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Christmas Creamguide 2018: Week Two

For we know we should be gay

Hullo again!

And we’re back with the second half of your double Christmas Creamguide with everything you need to stay entertained until well into MMXIX. So let’s get on with it!

SATURDAY, 29th DECEMBER

BBC1

17.10 Top of the Pops
It has been quite nice in recent years to see the return of the second part of the Christmas Pops, which used to be a regular fixture in the seventies and early eighties. These days it’s seemingly less a genuine attempt to cover as many of the year’s big hits as possible and more a cost-effective way to get two shows out of the same session, but even though most of the contents are now a mystery to us, we are pleased we’re still getting pop music in primetime so your grandmother could potentially be confronted by Christine and The Queens.

18.30 Celebrity Mastermind
How appropriate in a season when we welcome back our old friends from the Filmguide fireplace that Madeline Smith appears on the television, as she’s on tonight answering questions on Kew Gardens, while Holby’s George Rainford is quizzed on Back to the Future, which is one of the few film franchises we’re not getting this Christmas.

BBC2

18.15 Kylie Minogue: Reel Stories
This has been on iPlayer for months, but now it’s on your actual television, and it’s entertaining enough. Very much like a lowbrow Michael Cockerill documentary, Dermot O’Leary shows Kylie various clips from her life, some of which she’s never seen before, and happily from our perspective loads of them come from the likes of Going Live and Wogan.

21.00 Philomena
Sadly not a big-screen adaptation of the cutesy-dutesy escapades of a Johnny Ball-bookended kitten, but an excellent Stephen Frears-driven quirky relationship comedy starring Steve Coogan as a grumpy journalist who teams up with Imelda Staunton on her quest to locate the baby she was forced to give up for adoption decades ago, only to find that she was invented by Lee and Herring.

ITV

20.00 The London Studios: Home of the Stars
Although the LWT building never loomed as large in the public’s consciousness as Television Centre, we don’t think any studio facility has been responsible for more distinctive programming – you could possibly argue Teddington with its suburban sitcoms, but you could spot a shiny floor big bollocks light entertainment show from LWT from a mile off, and they always seemed impossibly glamorous and exciting. Sadly, despite the studios being much cherished and popular with stars, staff and audiences (because they were in Central London and not at the arse-end of a branch line) alike, they’re now being demolished so they can build posh flats there instead. Such a shame, though this show is likely to be an enjoyable send-off, as we’ll get to hear from Dickie Davies, Danny Baker, Mike Aspel and thousands more, all with precious memories of telly’s greatest fun factory.

21.00 Bradley Walsh: When Dummies Took Over The World
We’re not sure how much Bradley is contributing to this programme above just reading the autocue, but he’s a big name so gets his name in the title. It’s the history of puppets on telly, which sounds like it should be good fun, especially as we’re promised Spit The Dog and Nookie Bear will be featured. Sold!

CHANNEL 5

09.45 Bean
Typically for the pop-cultural no-man’s land between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, we really are short of coverage-worthy films today, to the extent that there was a glimmer of quickly-dashed excitement when new BBC4 import Black Lake was mistaken for a documentary about Black Lace. Thankfully the broadcasting powerhouse behind We Know Where You Live and Joey have come to the rescue with everyone’s favourite one joke that sustained fifteen whole episodes when they could have done a film about Sir Corin Basin instead, complete with Boyzone theme song that seemed to be number one for about a century without anyone actually really noticing. This is followed by Groundhog Day at 11.35, Groundhog Day at 11.35, and Ghostbusters II – sadly not the all-female one which is ace – at 13.35. That’s quite a line-up, and they’ve spared you one of those TV Cream Type-festooned list shows into the bargain.

BBC Radio 2

13.00 Pick of the Pops
Doesn’t look like we’re getting any ‘specials’ – ie, Gambo playing the American chart – this Christmas, but just the usual chart business, which is all to the good. Better yet, we get the post-Christmas chart from 1981, which is an absolute cracker, as seen on that brilliant episode of Pops with Kid Jensen of course. A less interesting second half with 1992, but the first hour’ll be worth the licence fee alone.

