Christmas TV 1977

Moving on 2 years from yesterday’s blog I come to the Christmas before I turned 13. It was the year that one of the crown jewels in the BBC’s Christmas viewing was watched by an audience of 21.4 million! I wonder if you can guess which one? As well as that show, there were a number of programmes both familiar and forgotten. So, join me on a trip through the Christmas of 1977 from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day.

Christmas Eve 1977

The Christmas Eve morning line up was very appealing to me at the time and, quite honestly, would be appealing to me now! We start off with Bagpuss at 8.55, which was a total comfort blanket of a programme. For a complete contrast you had that followed by Buster Crabbe in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe from 1940, which was still exciting to watch given the amount of battles and the cliff-hangers that would take you into the next episode. Regardless of the slightly hammy quality of the acting, it definitely stood the test of time in those days. It would, perhaps, be less appealing to the majority of today’s 12 year olds, but even 80 years on, it’s relatively fast pace might keep some of them interested. The next 90 minutes would have been an absolute must see for me as it contained much of the music I would have bought as I started to collect singles. I was a Swap Shop fan through and through, never once switching channels to the anarchy of Tiswas, whose casual, if humorous, cruelty reminded me far too much of my days at school at the time, minus the humour of course. One of the main areas for the other children at school to target were my musical likes which I was occasionally unguarded enough to admit to. This programme gave me 90 minutes to ignore all the bullying and ridicule and just enjoy pop music in Swap of the Pops.

Two things come to mind when looking at the list of artists. Firstly, I can guess what songs they will have been singing in most cases, and could quite conceivably have a number of them on vinyl. Secondly, what were Harry Secombe and Chuck Berry doing on the programme? I’m not saying they weren’t excellent singers in their own right, but they seem a little out of place on this list. Mind you, the music that we were introduced to particularly on the BBC covered all bases at the time, so it is perhaps less surprising than it would be these days. Having another look at the list, I’m even more impressed to note that they resurrected both Chopin and Beethoven for this show!

One of the biggest news stories of 1977 was the death of Elvis Presley on August 16. It is one of those news stories where I can remember exactly where I was when I heard it. In my case I was watching the ITV lunchtime news sitting in my dad’s chair as he was at work. I remember my heart literally skipping a beat through shock. Although I hadn’t really discovered much of his music before he died, the release of Way Down, giving him a posthumous Number 1 in August/September 1977 and the subsequent airplay his old hits got put him firmly on my radar. I clearly wasn’t the only one, as Christmas saw a season of Elvis films in the mornings.

I have to admit that I was never a great fan of his 60s films despite preferring his 60s music output. They were fairly pedestrian and pretty much all had the same plot, a bit like a prototype Hallmark movie set up! As a 12 year old, the constant romantic entanglements were of no interest to me, so it was really a case of waiting for the songs or, more probably, drifting away from the TV and concentrating on something else. They may have been commercially successful in their time, but they were definitely not great works of cinema!

Following G.I. Blues your BBC1 viewing was eclectic to say the very least. At 12:40 there was the Soviet Gymnastics Spectacular, at 1:30 the film White Christmas and at 3:25 Jubilee 77 which looked back at the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations that June. The two hours watching this review may, I would suggest, have stretched my 12 year old patience too far!

As you can see, things definitely looked up for me from 5.35 when Rod Hull and his feathered friend started off Christmas Eve evening with, almost certainly, complete chaos. The Superpets programme was a That’s Life spin off that looked at some of the animals featured on BBC TV over the years. It would certainly be popular today and would no doubt launch a huge number of Tik Tok posts or GIFs! I actually remember all of these segments believe it or not! The evening took another dip, from my perspective, with a film called Third Man on the Mountain which included a few famous names like Michael Rennie (who was ill the Day the Earth Stood Still!), Herbert Lom from the Pink Panther films and James MacArthur who was Danny in Hawaii Five-O (Book him Dano, Murder One!). My childhood was filled with action and adventure films which I generally found boring, and seemingly endless numbers of Westerns which I grew to detest. My favourite part of the evening was probably atypical for a 12 year old boy. It was this classic drama.

As you can see, it was the last of 16 episodes, and it was a programme that gripped me from the start as I watched Louisa’s journey from poverty to her position as the Duchess of Duke Street. Further down the cast list you can see Lalla Ward who was the Second Romana in Doctor Who and something of a crush of mine at the time. Let’s say that her appearances on screen were greatly anticipated! We then go from the sublime to the cor blimey with The Dick Emery Christmas Show, which I remember raising an awful lot of laughs in our house with his collection of broad characters and instantly familiar catchphrases. Finally, it was back to a favourite show of mine at 9.50, the ever brilliant Starsky and Hutch. The late finish of 10.40 wasn’t a big problem as I was not full of excitement for the following day in the way I had been two years earlier. Where was The Polar Express when I needed it!

Christmas Day 1977

Looking at the line up on BBC1 for Christmas Day a couple of things come to mind. First is a real sense of deja vu, of which more later, and second is the realisation that the ‘golden age’ of Christmas TV wasn’t necessarily as good as it is made out to be all these years later. Like the music from the era, we remember the gold and forget the iron pyrite!

