“Everyone’s home for Christmas”

Christmas Day 2010 brought us a familiar Christmas Day line-up on BBC1. Some may argue, in fact, rather too familiar. Doctor Who, Strictly Come Dancing, EastEnders, The Royle Family? Didn’t we get all this last year? And the year before that, come to think of it?

It’s true to say that the vast majority of BBC1′s Christmas Day followed the same pattern as in previous Yules, with the same shows in the same slots. Yet apart from EastEnders, these were still fairly new festive traditions, with the most frequent visitor to the 25th being Doctor Who, back for its sixth consecutive Christmas Day. Certainly, none of the shows had enjoyed the lengthy runs that the likes of the Generation Game and Morecambe and Wise did in the ’70s – and they were fixtures that went on to become more loved and cherished with the continued presence. BBC1 stuck with the familiar fare, as it had proven hugely popular over recent Christmases – and few seemed to argue, with increased viewing figures year-on-year.

The shows themselves had rung the changes, however, starting at 6pm with a new Time Lord in Matt Smith and a new lead writer for the show in Steven Moffatt, although the impressive festive cast list continues with Michael Gambon and Katherine Jenkins joining the onscreen team. Probably the most shamelessly festive episode since its first Christmas Day outing in 2005, with just one outing this festive season (rather than two spread over the end of 2009 and the start of 2010) it was a little more upbeat and suitable for teatime viewing than last year’s end-of-an-era cliffhanger.

Then at 7pm came Strictly Come Dancing, which had enjoyed a second wind this year after the declining ratings and press derision of the 2009 series suggested the show was on its last legs. A bit of spit and polish brought audiences back to its previous heights, as did a more imaginative guest list headed, of course, by the exploits of Ann Widdecombe. This year’s Christmas show broke from the usual champions of champions formula to welcome some new contestants to the floor, who were apparently unable to commit to a full series, which allowed for some more Westminster waltzing from Vince Cable (apparently Peter Mandelson had been invited for balance, but turned it down), and this twist was enough for Strictly to beat Coronation Street in their annual duel.

EastEnders, meanwhile, was broadcast in HD for the first time, and while The Royle Family didn’t deviate from the familiar formula – not even leaving the Royle household, as usual – these special remained irregular enough for the series’ now annual appearance to remain much looked forward to.

There were new additions to the day, although both owed much to festive schedules of the past. At 5.10pm, Ronnie Corbett celebrated his 80th birthday with The One Ronnie, a one-off comedy special featuring sketches and stand-up… er, sit-down comedy. The show was devised and produced by Matt Lucas and David Walliams and featured guest appearances from the rest of the BBC comedy family – the likes of Catherine Tate, James Corden and Rob Brydon – making this star-studded special perhaps the nearest equivalent to the likes of Christmas Night With The Stars.

Lucas and Walliams also appeared in the day’s other big new show, the first instalment of their new series Come Fly With Me. There was nothing remotely festive about it, but the duo’s huge popularity invariably provided them with a Christmas gift of a slot to launch their latest vehicle, which was watched by more than 10 million people. How many would stick around for episode two a week later was a moot point but as the second highest rated programme of the day, after EastEnders, it was clearly enough of an event to confirm its value on the 25th.

Elsewhere on BBC1 little changed from the well-worn, but hugely successful, line-up of programmes wheeled out for the past decade or so. Starting with Breakfast, kids’ shows and the religious service, the only surprise would perhaps be guessing which of The Santa Clause movies would be wheeled out, and it was a first outing on the day itself (though not the first outing ever) for the third in the series. The animated film Madagascar kept things ticking over nicely until Top of the Pops, The Queen and, for the umpteenth year in succession, the premiere of an animated film, this time Shrek The Third. In the whole the big day went swimmingly, the only signs that the Beeb were perhaps more financially straitened than in previous years being a repeat of The Gruffalo at 4.30pm – almost the exact same slot as the previous year – and Come Fly With Me being followed, not by another comedy show, but a couple of film repeats in Starsky and Hutch and A Fish Called Wanda, and an early night to bed.