SUNDAY, 30th DECEMBER

BBC2

12.15 Young Winston
Well, we were full expecting another day full of Cream-unfriendly talking pictures, to the extent that we’d cued up jokes about Two By Two being a sequel to dull zoo vet-based drama One By One and that photo on today’s Radio Times page of Dominic West apparently cosplaying as that kid from The Box Of Delights who says “SQUISH TO YOU!” under a waterfall or something. But there’s actually a few worth catching on today, starting off with Simon Ward in this Studs Lonigan-conflated (if you’re four years old and stupid) chronicle of Churchill’s early days mouthing off about newsprint in a ëjaunty’ hat. Incidentally, just in case you were waiting for the usual update, Granada’s Young Sherlock still isn’t out on DVD. Bah.

17.30 Porridge
Properly grim sitcom spinoff lacking a laugh track and, well, much in the way of laughs, as Fletch and Godber get caught up in an uncharacteristically non-comic escape plot and nobody wins, really. One of those sitcom spin-offs that nobody can ever really decide whether it’s any good or not, and it doesn’t even have a ridiculous disco funk theme song like Rising Damp. Imagine the prison bits in The Italian Job without the gags and you’re halfway there really.

ITV

20.00 Star Wars – The Force Awakens
In the light of all the ridiculous belches of hot air about Doctor Who being one of them birds now and saying racism is bad from furious blowhards and their vigorous insistence that it should be more like something or other that indicates that they actually used to watch a completely different programme altogether (and we have unanimously decided for them that it was in fact God’s Wonderful Railway and they are to watch it on a loop from now on to the exclusion of anything else ever), it’s interesting to react on the similar flannel-headed lossage of shit that occurred over those pesky women and ‘blacks’ doing the lion’s share of the heroics in this when it came out. Which obscured the fact that it’s actually a bloody good film and a more than worthy inheritor of the Star Wars mantle, as true to the spirit of the original as Steve Berry ticking off the Palitoy figures he’s already got on the back of a packing card while singing the disco version of the Cantina Band music. And if you’re too angry to agree, The Heroes Of Telemark is handily on BBC Four right now. You’ll love that. Especially when they get to page 400.

CHANNEL 4

02.40 Carry On Teacher
We should really just adopt the usual listings get-out clause and describe this along with all the others as ‘not up there with the best of the series’, but it’s always worth highlighting one of the earlier efforts ñ especially one of the black and white ones ñ as age and experience has taught us all that while the knocker gags, taxi drivers mishearing innocent words as expletives (‘watch it ñ don’t use that language with me mate!’) and Charles Hawtrey saying ‘me no speakee Engrish’ while Sid James tails him down the street to some stop-start brass are what you want to see when being allowed to ëstay up’ on a Bank Holiday, the earlier ones are objectively funnier and better films. Not least this one, featuring a lone Carry On credit for Ted Ray from TV’s Stop Looking At Your Watches ñ It’s Ted Ray!

CHANNEL 5

14.40 E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial
You’ll believe a bike can fly! Spielberg’s touching tale of a man who exploded and went inside out was pretty much inescapable on release, which is baffling when you consider the number of fully grown adults who will shudderingly confess to having been absolutely terrified of the Melted Selection Box-resembling barbler of platitudes and his very own range of ëCola Cream’ biscuits, And that’s not even touching on those who were slightly older and had little time for such twee sentimental claptrap and would rather have watched E.T.N. – The Extra Terrestrial Nasty given half the chance. We’ll be riiiiiight hereÖ watching something else.

