Rather sinister looking pantomime characters and a masked dancing harlequin adorn the cover of the Radio Times of Christmas 1988 in a painting by Lynda Gray. Rather weirdly, because of the way the dates fell that year, this is the only issue of the many we have looked at this year that, like in this very year of 2011, finishes before the end of the holiday season and required purchasers to buy another issue to cover New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and the remaining Bank Holidays connected to that weekend and, because of that, what we can discover about the New Year’s programming has been lost in time, at least as far as my little random box of saved magazines goes. I’m sure, however, that if you were really interested (and after the past three weeks, why on Earth would you be…?), a quick search of the wibbly-wobbly-web would provide you with all of the answers you seek.
Incidentally, the seemingly haphazard or “random nature” of the various copies of the listings magazines that I have chosen to share with you this Christmastime is simply to do with the order in which they came out of the box which I found in my attic, and has no other secret agenda. On another year, I may very well have opened another box instead and our journey would have been very different, although, I don’t reckon I’ll be trying to do that any time soon.
I promise.
Meanwhile, an entire week into this particular two week edition of that listings magazine we have all come to loathe this past few weeks, the content of Christmas Eve is revealed to us with “Jimbo and the Jet Set”, “Corners” and “Chucklevision” leading into “Going Live!” with Philip Schofield and Sarah Greene. Then, after “Yogi’s First Christmas”, a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon (whatever happened to those?) and (Gawdblessya) “Mary Poppins”, Desmond Morris investigated the domestic cat in “Tiger on the Tiles” until a visit to “Bob’s Christmas Full House” led rather nicely into the very nicely timed “Santa Claus: The Movie”. After the sitcoms “’Allo ’Allo” and “Last of the Summer Wine” got us into a mellow mood, “Jagged Edge” turned up to get us all spooked up again. Luckily “Christmas Eve with Val Doonican” was there to calm us back down again before a “First Communion” and John Wayne in “The Searchers” saw us all off up that wooden hill. Alternatively, on BBC2, you could spend your evening with The National Youth Music Theatre performing “The Ragged Child” and The American Film Institute Salute to Jack Lemmon leading into his performance in “The Front Page”.
Christmas Day started early on Christmas Morning with a selection of children’s TV like “The Christmas Raccoons” all under the umbrella title of “Now It’s Christmas” with Simon Parkin, Andy Crane and their guests. After worshipping at Paisley Abbey, BBC1 handed over to “Christmas Morning with Noel” which included more of the dubious hilarity of “Auntie’s Bloomers” but I don’t suppose anyone was paying that much attention. After that, a special “It’s a Christmas Knockout” from Walt Disney World included a bizarre list of celebrities including Richard Roundtree, George Lazenby, Bernie Clifton, Meatloaf and Toyah who I’m pretty sure never, ever appeared on the same bill before or since. Unique! Less unique was yet another “Best Christmas Walford’s Ever Had” and Bruno Brookes, Gary Davies and Anthea Turner leading into the Queen’s speech with the “Top of the Pops Christmas Show”. Rather appropriately (for this series of witterings anyway) BBC1 then went “Back to the Future” for the very first time, before heading back to Peckham for “Only Fools and Horses” followed by Cliff Richard and Sally Magnusson hosting “A Christmas Celebration” for “Songs of Praise” at 6.30 PM, featuring another eclectic list of celebrities from Thora Hird to Ian McCaskill. After that, the channel returned to the fun and frolics of “Bread” and “The Russ Abbot Christmas Show” before showing the fabulous “Silverado” for the very first time. I think I still may have that tape somewhere as it was my very first Christmas with a video machine as I’d started working in my first proper job the previous January.
BBC2 didn’t even get up until 10.00 AM that day and then spent most of it at the “Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Concert” as well as showing films like “Storm Boy”, “The Bible… in the Beginning”, “The Family” and “Some Like It Hot” and a play starring Zoe Wanamaker called “Once in a Lifetime” about teaching silent movie actors how to talk when the talkies came in.
Boxing Day meant that “The Black Stallion Returns” before Roger Moore played an amiable Nazi Officer (if that isn’t too oxymoronic) in “Escape to Athena”. The day was generally made up of fairly familiar fare with “Jim’ll Fix It”, “A Question of Sport” and “The Paul Daniels Magic Christmas Show” alongside the seasonal delights of “The World’s Strongest Man” and “Disney Time”. The later evening was spent with “Beverley Hills Cop” getting its first British television airing, “The Lenny Henry Special” (he’s come a long way since “The Fosters”…), a “Bruce and Ronnie” (Forsyth and Corbett) Christmas spectacular featuring Fiona Fullerton, and “Fiddler on the Roof”. BBC2 meanwhile, spent another day mostly at the movies after finally getting out of bed at 11.00 AM (perhaps it had regressed towards teenagerdom again…?), although when the films are a list like “Fort Apache”, “The Ladykillers”, “The Maltese Falcon”, “Otello”, “Local Hero” and “Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back” (ah, how ironic…) you tend to forgive them.
Finally, we end this journey (apart from tomorrow’s Coda, of course) with a look at the New Year’s television… but of course we can’t. There is, at least, a helpful page rather tantalisingly listing the weekend’s programmes, so I can tell you that the Saturday morning film was “One Hour to Doomsday” and BBC1 spent much of New Year’s Eve with Perry Mason, and that BBC2 started 1989 in the company of the Eurythmics and David Bowie’s Glass Spider Tour, and that the thing that seemed to be getting BBC1 most excited about New Year’s Day was “Amadeus”. Perhaps, after all this research into the ghosts of Christmas Telly Past, we could now hazard an educated guess as to how the day worked out, but to do that would be wrong in this environment of factual reportage, so I think we’ll just have to think instead of the general brilliance of the Christmas Telly of yesteryear and just put on our rose-tinted spectacles and prepare to be astounded.
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