But in the heart of primetime, few could argue with another successful, swaggering BBC1 Christmas Day.

If BBC1 was criticised for predictability, at least they could point to the ratings. ITV1′s line-up was even more of a shameless repeat of 12 months previously, and yet again they found their average schedule greeted by average ratings. Indeed the pre-Queen films, Santa Claus: The Movie and The Polar Express, were identical to 2009, albeit the other way around, while after the word from the boss, The Grinch was unspooled yet again.

You’ve Been Framed saw ITV1 into the early evening and their familiar soap block, with Emmerdale and Coronation Street yet again receiving hour-long instalments from 6pm, although neither this year managed to beat their Beeb opposition. The cheap light entertainment show filling that thankless role as stooge to EastEnders this year was All Star Family Fortunes, the kind of show that viewers would happily sit through at teatime most days but not quite up to the primest of prime slots. Then, like last year, was a new episode of Poirot – and a big one, too, with David Suchet finally getting his hands on ‘Murder On The Orient Express’. Sadly this prestige adaptation, with its box office cast, did no better than the bog-standard episode 12 months previously, although given the series seems to be produced expressly for export and constant repeats these days, ITV probably weren’t too bothered.

BBC2′s Christmas Day line-up revolved around that immovable fixture – er, a repeat of Dad’s Army at 8pm, exactly the same slot it has occupied since 2007. As in previous years there was also Blackadder and a repeat of Top Gear, but more familiar BBC2 festive fare could be found in the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of Cinderella in the afternoon, a carol service from Westminster Cathedral (which meant Catherine Jenkins appeared on two channels at once) and at 9.20pm an evening of festive music in Swingin’ Christmas, presented by Michael Parkinson. Later in the evening came a repeat for the most recent episode of Miranda, which had enjoyed fantastic ratings for BBC2 in the autumn, and it’s likely she may well make a return to Christmas Day in the years to come – perhaps one channel along.

This year Channel 4 offered up something still highly unusual – live television. Throughout the 25th they made four visits to Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton to watch the activity in the maternity ward as part of One Born At Christmas. Such was the excitement of this, however, that very little effort appeared to have been made with the rest of the line-up, relying on a stack of repeats including the ancient Edward Scissorhands in primetime. Channel Five (as it was rechristened earlier in the year), meanwhile, veered wildly as usual between almost endearing – with The Remains of the Day and the premiere of Stranger Than Fiction – and utterly awful, with a three-hour countdown of the Greatest Christmas Adverts at 9pm.

2010′s Christmas Day TV offerings certainly didn’t sparkle in the way previous years have, but BBC1 have clearly found a consistent and popular line-up that continues to pull in huge audiences. And, with Strictly and Doctor Who both enjoying highly successful relaunches over the previous 12 months, it’s not hard to imagine these familiar shows enjoying massive success for many Christmases to come.

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“Everything you could want for Christmas Night”

Over the past few years it’s been fairly easy to predict the ITV1 schedules for Christmas. The lack of advertising revenue on the day itself, as well as the Beeb’s traditional dominance, tends to lead to a fairly bog-standard line-up of faintly festive but otherwise unspectacular programming. Sure, the two big soaps get hour-long specials, but they’re usually accompanied by some repeated family movies, a drama that’s not quite from the top drawer and some workaday light entertainment – the likes of Stars In Their Eyes or Mr and Mrs – left to wither against rampant BBC opposition. The channel always came a distant second in the ratings but with more pressing priorities elsewhere in the year, ITV1 have never really been interested in offering anything other than token opposition on Christmas Day.