17.00 Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory
Along with Captain Black, Rachel From This Life and Raggerty, Mike Teavee has to be one of the most unfairly maligned ëvillains’ in screen history, suffering the microwave-transmitted miniaturised ravages of karma for having the temerity to enjoy the output of a medium that Ro(n)ald Dahl was a bit intellectually sniffy about. What was the matter, Roald? Didn’t think Not So Much A Programme More A Way Of Life was as good as That Was The Week That Was? Anyway, none of this seemed to matter quite so much when Ian Anglia Knight came a-knockin’ with a lucrative dealÖ

21.00 Britain’s Favourite Chocolate Bar
We don’t like Channel Five doing these shows, mostly because they become instant fodder for people to sneer at pointless clip shows – but the thing is, it’s exactly the kind of thing we want to watch and people will genuinely be interested to know the results. And really, what’s not to love about a load of old adverts and an interview with the Milky Bar Kid? You know you want to…

BBC4

22.05 Andrew Davies: Rewriting the Classics
A top bit of daft scheduling from BBC Wales tonight, as they made this show so they’re showing it first on BBC2 – at the same time, so that’s a wonderful choice of viewing for the principality. In any case, the noted writer and adaptor is all over the Beeb tonight with his new version of Les Miserables, and in this programme he’ll muse on the art of the adaptation. Not sure we’ll get much about Alfonso Bonzo, though.

NEW YEAR’S EVE

BBC1

19.30 Celebrity Mastermind
Before this is a bizarrely scheduled repeat of The Two Ronnies Sketchbook which is thirteen years old in itself, and we’re not sure why it keeps turning up on the repeat rota. Something slightly more up to date here, as Ana Matronic, of whom more in a moment, is answering questions on The Bionic Woman.

23.35 Madness Rock Big Ben Live
Much as the Christmas Eve concert was a staple of music telly in the seventies and early eighties – and the Queen show from 1975 is on BBC4 over the holidays – these days it’s New Year’s Eve in which is always an attractive gig for a band as it often gets one of the highest telly ratings of the year, whatever year it is. Sadly we missed Madness’ ‘final’ Pops appearance the other week cos of Mike Smith, but don’t worry because of course they came back a decade or so later and are still making ace records to this day. A pretty good choice for this slot, then, though obviously most of the set will be devoted to their spectacular back catalogue. And it’s Only An Excuse and the regulars in Scotland, of course.

BBC2

12.50 Death on the Nile
15.10 Evil Under the Sun
It’s a Twostinov! Everyone’s favourite philosopher steps out as Poirot in all his Lord Mayor’s Croupier finery twice over, as indeed does Maggie Smith. Evil has to be the pick of the two, if only for Roddy McDowall’s fantastic turn as Rex Brewster, the mind of Noel Coward in the trousers of Ken Masters. Both of these were written by Anthony ‘Wicker Man’ Shaffer, which might promise something, but is no guarantee of anything.

21.00 Raymond Briggs: Snowmen, Bogeyman and Milkmen
So The Snowman makes it on to the cover of the Christmas Radio Times for the umpteenth time in the last decade, but it’ll be nice to see this tribute to the great man himself. Won’t all be festive fun and games, mind, because we’re also going to touch on his grown-up work including the alarmingly unsettling When The Wind Blows.

Channel 4

05.25 Doctor Dolittle
11.10 Flash Gordon
13.20 Vice Versa
A decent shot at the treble from Four, with a muted start followed by a film that’s really had its reputation elevated in the last decade, before crashing out early with the Savage-Reinhold inheritance. Dolittle’s the one of historical interest, though, as it heralded the Third Age of the Hollywood Musical. The First Age was Astaire/Kelly/Rodgers/Charisse, the Second runs roughly from West Side Story to The Sound of Music, and the Third is the fascinating period when it all went tits up, with this, Man of La Mancha, Paint Your Wagon, Finian’s Rainbow, Camelot, Star! and, hardest faller of all, Hello, Dolly!, complete with Walter Matthau’s manly dance. But Dolittle has all the best stories: Rex Harrison being a complete arse on set; Flanders and Swann writing a scrapped set of original songs; the warehouses full of unsold merchandise (including action figures of Harrison in Bespin fatigues and Doctor Dolittle Animal Fist Faces) pretty much killing off the tie-in tat business until Star Wars; a production anecdote from the film inspiring Sir Ranulph Feinnes to blow up a dam in Wiltshire; and one of the giraffes treading on its own penis. As festive as any Poppins reboot, we’re sure you’ll agree.

