Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, I wonder what programmes are lurking inside BBC4’s hat?
BBC4 continues to mine the archives over the Festive period. Some programmes will be old favourites that always seem to resurface at this time of year, but they’ve also dug a few rarities out (which gladdens the heart of an old grump like me). So let’s take a look at what’s on offer between the 18th and 24th of December.
18th December
The 1986 Christmas Day edition of Top of the Pops lurches from the sublime (Billy Ocean, A-ha, Pet Shop Boys) to the less than sublime (Nick Berry). I wouldn’t have said that 1986 was a classic year for music, but the track listing is pretty decent so it’s well worth a look.
Keeping Up Appearances (The Father Christmas Suit) and To The Manor Born (The First Noel) both received December 2022 BBC4 airings, so they should be familiar to most. ‘Allo! ‘Allo! (The Gateau from the Chateau) last surfaced in October 2022 (prior to that it hadn’t been aired since 2012 on BBC1). It’s my pick of the three, not least for its affectionate Danny Kaye homage ….
19th December
Last seen in 2013, the 1977 Top of the Pops Christmas show makes a comeback. I’ve written about it here – fair to say that the punk revelation has yet to breach the TOTP studio, but it’s a show that has its moments.
Also on today, Steptoe & Son – A Perfect Christmas.
20th December
Top of the Pops Christmas 1991, dinnerladies – Christmas and Les Dawson on Christmas all make a rapid return to the schedules (TOTP last aired in 2021, the other two in 2022).
More interesting to me is a new programme – Mike Yarwood at the BBC, hosted by Rory Bremner. Yarwood is a character who seems to be loved and slightly despised in almost equal measures (I no longer bother posting clips of him on Twitter/X as it becomes tiresome reading comments about what a bad impressionist he was).
Yes, hand on heart some of his impressions weren’t terribly accurate (although I tend to have more issues with the scripts, which often only offered predictable and corny gags). But any 1970’s LE show will always appeal to me – and you have to be impressed with the way The Mike Yarwood Show pushed against the technical limitations of the era. Some of the split screen work, for example, still stands up today.
21st December
Today’s TOTP treat is Christmas 1984, which gets bonus points for the Do They Know It’s Christmas? singalong in the studio at the end.
That’s followed by Sykes (which I’ve written about here). This last aired in 2022 – prior to that it had received two repeats in 1997 and 1999. I find it interesting that its original tx (12th December 1975) was so early in the month. Like his pal, Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes often railed at the decisions of the BBC management – so no doubt this piece of scheduling wouldn’t have appealed to him ….
Three cheers for The Good Life Christmas special (Silly But It’s Fun). This has bestrode the schedules like a colossus since 1998 (repeated every year from then on) although it’s surprising that prior to that, repeats were more sporadic (1981, 1983, 1990, 1992). It’s no hardship to watch again (my thoughts on it can be found here) but it still niggles me that Margo waited until the 24th of December to have all her Christmas goodies delivered. This has to be, in order to make the story work, but it’s still something that’s hard to swallow.
22nd December
BBC4 seem to have given up on the annual TOTP Christmas shows (the surviving 1971 – 1973 programmes, with a little judicious editing, would have gone down very nicely). Instead they give us a Top of the Pops – Christmas Hits compilation from 2016. It has some Xmas classics (Slade and Mud) but it also features the likes of Coldplay, so a finger on the fast forward button is recommended.
23rd December
A real rarity today – Parkinson takes a Christmas Look at Morecambe & Wise from 1974 (unseen since its original Christmas Day broadcast and never issued on DVD). Morecambe & Wise didn’t make a Christmas show in 1974 so this Parky fronted clipshow had to suffice. No doubt it’ll be packed with all the moments we’ve seen a million times before, but maybe there will be some new material (if only interviews). We shall see.
Cilla in Scandinavia makes a swift return to the schedules. How much you get out of this depends on your tolerance to our Cilla – but she was able to corral an impressive guest roster (Marvin, Welch & Farrar, Basil Brush, Ringo Starr).