The morning offerings were similar to two years earlier with two programmes focused on the religious element of the season. Star over Bethlehem featured a service from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and after a programme called Playboard, which I have no recollection of at all, the traditional showing of a church service, this time from Kingston upon Thames in Surrey. The sole Christmas themed children’s programme was The Bear who Slept through Christmas.

Another programme lost in time, at least to me, and one that has a fairly sketchy write up with no idea from Radio Times who contributed to it. Well, IMDB came to my rescue this time with their page although with the exception of Johnny Mathis none of the names are familiar. The morning film, National Velvet from 1944, is famous for being the first starring role for the then 12 year old Elizabeth Taylor. It’s a film I have never watched, but given the cast I might look out for when it appears on TV again. At 1.40, there was the Are You Being Served? Christmas Special which would probably have had me in fits of laughter at the time, but from there until early evening, the deja vu I wrote about earlier set in! Top of the Pops, Queen’s Speech, Billy Smart’s Christmas Circus, The Wizard of Oz, all in exactly the same position in the schedules as they had been two years earlier. It was perhaps this type of relatively quick repeat of the ratings winner that has those of us of a certain age associating certain films with the holidays. The Great Escape always seemed to be on at Easter or the August Bank Holiday and Christmas was The Wizard of Oz or Oliver (Christmas Day 1976) or The Sound of Music (Christmas Day 1978)! Interestingly, it turns out that The Great Escape was first broadcast on August Bank Holiday Monday in 1979, May Bank Holiday 1981 then around Christmas in 1983, 1985 and 1987, while Oliver! was only repeated once more at Christmas in the 1978 and The Sound of Music was repeated in 1980, 1981 and 1982, but never at Christmas. Amazing how your memory plays tricks on you.

Anyway, back to the programmes which introduced everyone’s favourite vulpine celebrity into Christmas 1977.

Basil Brush’s infectious laugh and dreadful jokes thoroughly endeared him to me and to generations of children and it was no surprise to see him and Mr Howard in the Christmas schedules. It would definitely have been a programme I would have watched, and all of us would have settled down for the rest of the evening as BBC1 brought out the big guns after Songs of Praise, as Christmas Day was on a Sunday that year, starting with Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game at 7.15. Following that, were the two biggest shows of 1977, each attracting over 20 million viewers.

I discussed the relative unfamiliarity of Mike Yarwood to current audiences, but it was his show that won the ratings battle in 1977 with over 21 million viewers. It reflects his amazing popularity at the time, built on the excellent impersonations and the very funny writing that gave life to his characters. Can I remember anything about his 1977 show? No, I can’t. In contrast, the cast list itself for the following show which also attracted around 20 million viewers will bring back memories of two particular sketches.

Yes, this was the show where Angela Rippon showed off her dancing skills over 40 years before Strictly, and where Messrs Aspel, Baker, Bough, Kendall, Norman, Waring, Whitmore and Woods joined Eric and Ernie for the famous rendition of Nothing Like a Dame! When you remember that this was 46 years ago, it’s ability to conjure up memories is just incredible.

Boxing Day 1977

The Boxing Day fare was again very similar in nature to 1975, with Grandstand, It’s a Christmas Knockout, Top of the Pops, including a certain tracksuit clad presenter who also headlined a programme that fixed it for children making a reappearance, and such staples as Holiday on Ice getting a prime slot on Boxing Day afternoon. However, there were a couple of programmes that definitely deserve a mention. First of all, the Elvis film that morning proved beyond doubt that he could act and that he could handle the grittier character work that his overbearing manager, Colonel Tom Parker, refused to allow him to do in the 1960s.

Jailhouse Rock was arguably Elvis’ high point as an actor, and you can see in this film the way he could have rivalled Frank Sinatra who turned himself in to a movie star by proving that he could cut it as a serious actor. Elvis here is raw, angry, vulnerable and utterly charismatic as the young man who took the wrong decision, but whose talent may yet save him. He was followed on Boxing Day by another singer turned actor, the brilliant David Soul. His musical showcase might have had him reviewing his situation at one point!

The double act of Fagin and Hutch takes some getting your head round, especially them taking part in a darts match! However, both were very adept at comedy as well as drama and they both had a background in music so perhaps it isn’t quite as surprising as it seems. Soul’s appearance in the Christmas schedules reflects what a huge star he had become on this side of the Atlantic due to Starsky and Hutch and his massively successful year in the upper reaches of the charts.

The final programme to pick out is one of my favourite ever Christmas specials and one that I will give a full review to during #Blogmas. It’s this one.

Still hilariously funny, I will take a deep dive into this comedy classic in a couple of days time. I hope you have enjoyed my second look at Christmas TV of the 70s. Was it as good as everyone remembers? Probably not. The appearance of the same programmes is perhaps understandable as you don’t change a winning formula, but looking back it seems as though most of the festive content reflected a time where audiences were given safe and undemanding Christmas fare rather than the line up of absolute classics that our selective memories tell us we were watching. Did it hit heights that arguably haven’t been matched since? It definitely did. Morecambe and Wise and Mike Yarwood were gifted performers who brought perfect comic timing and excellent writing into the mainstream. The talent in front of and behind the camera was amazing and both programmes still stand up today as examples of the best of British TV.