19.00 ‘Crocodile’ Dundee II
Or Leo Wanker: Just Say No. We always thought the early scene here, where Hogan is dynamiting fish in the Hudson, was a sly reference to Python’s Hank and Roy Spim sketch (“I love animals. That’s why I like to kill ’em!”) but apparently that thing we’d always assumed was too cartoonishly silly for words turns out to be a real thing that people genuinely do for fun and profit. Which seems to be something of a motif for the year.

01.50 Northern Soul
‘Dance in cardboard pants!’ A well-liked drama based around the legendary dancing-to-some-old-records-we’ve-found scene, shot very much in the manner of Pride and Good Vibrations, in that no matter how many authentic red Adidas tracksuits the cast wear it never looks a second earlier than 1996. Anyway, kid gets short shrift at school, escapes into music, you know (and may even yourself have operated) the drill. Then things get serious, and he starts covering up his record labels so folk can’t get their own copies (a tactic also adopted by Blue Peter whenever they made a UFO interceptor out of an especially hip and hard-to-find bottle of washing-up liquid). There’s also a sad modern day coda where he thinks Doctor Who’s rubbish and nobody cares. Lisa Stansfield is a concerned mum, Steve Coogan a derisive teacher pitched halfway between Melvyn Bragg and Larry Grayson, Frank Carson is inexplicable and Ricky Tomlinson just is.

Sky Arts

18.10 Dinner for One
We suppose this is a suitably momentous moment for the Christmas Creamguide as we finally bill the most famous festive fixture you’ve never seen. Every schoolboy knows that across Europe on New Year’s Eve everyone sits spellbound in front of a Freddie Frinton sketch from the early sixties, much to our bemusement, with the punchline ‘Same procedure as every year’ apparently being a perennial catchphrase in Germany. Now it’s finally being screened in the UK, where it’ll clearly be something of a novelty. It’s certainly not being shown as comedy, anyway.

Movies4Men

07.40 Gunbus
Here’s an oddity. A sort of cross between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, produced by J&M Entertainment (they of the quality likes of Straight to Hell and Freddie as FRO7), with two decidedly un-winning wisecracking cowboys drafted into World War I to overcome Ronald Lacey’s absurdly oversized Zeppelin with an assortment of wacky, lashed together biplanes. Despite this film boasting a budget of nearly $20 million, and a record-breaking crew of nearly 600, and being directed by Zoran Perisic, Superman flying effects pioneer and auteur of nutso Yorkshire Television children’s cartoon The Magic Fountain, it looks like utter crap. Especially the ‘climactic’ air battle, which has to be seen to be gogglingly disbelieved. Also featuring John Sessions and the two Nicholases, Frankau and Lyndhurst.

BBC Radio 2

17.00 Tony Blackburn’s New Year’s Eve 60s
19.00 Mark Goodier’s New Year’s Eve 70s
21.00 Gary Davies’ New Year’s Eve 80s
23.00 Ana Matronic’s New Year’s Eve 90s
01.00 Dave Pearce’s Dance Anthems
Matronic rather letting the side down here as we almost had a clean sweep of former Radio 1 jocks here, and it’s certainly a happy Christmas for Gary Davies, rounding off the year he made his return to national radio, because he’s also standing in for Ken Bruce and so presenting three shows in just over 24 hours. This should all be entertaining enough, from Tony spinning the platters the matter at teatime and Dangerous Dave rolling some phat ones in the small hours.

