By 1987, the TV Times also had the offerings of two channels to promote. Their cover this year displays Julie Goodyear and Jean Alexander grinning from their shamelessly glitzy and Christmassy cover to promote the fact that this was indeed Hilda Ogden’s last Christmas on “Coronation Street”. I always feel thoroughly miserable when I leave a job, but in telly land it’s an “event” so everyone seems desperately pleased to see their career take a sudden turn towards possible doldrumage.
This was the era when the battle between our four TV stations was really hotting up, during what we might now regard as being the “phoney war” before the coming of “Sky” and all of its nefarious stablemates, and ITV were really pulling out all the stops come Christmas Eve with Nick Owen and “Sporting Triangles” (ahem!), followed by the sitcom “Only When I Laugh” and Michael Barrymore’s “Strike It Lucky”. They then showed the Bob Hope and Don Ameche Murder, Mystery and Suspense movie “A Masterpiece of Murder” which has a cast list that makes an old tellyhead like me weep with joy including Yvonne DeCarlo, Kevin McCarthy, Frank Gorshin and Jamie Farr as “himself”. There then follows “A Duty Free Christmas” and Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”.
Channel 4 was already five years old and gave over much of the evening to “Opera on Four” and a “Comic Strip Presents…” repeat and a rare showing of the two-colour Technicolor movie “Kings of Jazz”.
Christmas Day itself featured four Disney films (“Mickey’s Christmas Carol”, “Dumbo”, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”) and “The Spy Who Loved Me” although they did bring up their big guns during the evening with “Blind Date”, that “very special” “Coronation Street” farewell episode, “It’ll Be Alright on the Night” and brand new “Inspector Morse” (“The Wolvercote Tongue”)Channel 4’s “alternative” Christmas fare included “The Amadeus Quartet”, the movie “Five Days One Summer”, a Paul Simon gig, “The Golden Girls”, “The Last Resort” (with you know who) and Dire Straits Live in ’85.
Boxing Day evening on ITV was mostly the premiere of “Ghost Busters” surrounded by Bobby Davro, Dame Edna Everage and Clive James, but I’m glad to see that they were still showing Angie Dickenson as “Police Woman” even then. Channel 4 was mostly given over to “A Century of Stars”, a programme about the Grand Order of Water Rats, and an episode of “A Fine Romance” as well as a retrospective of the recently deceased Andrés Segovia.
ITV saw out what was turning out to be a vintage year for Agatha Christie fans with “Sparkling Cyanide” followed by “Taggart” (still with Mark McManus), Des O’Connor and finally “Flashdance”, whilst Channel 4 bid adieu to 1987 with “The Motown Story” and an odd sounding programme about Hogmanay called “New Year Pieces”.
New Year’s day brought us “Superman II” followed by a showing of the original “Star Wars” movie on ITV, and Channel 4 showed “Somewhere in Time” on what appears to generally have been a lacklustre start to 1988.
Ah Hilda Ogden and her muriel - what a woman.
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