24th December
I don’t think Last of the Summer Wine – Getting Sam Home has had a terrestrial repeat since 1984 (please let me know if I’ve missed any dates) which seems slightly amazing. A ninety minute special shot on film and with no laugh track, it was one of the jewels of the 1983 Christmas schedule (I’ll be spending the Xmas fortnight in 1983, so I’m sure this will be one to revisit).
Also on tonight are Yes Minister (Party Games) which I’ve written about here and One Foot in the Algarve.
After that is another rarity, Bruce Forsyth and Ronnie Corbett’s Christmas Special (albeit broadcast on Boxing Day) from 1988. Although it’s occasionally surfaced on YouTube it’ll be nice to have a better quality version. Little from the show has stuck in the mind, but maybe time has been kind to it (fingers crossed).
Rounding off the evening is The Two Ronnies’ Old Fashioned Christmas Mystery. It’s their Christmas show which tends not to be repeated that often (2008, 2017) so it’s a good decision to dig it out again. My old blog post about it can be read here.
Next week I’ll cast my eyes over the BBC4 schedule for the 25th – 31st December.
Archive Television Musings 
Genome shows a broadcast of Getting Sam Home on BBC1 on Sunday 8th May 1994. I actually can’t see any record of a 1984 broadcast though, just the original 1983 broadcast, the 1994 repeat and now the 2023 showing on BBC4.
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Ah, that might be me misreading the Genome search data and confusing 94 for 84. Thanks for that.
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By the way a possible reason why it didn’t get repeated for over a decade might be that it ended up being the last television appearance of John Comer who played Sid. John was feeling ill during filming, and his voice was so bad that his lines had to be dubbed by another actor in post-production, but it was only afterwards that it became apparent he was actually dying from throat cancer, and indeed he died just a few weeks after the episode aired. I imagine that for at least a while afterwards the cast and crew would have been uncomfortable with the idea of rebroadcasting the episode as it featured their friend visibly (but unknowingly) suffering from his final illness.
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Yes, that’s a good point – Comer’s illness does make for an uncomfortable watch at times. A pity, as otherwise it shows the series at something of a peak,
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I rarely watched Last of the Summer Wine before this point, but I do remember sitting down to watch “Getting Sam Home” right through to the end. I was a little surprised and disconcerted by it. The film-editing style gave it a quite different rhythm to the usual sitcom fare. It may have been the presence of Lynda Baron, and a few other elements, but I felt this episode seemed to have a lot in common with “Open All Hours” – it was quite a bit cruder than I had been expecting. The story kept me hooked though – at that time it seemed quite daring for a TV programme to show a dead body being carried around.
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1986 was a good year for pop music as far as the indie pop scene was concerned. But as far as the mainstream charts were concerned, it says it all the highpoints of the Christmas edition were The Chicken Song and Cliff Richard and the Young Ones, so the eighties was a good decade for tv comedy.
The other tv tie-in record was Every Loser Wins by Nick Berry, from one of the worst tv shows of the eighties.
I already gave my opinion of the 1977 Christmas Top of the Pops when you did a full review. The bands miming to Do They Know It’s Christmas? on the 1984 show was just tacky.
I believe that some of the cast of Last of the Summer Wine had reservations about doing a black comedy episode for Christmas.
Five years after Michael Parkinson’s look at Morcambe and Wise the 1979 edition was different from the usual shows. Eric had been ill during the year so they were unable to do a full sketch show, and instead it was an extended interview with David Frost.
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A cracking round-up. Thank you!
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I had another watch of “Getting Sam Home”. It was a lot cruder and more sexual than the sort of humour people came to expect of Last of the Summer Wine, which is perhaps why it has rarely been repeated. The feeling inside the BBC being that people who had enjoyed chuckling along with Thora Hird, etc., would not be comfortable with this.
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