NEW YEAR’S DAY

BBC1

13.00 The Railway Children
We’re all thinking it: how long until this gets the dreaded reboot? Is it obscure enough in the US to avoid that fate? After all, tuppence is withheld from the bank in Poppins, and Bernard Cribbins turns down tuppence here, so aaaah. We’re just glad they haven’t got their hands on The Amazing Mr Blunden. Probably set it in the future. (When, of course, stately homes will be even more derelict.)

15.45 The Jungle Book
17.00 Inside Out
Assigned warm-up duties before It’s ‘Orrible Being in t’TARDIS When You’re 8 1/2 are the Beatles-Xeroxing Disney original and The Numbskulls Do CBT, which makes us think that a CGI reboot of Faceache could be fantastic. In fact, since they’re building that new film studio in Didcot (honest) to make 2000AD films, why not a Beezer Studios? Topper Films? DCThompsonEU? 20th Century School Fun? You’d have Whizzer Productions and Chips Entertainment bringing out rival blockbusters on the same day. And when the studios have a board meeting to announce the inevitable merger, they’d put a sign outside the boardroom door saying ‘Great news for all shareholders inside’.

19.00 Doctor Who
And so here’s your festive Who, no longer on Christmas Day of course but with an episode that is actually set on New Year’s Day even though, like much of the series we’ve just seen, its exact contents seem to be something of a mystery, other than the news there’s seemingly a Dalek or two in it. And seemingly this is the only Who we’re getting in 2019 although we’re not sure why it’s so important we have to have a series every year, especially as later tonight we’re getting the first episode of Luther since 2015 and there’s no shortage of excitement about that.

BBC2

14.50 The Eagle Has Landed
Overblown Jack Higgins adaptation in which Michael Caine spoils Donald Pleasence’s clandestine Churchill-knobbling expedition by insisting all the Nazi soldiers wear vests with ‘We’re all actually Nazi soldiers oh no what a giveaway’ written on the front. Not to be confused with overblown Jack Higgins adaptation A Prayer for the Dying, which is far more festive as it features Alan Bates putting a bomb inside a big blue tin of Crawford’s Biscuits for Cheese. This film came out in the same week as both Jabberwocky and Silver Streak. ‘It made quite a lot of money.’ – Lew Grade.

00.25 Young Frankenstein
The terrifying recent news that Mel Brooks is idly contemplating a Spaceballs musical leads us to wistfully recall the early days of the Filmguide, when word was abroad of a follow-up to the stage adaptation of The Producers, and we drolly speculated on how much effort it would take to turn ‘Roll, Roll, Roll in Ze Hay’ into a workable dance number. And then they made a Young Frankenstein musical, doing precisely that. So this time we’ll stay very quiet.

CHANNEL 4

13.25 Splash
You know, we’re pretty sure there’s nothing in OFCOM’s literature explicitly militating against John Candy claiming, at this time of day, in Swedish, to possess a twelve-inch penis in the third act of this beloved Disney classic. Channel 4 could easily restore a tiny portion of their erstwhile controversial mantle by screening the uncut version. Bet they don’t bother though, and just bung on the edit that’s most readily available. It’s what we’d do.

CHANNEL 5

09.15 ET: the Extra-Terrestrial
11.30 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
14.25 Oliver!
Now here’s a festive triple that doesn’t come with the usual gloomy atmosphere the phrase ‘festive triple’ normally heralds when written on the front of a Pret sandwich cabinet. The most Christmassy of all films set at Halloween gives way to Mary Poppins Dark, which itself segues into the best application of Ron Moody’s limbs thus far preserved on celluloid. Our only complaint here is that this should all have been shown on Christmas Eve. They’d’ve cleaned up.

Sky Classics

06.00 That Touch of Mink
Cary Grant gets crap all over Doris Day, she goes to the bleakest of bleak early 1960s self-service cafeterias to dry off, and the standard romcom plot unfolds therefrom. Not to be confused with Make Mine Mink, in which Terry-Thomas and Hattie Jacques nick fur coats, or indeed any film starring Mink Stole, in which a set of events quite different in both tone and setting occur.

