TV Cream

Pot pourri

“All them programmes is recorded in August!”

Christmas telly, eh? THE GREAT ESCAPE! VAL DOONICAN! Your drunken dad standing up for THE QUEEN’S SPEECH! NOEL EDMONDS UP THE POST OFFICE TOWER!

Of course, unless you’re living in a sitcom or an issue of The Daily Mail, none of those things will be on television at Christmas, nor have they been for several years.

Yet there are still some familiar sightings in the festive TV schedules, albeit rather less celebrated.

Surely the first sign of Christmas these days are the hopeless made-up tabloid TV guides at the end of November, which try and suggest THE AVIATOR or DEAD AGAIN will be shown on prime time Christmas night. Yet despite at least half of the listings being devoted to “To Be Announced”, it’s actually fairly easy to predict the sort of things that are going to be on Christmas telly before you even open the Radio Times. For example, you’ll always see…

1) ANCIENT FILMS AT 6AM

A BBC2 staple, this, as whenever the Open University used to go on holiday, the extra hours would invariably be filled with a couple of RKO Radio Pictures like THE GAY FALCON, or umpteen LAUREL AND HARDY films back-to-back. In addition, whichever film star was having a season of their movies being shown on BBC2 over the festive period – normally either James Stewart or John Wayne – would invariably find their least distinguished pictures rolled out over breakfast so they can spend primetime showing the big guns while still announcing that the season was “definitive”. Of course, the thinking behind this was presumably to counter the cartoons being screened on every other channel until mid-morning, so for a generation the likes of THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT PART II served the same sort of role as ZIGGY’S GIFT and A MERRY MIRTHWORM CHRISTMAS.

2) BRITISH COMEDY FILMS AT 1AM

"I'm not shy, I'm circum...spect"It’s late on Christmas Day. Everyone else has gone to bed and you’re searching under the sofa to try and find that missing plate for the last dishwasher load. You idly switch on the telly for some distraction and find STEPTOE AND SON RIDE AGAIN. Or PORRIDGE or THE LIKELY LADS or, hell, even FATHER DEAR FATHER. For some reason BBC1 always took the Christmas holidays as the cue to fling on sitcom spin-offs around midnight, presumably as these are really the sort of films that can only really be watched after strong liqour – especially when they were really at the bottom of the barrel and had got on to HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH or PERCY’S PROGRESS. Indeed, DON’T JUST LIE THERE SAY SOMETHING has probably been on Christmas telly more times than THE SNOWMAN.

 3) THE USUAL SITCOM REPEATS

“Why is the Ooh Aah bird so called?” Congratulations to useless Lib Dem broadcasting spokesman Don Foster who, while the world tries to claw its way out of recession and millions are facing unemployment, has once again decided the most important issue affecting the medium is too many repeats of DAD’S ARMY. Nobody cares, though, because what better way to while away a dull afternoon over the holidays than reciting the script to THE GOOD LIFE along with Richard Briers. Indeed, such is the enduring appeal of some of these shows that in 1984, a repeat of PORRIDGE on December 27th was not just the most popular programme on BBC1 that night, but also the entire festive season with a whopping 19.4 million viewers. That’s more than RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK!

 4) DOCUMENTARY SERIES STRIPPED EVERY MORNING

“Hello? Yes, yes BBC, I know.” So BBC2 have got two weeks worth of daytimes to fill without schools programmes and Westminster. Call for Michael Palin, who can happily go AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS for the hundredth time every morning at 10am, or Alan Whicker, who can remark, “There’s something about a speedboat that makes you want to laugh” yet again. That said, as they’re on every single day of the holidays, we’re not sure who leaves their New Year’s Eve parties early so they can find out whether Mike’s going to be let into Saudi Arabia the next morning.