There have been occasional exceptions, though – most obviously the much trumpeted poaching of Eric and Ern in 1978, but also the much-hyped premiere of Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1984 and the bumper helping of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire at the height of its powers in 1999. Now in 2011, another A-list show was deployed as a spoiler against the offerings from Television Centre – a special edition of Downton Abbey. The period drama had enjoyed enormous ratings during the autumn, as well as huge critical acclaim, and it was obvious that a Christmas special would be a major attraction on the day itself. A shamelessly festive affair, the two-hour show was probably the toughest competition the Beeb had faced for a decade or more. In fact, it was more likely that ITV could have enjoyed higher ratings (and, all the better for their bank balance, advertising revenue) had they shown it another night, but its spot in the primest of prime slots also served as an indication that ITV were taking Christmas Day seriously this time.

The rest of the day on ITV1 was fairly solid. As usual much of the daytime as devoted to films, though at least there were some different titles to the familiar fare in the shape of March Of The Penguins, Miracle on 34th Street and Aladdin, although Happy Feet found itself in the post-Queen slot for the second time in three years. The monarch’s message this year, incidentally, was the first to produced by Sky News and this, presumably, explains why it earned a screening on Sky1 for the first time in a while.

ITV1 then went into the evening in familiar though robust fashion with You’ve Been Framed and then Emmerdale at 6pm. One change this year was that the familiar double-helping of soap was split into two, with All Star Family Fortunes slotted in at 7pm before Coronation Street. This actually turned out to be a fairly inspired move by the channel, as the evergreen quiz’s ratings increased hugely on its performance last year when it went out at 8pm, presumably helped by its hammocking between two big shows, and the earlier slot where viewers are after something undemanding as accompaniment to the turkey sandwiches, rather than later in the evening when you want something more substantial. After 11pm, ITV1 wound down with a repeat of Benidorm from a previous festive season, but overall this had been a solid Christmas Day, with a well-chosen big event and some schedule tinkering ensuring a more appealing line-up than we’d seen in previous years.

So whereas in previous years when BBC1 only had to turn up to ensure victory, how did they fare against a renewed threat? To begin with, as Christmas fell on a Sunday, there was a slightly larger amount of religion than is often the case, starting at 9am with a retelling of The Nativity, first shown during Christmas 2010, leading up to the traditional service, this year from Lichfield Cathedral, then a special Songs of Praise from the Royal Albert Hall. Suitably spiritually enriched, viewers were then able to let their hair down with Morecambe and Wise, a repeat of the film Kung Fu Panda and Top of the Pops, a line-up made all the more impressive by the non-appearance of any of the Santa Clause films.

After The Queen, unsurprisingly animated films abounded, as is BBC1′s wont, with Monsters vs Aliens and Ratatouille receiving their network TV premieres, both of which made for amiable viewing but neither were quite out of the top drawer. Then at 6.30pm was The Gruffalo’s Child, a sequel to the successful animation shown two Christmasses ago.

One notable omission from the BBC’s schedules this year was The Royle Family, which it was rumoured had been planned, but had to be aborted as Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash failed to complete a script in time. Whether there was any truth in this or not, this was the first Christmas Day since 2007 when there was only one Royal in BBC1′s schedules, back at 3pm. To fill the gap, the next three shows all appeared an hour later than the previous year, with Doctor Who at 7pm, Strictly Come Dancing at 8pm and an hour-long EastEnders at 9pm.

Perhaps oddly, despite the more favourable slot (and the seemingly weak ITV opposition), Doctor Who‘s ratings were actually lower than 12 months previously, and the same was also the case with Strictly, with the show losing out to Coronation Street in their annual festive face-off. As with last year, Strictly‘s festive edition featured a host of new celebrities taking to the floor, although it’s perhaps questionable as to the value of this format given Simon Webbe and Barry McGuigan hardly seemed any more exciting than the stars who had been appearing week in week out for the past three months. Perhaps we’ll see the Champion of Champions trophy dusted off again for next year’s Christmas Day outing.

