The Why Don't YouTube? Newsletter - December 25th 2023
From the house of @whydontyoutube
50 YEARS AGO
Television was falling out of love with the portmanteau Christmas Day show. Christmas Night With The Stars had finished the previous year to concentrate on the actual shows and the attempt to hybridise the annual children's hospital morning visit with a kids' version, A Stocking Full Of Stars (Facebook link, sorry, we'll try not to make it happen again) was into its second of three years. That did include a mini-Record Breakers in which a Santa-suited Roy reads out various appropriate achievements before being joined by the McWhirtery bell ringers of doom.
It's a Tony and Noel Christmas Day Top Of The Pops with surely one of the great lineups, redolent of its era and as confused as that sounds. Fair way to kick off the studio performances, though, Slade, with a Noddy hat replicator at the front - lots of hats around, actually - and Dave as some sort of kaleidoscopic peacock. Then it's Suzi Quatro, the Simon Park Orchestra, The Sweet cut down in this edit but not this one with Steve Priest in German helmet and full-on expressions to camera, Dawn & Tony Orlando, *that* Pan's People Get Down routine, er, Gary Glitter, the "highly meritorious" 10cc, Peters & Lee, Wizzard going the full hog complete with unconvincing jivers, and Slade returning (here in full) with their Christmas number one a stage invasion that's far too early and far too populated, not allowing the camera to get anywhere near until after one of Wizzard has put the standard pie in Noddy's chops - presumably that's what the little cheer at 1:33 is for. Someone kisses Noddy at the end despite having seen the state of him.
As we say, the umbrella festive special era is almost at an end, and so this was the fifth and final All Star Comedy Carnival. Tarby hosts, dropping into his introduction an amazing Watergate-related prop joke followed by a pointed barb at Ted Heath. It's the most mixed of bags as Man About The House, Sez Les and Doctor In Charge specials rub shoulders with Billy Liar, My Good Woman and Spring And Autumn, a Jimmy Jewel vehicle that plays out to near silence. Bob Todd does a spectacular job as a drunk butler, with fellow guests Bobby Moore, Henry Cooper, Val Doonican, Fyffe Robertson and very briefly popular ventriloquist Neville King and Grandad, plus the repertory company from Jimmy's very short-lived sketch show Tell Tarby, Lynda Bellingham, Kenny Lynch, Frank Williams, Josephine Tewson and Hugh Paddick. Right at the end Tarby and Kenny indulge in a dance-off to the strains of Wandsworth Boys School Choir.
What of those specific BBC shows breaking out on their own? First up, The Generation Game, where the final round is a production of Cinderella with a young pre-Sellers Lynne Frederick as the titular lead, Bruce as Buttons and, in something of a magnificent booking, Frankie Howerd as the Baron. One suspects he and Frederick hadn't attended rehearsals together. Here's how the couples did, while another surprise guest appears, Howerd doles out the points and then it's the conveyor belt.
After Yarwood, this wasn’t one of the Morecambe And Wise Christmas Show all-timers but Eddie Braben returned after missing 1972 with a work-related breakdown, giving Eric his first ever entreaty to a passing siren, Hannah Gordon singing The Windmills Of Your Mind, the struggles to find a big name guest, and Vanessa Redgrave in Latin heat and as Josephine to Ernie's Napoleon.
While BBC1 completed a strong and lasting prime-time with the premiere of The Odd Couple, BBC2 had a new fantastical dramatisation of Alice Through The Looking Glass, directed by the pioneering James MacTaggart (of Lecture fame) and starring future Nyssa Sarah Sutton as the youngest actress to have ever played the title role against Geoffrey Bayldon, Brenda Bruce, Freddie Jones, Judy Parfitt and an almost entirely CSO set that it constantly strains against the day's limitations of.
40 YEARS AGO
BBC1's day starts off with the UK premiere of 1980’s The Christmas Raccoons, in which Cyril Sneer finally cuts out the middleman and tries to cut down the entire forest to the sound of new songs by Rita Coolidge and Rupert Holmes. Another imported debutant later on is Emmy winner Ziggy's Gift, a version of a long running US newspaper cartoon strip brought to life by the great Richard Williams as director, with Disney and Dreamworks animation emeriti Eric Goldberg and Tom Sito drawing and Harry Nilsson providing an original song for the soundtrack. It would be shown four more times on the 25th, the last on Channel 4 exactly ten years later.
Meanwhile Roland's Winter Wonderland, Rat and pals in Switzerland, compiled what had been running on TV-am across three weeks. Most ITV watching children had to settle for third division buy-ins between the religious programming, except for viewers in Scotland who had Glen Michael's Christmas Cavalcade down what appears to be either a circus or a gym, then next to a swimming pool which has had a white Christmas tree prop placed poolside - do these people not think of the potential for bare soles/pine needles interaction? - and finally an ice rink. We dread to think how far in advance this was recorded given the portable tree is the only visible decoration.
