In addition, this special failed to repeat its feat of last year and actually beat Corrie, but it would be hard to see how else BBC1 could combat ITV1’s one guaranteed success without breaking the bank.

At 8pm came EastEnders, this year in one big hour-long chunk, which with an audience of 10.9 million was the highest-rated programme of the day. After the comedy block came a late news bulletin, an epilogue and at 11.45pm the film Speed, rather oddly for the second time over three Christmases. In between all that, our thoughts must go to the hapless OJ Borg who, because it was a Friday and Christmas Day isn’t quite the special occasion it is here elsewhere in Europe, found himself spending the  night in a TV studio reading out the results of the Euromillions lottery draw, surely the worst job in the world.

If the BBC1 schedule is increasingly familiar, so ITV1’s schedule has that recognisable air of a channel aiming to appear festive while spending as little money as possible. Indeed, having two weeks earlier pulled in nearly 19 million viewers for the grand final of The X Factor, at a time when the shops were still trying to promote their Christmas wares, you could argue their Christmas Day had already been and gone earlier in December. ITV1’s schedule wasn’t as annoyingly unfestive as in previous years but was predictably uninspiring. Yes, Antony Worrall Thompson and the Creature Comforts repeat were back in the morning, while lunchtime was filled up with a couple of movies – The Polar Express, far more at home here than in its ill-advised primetime spot two years previously, and Santa Claus: The Movie, making its first appearance on Christmas Day ITV1 after umpteen screenings on the Beeb. It’s not quite as epoch-shattering as Eric and Ernie defecting, we feel.

After The Queen, ITV1 was probably at their most competitive, with a new You’ve Been Framed special followed by the premiere of the film Happy Feet, a more entertaining effort than some of the movies screened in this slot in recent years – one probably good enough to appear on BBC1. As usual, an hour-long Emmerdale and an hour-long Coronation Street followed, as is ITV1’s wont, Emmerdale falling foul of ‘Who but Corrie managing to beat the Beeb this year. Then ITV1 quietly retired from the fight, with a festive episode of Mr and Mrs scheduled against EastEnders, the latest in a long line of ITV1 entertainment shows shoved out in hopeless slots over Christmas to pull in a fraction of its regular audience. At 9pm came a new episode of Poirot, of the kind that could happily go out any week of the year, with most viewers deciding they could wait to catch it on one of its umpteen repeats. The film Gladiator rounded off a standard cut-price Christmas on ITV1.

It could be said that BBC2 was more entertaining than ITV1 this year, certainly in primetime where the endless opera and ballet were very much a thing of a past. Sadly it instead made way for a stack of repeats, including at 8pm the same episode of Dad’s Army in the same slot it had been for the previous two years, followed by an episode of Blackadder The Third and another outing for the previous week’s Top Gear. Earlier in the evening James May presented a new episode of his Toy Stories series, playing with Hornby trains, and the high-minded BBC2 of old was not completely forgotten, with the film of La Boheme in the afternoon.

Channel 4 rung the changes, too, electing not to screen the usual lengthy religious show in the middle of primetime. Instead came another showing for the Cutting Edge documentary about the disfigured Katie Piper, to tie in with the former model delivering the Alternative Christmas Message, and a premiere for the film Grey Gardens. Five once more reached into the bargain basement with an evening of programmes about ABBA, all repeats, with ABBA: The Movie placed at the end of the evening for merry channel hoppers to screech along to.

2009 perhaps wasn’t a vintage TV Christmas Day – by which of course we mean a BBC1 Christmas Day. Indeed the fact that two of the big programmes were actually looking forward to huge climaxes elsewhere in the festive season explain why ratings were slightly lower than in previous years. Yet throughout the decade, and despite the media landscape changing beyond all recognition, ratings have remained buoyant – testament to the timeless appeal of classic Christmas TV.