At 9pm came the major battle as EastEnders slugged it out against Downton Abbey – and the spoils initially went to Albert Square, with the overnight ratings showing the soap was watched by 9.9 million viewers, the biggest audience of the day, while 8.6 million people opted for the commercial channel. This wasn’t Downton‘s biggest audience by any means but the win for EastEnders isn’t perhaps a huge surprise given its long-established status as Christmas Day’s top soap, and it’s highly likely many would have chosen to record the timeless Downton rather than ‘Enders (with the next episode 24 hours later). This did mean it was the first Christmas Day ever where no programme won over 10 million viewers in the overnights, although this was clearly down to greater competition than general dissatisfaction, given Downton enjoyed more than double the audience Poirot did in the same slot last year. In addition, Downton ended up being named as the top show when official ratings (including recordings) were taken into account, though EastEnders was the most watched show on the day itself.

ITV1 did take the lead during Downton‘s second hour while BBC1 did manage to rustle up some new comedy. At 10pm came the first new episode of Absolutely Fabulous since 2004. This was a series that had perhaps been more appealing to the media and the people it was parodying than the general public at large, but the new episodes – two more of which were to follow in the New Year – enjoyed good reviews and pulled in a creditable 7.4 million viewers. Then at 10.30pm came a special episode of Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow. This seemed to hark back to the episodes of They Think It’s All Over in the late 1990s in terms of their unfestive nature, though McIntyre had tried hard and interspersed the stand-up with sketches featuring familiar BBC1 comedy faces – including Miranda Hart and James Corden – and music to create more of a Christmas Night With The Stars feel. An entertaining show that worked pretty well for late night chilling out, it managed to get over six million people watching after 11pm – highly impressive, especially given BBC1 virtually called it a day at 10.30pm last year. This Yule, repeats of Have I Got News For You and Graham Norton from a few days earlier, plus a comedy film, were the post-news fillers.

One surprising entrant into the Christmas ratings war  was Channel 4, who oddly appeared to abandon the traditional self-consciously “alternative” programming of previous years in favour of light entertainment. Gordon Ramsay filled a whole four hours of the schedules from 10am inviting viewers to cook their Christmas dinner along with him, while an afternoon of Come Dine With Me and Deal Or No Deal was followed by the family films Big and Ice Age 3, then at 9pm a festive special for Alan Carr. It’s hard to see how, given the competition, this could do much better than the religion, ballet and opera that used to be a staple of C4 on Christmas Day.

BBC2 followed a more familiar path with its Yuletide centrepiece a special show featuring Darcey Bussell re-enacting her favourite dances from Hollywood musicals. Classic comedy was also on the agenda with Dad’s Army (controversially at teatime, not the 8pm slot it had filled for the last few years), Porridge and Blackadder, a series that now seems to be confined purely to Christmas Day. Battling against the big guns at 9pm with The Toys That Made Christmas, a wry look at festive fads and fashions of the past. Channel 5 were their familiar threadbare selves with a stack of TV movies and a three-hour countdown of Britain’s Favourite Christmas Songs.

It was certainly a happier Christmas for ITV1 in 2011, which illustrates how the presence of a genuinely big show in the schedules can brighten up the whole day. This increased competition, and the lack of anything really spectacular, made it a slightly disappointing day for BBC1, though it continued to enjoy the lion’s share of the audience and put together another remarkably consistent line-up. It also proves that, yet again, Christmas remains one of the most important days in the telly calendar.

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“A story of lifelong sorrow and abandonment”

The BBC1 Christmas Day line-up is often held up as the perfect example of the best of British television, but one genre that’s been conspicuous in its absence in recent years is that of drama. Sure, EastEnders turns up as regular as clockwork, and Doctor Who has been a welcome addition in the past few years, but you’d have to search hard for the regular dramas that dominate the schedules the rest of the year. Even the likes of David Copperfield and The Lost World at the turn of the century owed more to star-spotting and special effects respectively than serious story-telling.