 5) A HASTILY-COMMISSIONED CHRISTMAS SPECIAL OF A FLOP SERIES

TV scheduling is often more luck than judgement. Take 1980, for example, when BBC1 commissioned NICE WORK, a factory-set sitcom starring Edward Woodward. It all seemed very promising so, at the same time, they greenlit a Christmas special, assuming that by December the public would be chomping at the bit to see how the by-then-much-loved staff of Hoffman Pressburger would celebrate the festive season. However by the time Mr Woowar joined the likes of Terry Scott and Robert Lindsay in the Christmas Radio Times to suggest how his character would celebrate Christmas, the series had been broadcast, and promptly flopped, meaning the special was its last ever outing. In later years, the likes of BABES IN THE WOOD and JACK DEE’S SATURDAY NIGHT enjoyed some ill-advised festive outings, while so desperate were the Beeb to replicate that Only Fools magic, THE GREEN GREEN GRASS went out at 8pm on Christmas Day 2005.

 6) A CHRISTMAS SPECIAL IN AN EMBARRASSINGLY UNPRESTIGIOUS SLOT

You'll like this, not we won't, etc.There are only so many hours in Christmas Day, so not every series can get their festive special in the favoured slot. Yet there’s something a bit embarrassing about a show trying to get us in the festive mood when, thanks to several more enticing shows taking priority, they’re doing so on December 19th when everyone’s still in work. For a time, the position of a show in the Christmas line-up could tell you exactly at what point an entertainer’s career was at. The best example is THE PAUL DANIELS MAGIC CHRISTMAS SHOW, which, when our man was still a rookie magician, started its life in 1979 on December 22nd. In the early 80s he was at his peak and regularly turning up on Christmas Day, but by the end of the decade, when the novelty started wearing off somewhat, he flitted around Christmas Eve or Boxing Day. Finally, in the 90s, Paul was reduced to manning the Bunco Booth on the 29th or 30th when everyone’s bored of Christmas, and nobody was surprised when the show soon came to an end. Meanwhile, 1988 was a blue Christmas in the Forsyth and Corbett households when Marcus Mortimer, producer of their seasonal special BRUCE AND RONNIE, walked into the rehearsal rooms in tears and blubbed, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’ve just looked at the schedules and we’re on Boxing Day at eleven o’clock”.

 7) LEFTOVER EPISODES OF FLOPS GETTING FLUNG OUT DURING THE DAY

Every year the shelves at the Beeb and ITV are groaning with hundreds of episodes of series that have never seen the light of day thanks to series getting canned mid-run, so the broadcasters have regularly flung the previously unseen shows out during Christmas daytimes, justifying the expense of making them while hoping nobody notices. And if the makers complain, at least they have the prestige of going out at Christmas. The likes of dodgy Davina-helmed hidden camera show OBLIVIOUS and silent comedy THE BALDY MAN have been shoved out in this manner in recent years. Occasionally you’d also get leftover episodes of game shows that had been postponed during their runs, with the surprisingly unfestive edition of EVERY SECOND COUNTS screened at lunchtime on Christmas Day 1986 being the episode that had made way for One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing after The Late Late Breakfast Show had been cancelled and the Saturday schedules abruptly rearranged.

 8) SOMETHING ON BBC2 OR CHANNEL 4 GETTING NO VIEWERS

For 51 weeks of the year, Channel 4 is the channel of Big Brother, Come Dine With Me and Property Ladder, often being more populist than ITV. However come Christmas, with BBC1 shoving out all the big guns, C4 seems to revert to its early days with schedules filled with the sort of “alternative” – ie, utterly tedious – programming that it’s too scared to show at times when anyone’s watching. Hence you get opera, ballet and extended religious documentaries, and at least one of these will be scheduled on Christmas Day opposite EastEnders or Doctor Who and get a rating so low it’s officially rounded down to zero. In 1993, for example, C4 screened SWAN SONG, a low-budget, one act play starring John Gielgud and directed by Kenneth Branagh, no doubt delighting the handful who bothered to tune in. BBC2 couldn’t crow too much, though, as the same night they played Alan Plater’s dramatisation of Glyn Thomas’s (who?) autobiography, SELECTED EXITS, and nobody watched that either.