The usual mob-handed assortment of DJs on Top Of The Pops is cut down to four, namely Simon Bates, Janice Long, Mr Light Entertainment Andy Peebles and, so you won't have seen it, Mike Smith in full dame costume. You won't see a lot of it here as someone cut out the vital between song folderol outside studio performances from Freeez, Shakin' Stevens, Eurythmics, Bucks Fizz, Heaven 17, UB40 and your festive chart topper the Flying Pickets.
Terry's final Blankety Blank follows the Queen, seen off with a panel of at least semi-regulars, namely Sabina Franklyn, Roy Kinnear, Ruth Madoc, Patrick Moore, Beryl Reid and Freddie Starr. And yet a twist would emerge much later as one contestant is Captain Tom Moore, far from Sir, and also far from the prizes as he loses his round. An auspicious, and auspiciously placed, occasion for a programme Tel dropped out of as he felt it was running fast out of steam, but not one that people were going to engage with in large numbers when Superman was premiering, which while only fourth in the day's ratings battle was ITV's big winner by some distance with 11.3 million viewers.
Exiled to mid-afternoon BBC2 for the day even though morning BBC1 could have done with it, Henry's Cat helps Chris Rabbit prepare Christmas dinner for everyone until a pot of glue gets in the way.
Channel 4 stood for the innovative, risk taking and alternative. So here's the Barron Knights with Twice Knightly, their second special for the channel that year, producing a series of videos for their most recent songs. Carol Lee Scott makes an undignified cameo, like there could be any other kind here.
The Two Ronnies' third Christmas Day show followed the example of the previous year by being the day's most watched non-Queen programme. This was the lowest rating Christmas Day of the decade, BBC1 in a slump that would lead to the Michael Grade era and ITV maybe complacent with their big film, so that meant all of 12.3 million tuning in for Elton John and lots of sketches not such archived, two singing Welsh train operatives, a taxidermist, a judo demonstration and the annual big closer being The Adventures of Archie, in which the titular Corbett character is transported to a desert island by a genie with only Carol Hawkins for company and is rescued by a Tardis piloted by Worzel Gummidge. See what they've done there?
Now we're getting something shiny floored, Jimmy Tarbuck's Christmas All Stars a studio based variety spectacular as she is spoken, meaning Brucie appears again this time in music hall pianist mode alongside Cannon & Ball, Max Bygraves' song about the year, a mini-Game For A Laugh, Yarwood, Barrymore, Shaky and via satellite the Temptations, Andy Williams and the stars of Hart To Hart, Freeway inclusive.
All Creatures Great And Small (part two) took third place in the viewership chart, three years after the third series, four before the fourth and rather splendidly getting a follow-up episode two years to the day later. The war has ended so the call-ups that ended matters in 1980 (as it were) have been demobbed and James, Tristan and Siegfried have to readjust to civilian and vetenary life. Or you could watch the very quick (five months after UK release!) TV premiere of The King of Comedy On Channel 4.
Thicker Than Water was the third Only Fools And Horses Christmas special, which finished fifth in the ratings chart, but the first of fourteen to go out on the day itself. John Sullivan is finally getting to grips with the special form and it advances the family story and the "men without women" angle of the set-up, something it wouldn't come back to at Christmas for some time, as Del's dad Reg Trotter, played by the voice of Pigsy from Monkey Peter Woodthorpe, briefly retuns. It would turn out to be Grandad's final appearance, Lennard Pierce dying ten days short of a full year later while filming the next series.
But what about the Queen? BBC2 as always picks up at 9.50pm having had time to subtitle and sign her thoughts on communication and co-operation, followed by The Bob Monkhouse Show ending its first series with Yakov Smirnoff. In Soviet Russia entertainment lights you!
30 YEARS AGO
Philippa Forrester is in the Czech Republic, sort of giving away that she was there weeks ago by means of some very worrying and absolutely unbroadcastable now traditions, for Children's BBC's early morning links which lead up to Live & Kicking On Christmas Day, which bravely has taken up the Noel mantle by going out live (supposedly, we have no direct evidence of this) and dragging Take That in for as long as Robbie is, unbilled in advance for reasons we'll come back to after this sentence, as well as Eternal which seems weird given half of them are infamously devout Christians.
As we mentioned covering the previous weekend this is really the last stand for What's Up Doc? in its hellzapoppin' form, and not just because Yvette was off on maternity leave but also most of the cast left due to disputes with STV. Added to that it's only fifty minutes long, half of which was cartoons, clips and adverts. Enjoy, still, a wild, only partially inappropriate version of A Christmas Carol and your last opportunity to hear Andy Crane say "insubstantial ghee", in the company of - see what we mean? - Take That. And, er, Gary Glitter.