You have to go back to the ’80s for a time when drama made a regular appearance on BBC1 on Christmas Day with All Creatures Great and Small and Miss Marple both enjoying a couple of outings, but the reason for its rarity on the big day since can possibly be assigned to Richard Curtis’ recollections of sitting down happy with his family to watch Miss Marple’s Caribbean Mystery in 1989 - “two people were stabbed and one was forcibly injected with heroin. By the end of it we were totally miserable.” It seemed that drama like this was simply too bleak and complicated for Christmas Day, and certainly many of the BBC’s most successful dramas of the past few decades would make for unsuitable festive viewing. Silent Witness over the sausages on sticks?

Of course, EastEnders is hardly bursting with Christmas cheer but it does at least have the familiarity to ensure it can be watched with one eye on the turkey, while Doctor Who‘s mix of sci-fi and spectacle can entertain all ages, but other drama has fared far less well. While ITV1 have been more disposed to scheduling drama on Christmas Day, the mediocre audiences attracted by the likes of Doc Martin and Midsomer Murders – far smaller than they would usually enjoy on any other day of the year – appeared to confirm still further that when family members of all ages are watching together, and viewing is often interrupted by screaming children and regular trips to the tea table, people don’t have the patience or the ability to sit down to a hour or more of drama.

Christmas Day 2011, however, suggested that the right drama, sensitively scheduled, can break out on Christmas Day. Downton Abbey was the most talked-about show of 2011 and its festive special was a major event. It also benefited from one of the changes to how we watch our Christmas telly in recent years – while it wasn’t the most watched show on the day itself, it topped the ratings when recordings were factored in, with well over a million people deciding to save it for a less frantic moment of the holidays. Unsurprisingly, ITV1 repeated the trick in 2012 with another feature-length episode – and it wasn’t the only major drama on TV that night.

Call The Midwife had arrived on Sunday nights on BBC1 in early 2012 with little in the way of fanfare but the tale of the midwives in post-war Poplar caught on immediately, thrashing ITV1′s previously impregnable Dancing On Ice in the ratings and pulling in over 11 million viewers – up there with Downton as one of the biggest shows on TV. And, like Downton, it was considered ideal for a Christmas Night slot with its mix of pathos and gentle humour making for ideal festive fare. Its prime 7.30pm slot made it one of the biggest departures on BBC1′s Christmas Day for many years.

The results of the experiment were, however, rather mixed. Overnight ratings suggested that neither of the drama juggernauts had reached their full potential, both losing out to their soap competition on the other side. Call The Midwife did mediocre business and its average ratings were inflated by the last 15  minutes going up against the ITV1 news, a rather inelegantly scheduled bulletin purely there to ensure Downton started at the exact moment Call The Midwife finished. Not that it helped Downton much, though, as ratings for this year’s special – despite a major cast member being killed off – were way down on 12 months earlier.

Ratings for both shows did increase when recordings were taken into consideration, with each finding large time-shifting audiences – some evidence they simply weren’t the right choice for Christmas Day and would have been better appreciated on a quieter night. Indeed, with critics suggesting they were somewhat gloomy choices for the big day, it does appear as if Christmas Day viewers want something different than the rest of the year.

Despite the changes in prime time, the rest of the Christmas Day line-up was little changed from the familiar template. Breakfast on BBC1 was followed by a couple of cartoons – including another outing for The Gruffalo – and the service, though there was little massively festive in the lunchtime schedules with the final episode of Only Fools and Horses‘ 1996 trilogy (a special show, certainly, but not Christmassy in the slightest) followed by the film repeat Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, though at least The Santa Clause wasn’t churned out again. The familiar annual outing for Top of the Pops followed at 2pm, then it was The Queen, this year for the first time broadcast in 3D, no doubt thrilling the dozen or so people who had the required kit.