 9) A SPRIG OF HOLLY ON THE TELEPRINTER

Festive garland not picturedIn every paper over the Christmas period you’ll find some columnists wringing their hands over the number of matches footballers are forced to play over the festive season, but the three or four full fixture lists over the festive season are always great fun, especially because the players are usually a bit knackered towards the end and there’s all sorts of bizarre results. However such were the restrictions on televising football in the past you’d only get MATCH OF THE DAY on Boxing Day if it fell on a Saturday – if that. Indeed it wasn’t until 1999 that you’d always get a highlights show on the 26th. To make up for it they were normally allowed to show a couple of goals on FINAL SCORE, where Harry Gration, Ralph Dellor or David Icke would sit in front of a Christmas tree to have a look at the teleprinter, with a sprig of holly replacing the usual score draw ticker as the pools didn’t operate on Boxing Day, before running through the results and tables as briefly as possible and buggering off. Still, it was more interesting than Setanta Sports News.

 10) SOMETHING SHITTY ON NEW YEAR’S EVE

Television on New Year’s Eve is the equivalent of Tesco at 5pm on Christmas Eve – all the good stuff’s been and gone and if you can’t find anything it’s your own fault. Seemingly the broadcasters have decided en masse that everyone goes out on December 31st and there’s no point in showing anything half decent, so out comes all the rubbish they can’t get away with screening when people are watching. For ITV, this is normally a crappy drama that’s been on the shelf for ages, like 1996’s in-jokey media satire CUTS or 2007’s DOUBLE TAKE, while on the Beeb it’s endless repeats, like PARTY AT THE PALACE all over again in 2002. Surely the biggest pisstake was on the last day of 1994 when BBC1 presented the incredible double bill of STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT and BARBRA STREISAND IN CONCERT, but anyone on their own in 2004 will doubtless still recall the heightened despair caused by the screening of A QUESTION OF SPORT OUT-TAKES SPECIAL at 11pm.

37 Comments

37 Comments

  1. Vole

    December 14, 2009 at 10:44 am

    In Scotland we always looked forward to relatives south-of-the-border sending us a VHS recording of the Clive James end of year show.

    While Scotch & Wry was always a welcome treat the rest of the Scottish telly schedule at Hogmanay was (and is) miserable. I can think of little less conducive to celebration than the forced jollity of Jackie Bird.

  2. Applemask

    December 14, 2009 at 11:33 am

    It was Hogmanay. If you were sober enough to recognise him you were doing it wrong.

  3. Adrian

    December 14, 2009 at 11:44 am

    STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT

    Surely the pinnacle of post war cinema?

  4. TV Cream

    December 14, 2009 at 1:07 pm

    And since this article was written, a further example of number seven can be seen this year with the final episode of The Colour Of Money getting that prestigious mid-afternoon-on-December-29th slot.

  5. gareth jones

    December 14, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    To tie in with No 10, itv this year at 9pm is a drama called Sleep with Me starring no one famous,how long has that been on itv shelves gathering dust i wonder.

  6. Cindylover1969

    December 14, 2009 at 8:00 pm

    Number 10 is in full effect this year with Five putting on Clint Eastwood snorefest “White Hunter, Black Heart” and BBC1 showing “Flubber,” “Madagascar” AND “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”

  7. Applemask

    December 14, 2009 at 9:24 pm

    So is The Advent Crowd dead? I mean it isn’t easy to fit into the new Web 2.0 version of Cream, but it’s still a shame. I used to look forward to that damn thing every year.

  8. Applemask

    December 14, 2009 at 9:27 pm

    Oh, also The Great Escape is on at some point during the Radio Times double issue weeks (which is what “at Christmas” is, of course).

