“All children, except one, grow up”. I’ll be enjoying Jackanory for the next five days – Jan Francis’ delightful reading of Peter Pan. It’s one of only a handful of Jackanory stories commercially available, so surely it’s about time that some of the series’ back catalogue (I know that, sadly, many editions were wiped) turned up on the iPlayer? If the money can be found to plonk every episode (apart from four) of Doctor Who on the iPlayer, surely a bit of cash can be spared for Jackanory too.
Tom & Jerry – The Mouse Before Christmas. I don’t why I shouldn’t slip this into today’s schedule as it turns up on my rota most Christmases (and indeed, often during different parts of the year as well).
Next up is a repeat of Christmas with Terry and June. The Radio Times listing isn’t too helpful, but after a little research I’ve worked out that it’s the 1981 Special. If I end up posting a clip on Twitter/X, I wonder how long it will be before someone pipes up to tell me that Terry Scott was a terrible man? Presumably they think that I’ve either not heard the rumours and/or am interested in their opinions …
Over on BBC2 there’s A Talent for Murder with Angela Lansbury and Laurence Olivier. Lansbury chews the scenery and Olivier affects a long-suffering air (odd to hear his character say “pain in the ass” rather than “pain in the arse” but that’s presumably a concession for the American market). Overall it’s a curio, but something that’s nice to see at least once.
Here’s the Radio Times feature (an interview with Lansbury).
ITV and C4 isn’t offering a great deal today, but I’ll tune in for Coronation Street and In Loving Memory. Richard Davies is guesting in today’s episode of In Loving Memory, so that’s one good reason for tuning in.
Archive Television Musings 
I was too busy working to watch tv for much of that week, and I even worked evenings.
But I was home for A Talent For Murder.
Where were they then Adam Woodyatt was in The Witches and the Grinnygog before he spent most of adult life on EastEnders. On Children’s BBC there was playhouse with Amanda Kirby as the princess. Three years earlier she was in The Swish of the Curtain with Sarah Greene who left Blue Peter in 1983 and was now in Saturday Superstore and Eureka.
The Night Before Christmas was the third Tom and Jerry cartoon, and the second that was actually called Tom and Jerry. (In Puss Gets the Boot the cat was called Jasper.) I always remember that cartoon in black and white because it was usually shown on Christmas Eve when we only had a black and white tv.
I would love to see Tom and Jerry: The Night Before Christmas, or the National Filmboard of Canada’s The Great Toy Robbery, at the cinema on Christmas Eve just before a classic Christmas film. But according to the Celluloid Sorceress, who sometimes curates cult move screenings for Picturehouse Cinemas, prints of animated shorts are hard to get hold of.
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And speaking of Eureka, I have just learned that Wilf Lunn has died. He was best known as the inventor on Vision On. He also deserves to be remembered as a panelist on the forgotten quiz show It’s Patently Obvious.
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Coronation Street had clearly just recently killed off long term character Len Fairclough from reading this evening’s episode. I seem to recall the programme suffered multiple cast exits around this time with Peter Adamson’s off screen scandal and dismissal being the most memorable.
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