After that, the last and definitely least in the Shrek series, Shrek Forever After, was the day’s big film premiere, continuing the franchise’s domination of this post-monarch slot in the past decade. The by now traditional new animation followed as the creative team behind The Gruffalo brought the popular kids’ book Room On The Broom to life. The arrival of the midwives meant Doctor Who found himself earlier than ever on Christmas Day with new companion Jenna-Louise Coleman being unveiled at 5.15pm, but the show’s army of fans all made sure their recorders were whirring away. Strictly Come Dancing was also on earlier than usual at 6.15pm, but the show’s light-as-a-feather fun was perfect for an early evening slot and, helped by the fact it didn’t go up against Corrie for the first time, ensured it was one of the few programmes that enjoyed a ratings increase from 12 months before.

EastEnders was, for the fifth consecutive year, the most watched programme on the day itself, and its large audience was passed on to the returning Royle Family. BBC1′s comedy line-up had brightened up a little in the past few years, with the likes of Miranda, Mrs Brown’s Boys and Outnumbered now all able to pull in large audiences, as opposed to earlier this decade when any existent comedy show managed to get the Christmas Day slot almost by default, but a new episode with the Royles was still a big enough occasion to see it cling on to the prime slot. After the news BBC1 wound down with a repeat of a festive Vicar of Dibley plus Have I Got News For You from a few days previously, before a late film. All in all, a fairly routine Christmas for BBC1, and as usual it enjoyed the lion’s share of the audience for most of the day.

ITV1 filled up most of the daytime in as cost-effective manner as possible, including a former BBC1 festive staple in Toy Story, plus The Nation’s Favourite Christmas Song, a clip show that may well have performed better at 11am than in its first showing opposite the Strictly Come Dancing final the previous weekend. Like BBC1, there was a film premiere after the Queen, in this case Tangled, but this lost out to its more familiar BBC opposition. You’ve Been Framed saw viewers into teatime again, then Emmerdale was split in half and found itself lumbered with two thankless slots, including at 5.30pm midway through Doctor Who where it pulled in probably its lowest rating of the year. Between the two at 6pm was a special edition of Paul O’Grady’s Battersea-based series For The Love Of Dogs, which had proved popular enough earlier this year but seemed terribly threadbare on Christmas Day – not even Animal Hospital, when that was in its pomp, had ventured this far into prime time. It also seemed something of a waste of a show that could have pulled in a far bigger audience any other night of the festive season.

Benefitting from its familiar 7.30pm slot and many viewers deciding Call The Midwife was better watched later, Coronation Street was ITV1′s biggest show and second overall behind EastEnders – a decent result. With a couple of films after Downton, it seems ITV1′s attempt to recreate last year’s winning formula was unsuccessful – not helped by the Beeb’s schedules making the day look rather overstuffed with drama.

The smaller channels carried on in their familiar fashion. BBC2 served up the opera, the serious documentary – with the return to TV of Sister Wendy Beckett – and the classic comedy, inevitably including Dad’s Army and Blackadder. Channel 4′s light entertainment efforts the previous year seemingly worked well enough for Gordon Ramsay to take up much of the daytime again with his Cookalong and Alan Carr to return at 9pm, while Lord of the Rings filled up most of the early evening in a cost-effective fashion. Channel 5 did even better with almost the entire daylight hours filled up with Gone With The Wind (four and a quarter hours) and Ben Hur (another four hours or so), though these epics surely couldn’t hold a candle to the three consecutive repeats of the channel’s never-ending fly-on-the-wall series about Eddie Stobart trucks. Greatest Christmas TV Moments followed yet again at 10pm – a title unlikely to be applied to the previous three hours.

It’s likely the Beeb will be by far the happiest from a Christmas Day when the recorders were working overtime – especially as Call The Midwife had beaten Downton Abbey on the night itself. The army of people recording Downton would have rung a  little hollow for ITV1 as it meant the all-important adverts were being flicked through at a rate of knots. For those watching on the day, the overload of dramas created the feeling of a rather stodgy, indigestible festive line-up.

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