  9. Adrian Fry

    December 15, 2009 at 9:01 am

    I always like watching for the early signs of Christmas TV and radio. Thee’s nothing very festive about Powell and Presburger films, but their appearance on BBC2 any Saturday afternoon from December 1st certainly gets me breaking out the advocaat. The BBC’s Sport’s Personality of the Year, interminable as Advent to an eight year old, is another early signpost on the road to Christmas. Oddest thing so far this year was the festive edition of Radio 4’s The Moral Maze debating, rather half heartedly, whether Christmas is a good thing or not. Brian Redhead’s A Word in Edgeways did it so much better in 1977. Probably.

  10. TV Cream

    December 15, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    On the subject of Sports Review Of The Year (call it by its name, BBC!), for a long time there’d always be an afternoon repeat on BBC2 (which, we think, began as an unscheduled replacement for some abandoned racing) which, in itself, became another staging post on the road to Christmas.

    And yes, interminable is the word. “Well, what a year it’s been for golf.” Just get to the Bit Of Fun!

  11. Vole

    December 15, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    “If you were sober enough to recognise him you were doing it wrong.”

    Perhaps, but under-age drinking wasn’t encouraged in my house.

  12. johnnyboy

    December 15, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    “…Scottish telly schedule at Hogmanay was (and is) miserable”

    ‘Only an Excuse’ is probably the one shining light on Hogmanay in Scotland nowadays. Always worth putting down your drink for 10 seconds; just to stop spilling it, mind.

  13. David Smith

    December 16, 2009 at 11:09 pm

    It rather amuses me to think that Only An Excuse? owes its name to a jokey reference to a somewhat obscure documentary series that ran for just five weeks 23 years ago, and I do wonder how many of its viewers still get the gag (if they ever did)…

  14. goodpudding

    December 16, 2009 at 11:19 pm

    Me thinks Big Top Christmas Special…. Ruth Madoc and a Performing Dog… All they need is a snowman on the titles and then you’ve got a special!

  15. TV Cream

    December 17, 2009 at 10:29 am

    Yes, the name Only An Excuse baffled Sassenach TV Cream for years until we were finally told. That said, we did actually remember watching Only A Game? when it was networked on BBC2 in the afternoons in the summer of 1987.

    And we do enjoy watching clips of …Excuse on YouTube, despite not knowing who half the presenters and commentators being satirised actually are. It’s fantastic that a show can exist to take the piss out of Jim White.

  16. Martin M

    December 17, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    For the last 4 or 5 years …Excuse? has been a lot more miss than hit, but the stage show is still worth a chuckle. Plus, didn’t ITV give up on the xmas day ratings battle years ago?

  17. Richard Davies

    September 6, 2010 at 7:11 pm

    I remember at a few Xmases there being a one-off (often non-xmas themed) nearly all star comedy drama, that would be shown once, & only repeated if there was a sudden gap in the schedules about 18 months later.

    A glut of output from Aardman Animation is common at Xmas, though mostly outside the Cream era.

  18. televisualcabbage

    October 18, 2010 at 10:06 am

    Its like ITV looked at the selection box and saw the peanut cracknell and said is that it?

  19. Richard Davies

    December 4, 2010 at 11:30 am

    The Xmas period always seems to be a decent excuse to show some (often non-Xmas themed) one-off animation of varying quality.

    That California Raisins special & Lyle Crocodile come to mind as some better examples.

    Can anyone remember a light hearted review of the year on Xmas day or Boxing day 1991, which used loads of old stock footage (mostly black and white) and “zany” voice overs?

    • Tom Ronson

      October 17, 2022 at 10:50 am

      In reference to Richard Davies’ comment from nearly twelve years ago, that sounds very much like The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand De Bargos, which was a rum old do indeed…

      • Richardpd

        October 17, 2022 at 9:59 pm

        Yes since my original post I’ve found out it was that, oddly I was reading something about it on Facebook earlier today!