This was the infamous year a recession and franchise change hindered ITV didn't so much drop the ball as refuse to acknowledge there was one at all, scheduling their biggest shows either side of the big day much to the ITC's annoyance and filling the hours between the Queen and 11.40pm with four films (including the very unChristmassy film noir D.O.A.) and a Jeremy Beadle-fronted stunt clip show. Despite all that, the apogee may have come as early as 12.30pm when, it being a Saturday, there was as usual an edition of Movies, Games And Videos, Steve Priestley voicing over a package of film clips and EPGs intended as nothing other than filler, this edition cycling through some of the recent cinema offerings and a few things expected in early 1994 with very little acknowledgement of the season. And they kept it in place.
The Queen has her usual things to say, mostly about the hope of world peace - clearly a passé judgement, the speech losing a total of five million viewers compared to 1991. Some of them may have migrated to Channel 4, where as part of their Christmas In New York themed season Quentin Crisp became the first person to give the Alternative Queen's Message, as it was then known, in the days where they were brave/man enough to run it at 3pm, though they do run the actual speech much earlier than usual at 4.15pm maybe just in case. Her Maj's words later lead the BBC news ahead of children being left home alone for the holidays, while there's been a white Christmas or a flooded one.
The fifth Noel's Christmas Presents, which as often is set some time in the Victorian age, isn't supposed to be glamorous but the first Present takes it to extremes, taking place in the Welsh coal mines. Things get more ambitious after that with Santa Noel giving a whale watching trip in Hawaii, Eurodisney, a fire-fighting trip for a small boy, a family reunion in the worst weather, the supposed search for a hammock that expands in a trip to Mauritius just because they can, a reunion of a octogenarian with the American GI she looked after during wartime with a reveal in which everyone else in the room has to pause stock still for some reason, and the one everyone remembers where the Hollies play in someone's garden.
Now two years on from the final regular episode of the show, this Only Fools And Horses was the last special before the "final" Christmas trilogy (not to be confused with the final FINAL Christmas trilogy), John Sullivan bemoaning to Radio Times that he could easily write a new series immediately but David Jason was making Frost and with Nicholas Lyndhurst entering his time travel era he wouldn't be able to get anything on in 1994. Fatal Extraction, which was such a big deal it had two trailers, is a curious one to go out on regular Trotter travails, given Raquel leaves Del over his drinking and Del dates a dental receptionist who he thinks then starts stalking him and accidentally starts a riot, it's obviously a national event and won the day's best audience of 19.59 million, a couple of hundred thousand ahead of Birds Of A Feather going to Hollywood.
Eastenders famously set out to deliberately ruin people's Christmas Day with a set of divorce papers and that's what they came to live by as this time around Aidan threatens to throw himself off the top of a block of flats, and had management not intervened would have. Sean Maguire, who despite becoming the soap's pin-up only did 63 episodes, left three days later.
20 YEARS AGO
Aardman made a couple of series of Creature Comforts for ITV, possibly just because, including a ten minute Christmas episode with guest reindeer and trees, which aren't creatures but whatever.
So what was this year's Eastenders major upheaval? Well, Kat and Alfie got married, then found Alfie's divorce hadn't come through so they hadn't, then it did, then they got married properly this time in the Vic. Hooray! And there was a massive violent showdown between Dirty Den and the newly escaped from prison and about to escape Walford for eighteen months Phil Mitchell, with Dennis as an active bystander! Ah, Eastenders, always determined to throw the spanner into the festivity works. Plenty of arguments, interference, revelations and occasional inevitable levity in Coronation Street too, because if it works for one...
Where once, as we've seen and will soon enough see again, taking a sitcom somewhere new in the world was once enough, My Family takes the family into a new place within reach of a home, stationing a bottle episode on a broken down Tube train. It's not even an extended episode and it still needs novelties to pad out the runtime with Richard Whiteley making a walk-on appearance and Robert Webb as a passenger from Estonia but practically using his actual accent. The show was pretty much at its peak, but not for much longer as Kris Marshall left afterwards.
Even as a one-off World Idol, bringing together eleven international winners from the Pop Idol franchise, has a fatal flaw that even Simon Cowell owned up to literally weeks later - it was a Simon Fuller idea, Cowell's unwise steps into straying outside his TV lane were years and years away - namely that you're telling people who proved themselves and won that after all they're not as good as someone else. So it was that, having already sold millions of records domestically, Will Young and Kelly Clarkson, whose performance we feature, among others were found wanting in the end. Filmed in London, it didn't even launch Ant & Dec internationally, let alone winner of winners Kurt Nilsen.
We'd had the final Only Fools And Horses; now unless you want to count the single scene for Sport Relief eleven years later it was the final *final* Only Fools And Horses, a trilogy that proved such a state of overstretched affairs that while still top of the viewing chart for the day (Eastenders second, World Idol not even in the top ten) meant it dropped four million viewers compared to two years earlier. Cassandra is pregnant, Rodney might have found his biological father, Del and Raquel might be splitting up, the family might be evicted and Marlene might be dead. They said there'd be room for more. There was not.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
No, come on, we'd be here for far longer than we even have been already. Just read our previous Christmas Day schedule deep dive blogs: 1980, 1981, 1982, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992.
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