WEDNESDAY, 2nd JANUARY

BBC1

19.00 Celebrity Mastermind
Always a curious day of telly, 2nd January, ostensibly a normal working day with all the news bulletins operating as usual but still loads of films everywhere and some leftover festive fare, of which this is the obvious example. Strictly’s Neil Jones, fresh from another series of everyone saying ‘who’s that ginger bloke?’ is here tonight, answering questions on Charlie Chaplin, while Paul Higgins does Watergate.

BBC2

08.10 Swallows And Amazons
Oh great, it’s that point of the holidays where they start flinging on the ëimproving’ stuff. Virginia McKenna and Ronald Fraser head the cast in this uneventful tale of fresh-faced youngsters up to all manner of dashing ëoutward bound’ activities that even Tarka The Otter would have considered a bit wet, with a neat sideline in grassing up some people with moustaches for liking ëjazz’ in a built-up area. It’s no Battle Beyond The Stars.

CHANNEL 4

09.30 The Great Muppet Caper
Kermit, Fozzie, Miss Piggy, Crumpso, That Sort Of Yeoman Of The Guard One and all your not-quite-a-mop favourites are all on board for this ridiculous diamond heist escapade that’s been a bit forgotten about now despite being a lot better than it should be. Especially noteworthy as a textbook example of that curious Big Budget American Film Made In England And Stuffed With Unlikely Supporting Cast phenomenon, taking in Michael Robbins, Joan Sanderson, Peter Hughes and Tommy Godfrey. Alongside Peter Falk as a bin.

11.35 Willow
Thumb-twiddling Lucas sword-and-sciencery would-be blockbuster flung out while he was waiting for someone to develop the technology that would allow him to scribble all over the original Star Wars trilogy with one of those pens with about fifty different retractable inks in them. One of those films that you relentlessly saw plugged on the back page of Marvel UK comics but never quite got around to actually seeing.

THURSDAY, 3rd JANUARY

BBC1

20.00 Celebrity Mastermind
Looks like a couple of celebs are making a second appearance in the black chair this Christmas, although given they have to find forty a year who are prepared to schlep up to Salford and potentially look stupid, we’re rather amazed they’ve gone so long without having to recycle some. Breakfast’s Mike Bushell is seemingly a convenient booking given he’s just a few doors down, so after he had a go at Alan Partridge, illustrating pleasing self-awareness, the other year, he’s back answering questions on Python.

BBC2

08.05 Angels One Five
One of those fifties films about air heroics that you don’t really see that often, which is a shame as this features that Humphrey Lestocq character off of that ëMr Turnip’ business that nobody quite understands what it is but ënostalgia’ shows mention it every three minutes regardless in a rare straight acting role. We’d rather have seen a pic about Rhapsody, Symphony, Destiny, Harmony and Melody, mind.

09.40 The Happiest Days Of Your Life
There were some fairly weird movie licensing tie-ins for ZX Spectrum games, but few were more incongruous than the 1986 offering from Firebird Software ñ BT’s label, no less ñ that transformed 1950’s Sim’n’Rutherford girl-boy-school-merger comedy classic into a sort of cross between Skool Daze and Fairlight, to nobody’s appreciable benefit. Though it was Kempston compatible. Anyway, this is well worth watching, as long as they’ve sorted out that pesky attribute clash.

CHANNEL 4

12.15 The Princess Bride
Peter Cook. Fezzik. Inigo Montoya. ‘I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means’. Fred Savage. Peter Falk. ‘STOP SAYING THAT!’. Miracle Max and his diagnosis of ëMostly Dead’. Buttercup’s fight sequences. Oh and Mark Knopfler, but we’ll gloss over that. WATCH. THIS. FILM.