  20. Sidney Balmoral James

    October 17, 2022 at 12:33 pm

    The Staggering Stories…. was quite droll, but it was quite a demanding watch, as you had to listen to the narration and voices, and pay attention to the (often completely random) footage, which was sometimes distracting. I actually remember wrapping presents on Christmas Eve whilst watching an episode, but it wasn’t a review of the year, so perhaps that was shown the following week on 31 Dec? Would have been around 1991 – same night they showed Sea of Love, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon as I recall (good combo of traditional Xmas telly there also).

    • Richardpd

      October 17, 2022 at 10:04 pm

      I remember seeing one episode in late 1991 about John McCarthy being released, with some footage of an old plane supposedly going to fly him home, with the pilot boasting that he was flying the plane in a childish way.

      The BBC seemed to buy up a load of stock footage in the early 1990s, judging by the about used in programming. The 8:15 From Manchester used a lot, mostly of old trains, & the revamp of Going Live! also made good use of it, like the 081-811-8181 announcement over footage of people from the Roaring 20s using period phones.

      • George White

        November 28, 2023 at 10:26 pm

        A lot of De Bargos was actually from the RKO library, which the BBC have infinite TV/streaming rights for, but not physical media.
        Hence clips from the likes of The Boy with Green Hair (sometimes in b/w, despite being shot in glorious colour), Vigil in the Night (faux-Lancashire hospital drama featuring a then Hollywood-resident Peter Cushing doing his From Beyond the Grave shopkeeper accent), the Great Man Votes, Mary of Scotland, the Falcon, Kirk Douglas/Robert Mitchum/Robert Ryan westerns…

  21. Adrian

    October 18, 2022 at 10:17 am

    Aren’t the only things advertised on ITV on Xmas day indigestion tablets & the january sales, therefore not really worth competing with the BBC over.

  22. Richardpd

    October 18, 2022 at 10:30 pm

    My Dad reckoned ITV didn’t show adverts at all on Christmas day for it’s first few years, due to some Toddler Truce like ruling.

    I remember ITV often had a lot of adverts for furniture & holidays of the Christmas period, often local companies using still images voiced over.

    Film Noirs seemed to be common in the small hours until recently, possibly as part of a film season. I remember The Killers (1946) being shown late on Christmas Day 2000, with a young Burt Lancaster as “Swede” Anderson.

    Channel 5 seem to show every year a documentary about Christmas songs made years ago that now has a lot of captions saying “speaking in…” for now deceased contributors.

  23. Glenn Aylett

    October 19, 2022 at 10:31 am

    The run up to Christmas in the late seventies on BBC One in the morning usually meant a re run of Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films. Great fun as Tarzan battled giant ants, Nazis, mobsters in New York and a leopard cult. Often these were preceded by Buster Crabbe playing the original Flash Gordon from 1936. Rather better than watching people buying houses.

    • Richardpd

      October 19, 2022 at 10:56 pm

      I remember Undersea Kingdom being shown over the mornings of Christmas 1990.

  24. Glenn Aylett

    October 20, 2022 at 4:58 pm

    I suppose now there are seperate channels for children and none would be interested in watching a black and white serial from 1936 that BBC One and ITV continue with their normal programming right up to Christmas Eve. Indeed ITV over the last two Christmases has even shown Lorraine and This Morning on Christmas Day as they probably realise around a million will want their fix of them on Christmas Day and it’s cheap. Also religion is very much a dead thing on the light channel.

  25. Richardpd

    November 26, 2023 at 3:20 pm

    As well as a Charlie Brown Christmas often getting into the schedules, the other Peanuts specials would get an outing, like when the gang went to summer camp & the other where the were exchange students in France. It’s a shame these don’t get an outing, even the more recent film hasn’t been obvious in the festive schedules.