CBBC

17.30 Blue Peter
Used to be that the first Blue Peter of the new year would always be the one where they announced they’d reached the target of their appeal, as always marked in the running order by Biddy as ‘We’ve Got It!’. Despite the triumphant return of the bring and buy sales this year we won’t get that here as the gang are still on holiday, but it’ll still be interesting as Lindsey’s ballooning challenge is abridged into a single show.

Gold

20.00 Morecambe and Wise in America
In the sixties it used to be a regular engagement for anyone signed up to ATV to do at least one series expressly for export to America, still produced at Elstree but filmed in colour and with American writers and producers calling the shots. Not many of the performers seemed to enjoy them much, or get much out of it, but Eric and Ern had a good go at it and we’ll see some of the results here, as well as a part of their career we often don’t hear much about it any great depth, their mediocre movies.

FRIDAY, 4th JANUARY

BBC1

20.30 Celebrity Mastermind
As ever, there are a couple more episodes of this series to dribble out through early January so we’ll be clinging onto the Christmas celebrations for a few more days yet. Rounding off the festive fortnight, though, is Bake Off’s Candice Brown on Audrey Hepburn and Danny Sebastian off Bargain Hunt doing Only Fools and Horses.

BBC2

07.45 Great Expectations
There’s more than a handful of veterans of the ëLoungecore’ scene bellowing ‘In the north! In the south! In the east! In the we-hu-ha-yessssst!’ right now, but it’s sedate 1946 Lean On British Pork Dickens-adapting all the way, in what is apparently the fifth greatest film of all time. As long as one of the upper four is The Magic Garden Of Stanley Sweetheart, you’ll get no arguments here.

09.40 The Lavender Hill Mob
And as the Creamguide (Films) Fireplace sizzles down to that empty box of Matchmakers someone accidentally threw in with the green flame-inviting corrugated paper thing still inside there’s just enough time for this excellent caper comedy with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her not exactly wider than a mile early role for Audrey Hepburn, and a quick recommendation for Betamax Video Club, an excellent podcast casting a wry eye over many a Cream-era video shop favourite, and indeed featuring a couple of Friends Of TV Cream as guests. Meanwhile, if you want to hear two of the Creamguide (Films) ëmassive’ despairing at their shared memories of seeing Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? Then you’ll be wanting to have a listen to Looks Unfamiliar. And of course there’s our own regular Creamguide (Films) Commentaries. Our dad may not have written a porno, but that little lot should keep you in listening matter until they stick on Nice Girls Don’t Explode again.

21.00 Billy Conolly: Made in Scotland
Second and final part of the telly self-portrait where Billy heads off back to Scotland to have a bit of a natter with the people of Glasgow and reminisces about his childhood, pondering along the way about what effect his Scottishness had on his life and career.

BBC4

21.00 Top of the Pops: The Story of 1987
22.00 Top of the Pops: Big Hits 1987
And we’re thrilled to see the traditional Last Thing In The Christmas Creamguide for the eighth year running, and it’s great to go into 2019 knowing we’ve got another stack of repeats lined up. Quite an interesting year ahead of us, too, we think slightly more interesting than the one we’ve just had with a host of pleasingly eclectic line-ups, a bit more excitement than the sometimes rather dull 1986 and, from our perspective, a four month period in the summer where we don’t skip a single episode (although we do miss four in a row in the autumn), though that’s offset by the imminent departure of John Peel. These docs usually come up with something interesting, this one promising a look at the long-forgotten American version of Pops, and then the clip shows are always great, with some stuff we won’t see on the shows themselves, including Eric B and Rakim’s notorious performance of Paid In Full where they mimed to a remix they’d only heard that morning and only realised they were on national TV and not some minor local show when everyone asked them about it the next day.

And that’s it!

And there we go with another festive fortnight all present and correct. We hope this is of some use to you. All that remains is for us to thank everyone who’s read and contributed to Creamguide in 2018, wish you a wonderful Christmas, and hope you’ll join us again on Thursday 3rd January for another twelve months of this kind of thing. All the best!

By the way…

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