  26. Glenn Aylett

    November 26, 2023 at 6:14 pm

    Border Television, having to serve its Scottish audience, would inflict the Scotsport Review Of The Year on Emglish viewers between Christmas and New Year. Other regions would be showing a decent war film, but we had the joys of watching highlights of football teams no one in England suppoorted for 90 minutes. Well, Jim, the Lanarkshire derby could have been a lot better than 1-0 in stoppage time. Aye, ye’re right there, Jock, now here’s a clip of the Dundee derby from last January.

  27. Richardpd

    November 26, 2023 at 10:03 pm

    Hogmanay seemed to cause many Scottish opt-out programming around the New Year, though the above mentioned Only An Excuse seemed to be a highlight worth watching.

  28. Glenn Aylett

    November 28, 2023 at 2:50 pm

    The war films are still wheeled out on BBC Two and whatever smaller commercial channel has the rights between Christmas and New Year, where once they would be the highlight of Boxing Day and December 27th on BBC One and ITV. If you’re so inclined, you can see Von Ryan’s Express, The Heroes of Telemark( this always appears on BBC Two every Boxing Day or December 27TH), The Guns Of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Heroes for the hundredth time. Sometimes you might get The Odessa File turning up as well on Channel 5.

  29. Richardpd

    November 28, 2023 at 10:27 pm

    I’ve noticed certain films usually get an outing over the festive period, non Christmas themed but still a fun way for the family be occupied for a couple of hours with the minimum of brain effort.

    The Julie Andrews twosome of Mary Poppins & The Sound Of Music are usually high on the list, along with the likes of Grease, Bugsy Malone, The Wizard Of Oz, Watership Down & many others, usually on the main channels. Other bank holidays get the same treatment.

    The Christopher Reeve Superman films along with the numbered Star Trek films were bank holiday staples for a couple of decades but are now languishing in the obscure digital channel schedules if there at all.

  30. Sidney Balmoral James

    November 29, 2023 at 8:44 am

    The Heroes of Telemark is enjoyable to watch to spot signs of the obvious mutual dislike of Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris – not a wise casting decision (Harris had similarly fallen out with Charlton Heston in Major Dundee, and Marlon Brando – easily done – during the making of Mutiny on the Bounty). Can’t say I’ve ever felt much affection for Where Doubles Dare, or the Guns of Navarone, which are horribly overlong and convoluted, and Trevor Howard and Frank Sinatra look too ancient to be WW2 soliders in Von Ryan’s Express. These are films which you are almost forced to accept as classics, but which don’t really have the qualities of classic films, unlike say, The Great Escape. I may also be in a minority in thinking The Battle of Britain is a really good film. It is likely that its poor critical and box office reception did for it long-term. Speaking of Brando and Trevor Howard, Morituri is also a good 60s war film, which has never won a place in the public’s affections.

    • Glenn Aylett

      November 30, 2023 at 7:40 pm

      The Heroes Of Telemark will be present and correct on BBC Two over the festive period. Also last year BBC Two showed Odette, which is a true story and has some of the most hateful Nazis you’ll ever see in a war film, particularly as their victim is a woman. The Gestapo officer and his poker is the most evil character, as he is completely without emotions and enjoys his work, but the two female Nazis- the prison guard and the woman in the concentration camp- are a pair of spiteful, vile harridans as well. Always love it when Odette tricks the camp commandant into believing she is related to Churchill, which probably saves her life, and ends up handing him over to the Americans as a war criminal.

  31. Richardpd

    November 29, 2023 at 10:01 pm

    I like The Battle Of Britain, even if the plotline away from the real events are shaky, but with a star studded cast it makes a present way to spend a quiet afternoon. It helps that Hugh Downing was still alive to act as a consultant, even though he was still bound by the Official Secrets act. In some ways it’s like Le Mans, where you watch it for the action & not the plotline!

    Luckily many of the War films made in the 1950s & 60s had actors in who had fought in the actual war, so knew what they were doing.

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