Hullo again!

And as long as we haven’t ballsed up the scheduling, welcome with tremendous haste to the second part of the Christmas Creamguide. For those who just join us at Christmas, you may be staggered to learn that we do this kind of thing all year round, powered by all your marvellous contributions to creamguide@tvcream.co.uk, if you’d like to let us know your particular festive highlights. But now, more of this.

SATURDAY 27th DECEMBER

BBC2

19.40 Lives Well Lived

You know you’re getting old when this is one of the highlights of the festive schedules, Kirsty Wark’s now annual commemoration of some of the people we lost this year. They do a really good job of it too, bringing together some fascinating and rarely seen archive and some informed and engaging contributors to pay tribute, hence we’ve got Sting and Al Jardine on Brian Wilson, David Blunkett on Norman Tebbit, Sheila Hancock on Cleo Laine and Bob Woodward on Robert Redford, among others. And this is another evening, as Tom Baker memorably had it, where the living are mainly entertained by the dead, as it’s accompanied by various repeats, including...

23.05 Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

There’s a Simpson sight gag-inviting triumvirate of worth-your-attention monochromatic classics over on the channel that gave us Murder Most Horrid and Juice earlier in the day, namely Double Indemnity, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, but we’re keeping it strictly Cream-era as you plough your way through the Neapolitans nobody wanted – eg none of them – so fire up your Fisher-Price Pocket Radio for a true midweek asking-to-‘stay-up’ mainstay as Newman and Redford head off in freeze frame to take on their greatest adversary, Oran ‘Juice’ Jones. Presented here in at least partial tribute to the latter, although it really was wryly amusing to see how the ‘quality’ career retrospectives routinely carefully circumvented his last couple of pre-retirement credits – namely Avengers: Endgame, the Pete’s Dragon reboot and that one he directed himself where Sissy Spacek flew through a briefcase or something, which doubtless caused considerable aghastment for all those wryly-expressioned twelve year olds with their own Guardian column where they appear in half-full profile wearing a T-shirt like a cool person and go to those cinemas where you can order a bottle of that one where Paul Newman has a fireman’s helmet on the label directly from your seat via a confusing app. You’d have been lucky to get a Wall’s Super Choc when this was first out!

CHANNEL 5

10.30 Clash Of The Titans

Postermag-propelled relentlessly Clapperboard-profiled discounted Calibos action figure as frequently replicated birthday present-engendering textbook Ray Harryhausening big budget misfire somehow labouring under the misapprehension that what the post-Star Wars – never mind that, post-Flash Gordon – moviegoing youth of the nation REALLY wanted was some kind of fusion of the Children’s BBC presentation of The Phoenix And The Carpet and I Clavdivs, only five years late and without nearly as much Gary Russell as that might seem to suggest. But what a misfire! Clockwork Owls, younger sibling recountage-spooking manifestations of Medusa, longstanding Harry Hamlin-spotting across a good decade of hour-long American dramas flung out by ITV at 9pm, and the requisite three seats worth of quasi-lairy local eleven year old ‘lad’-affectators shouting at Judi Bowker to drop the robe, as if the cinema screen might suddenly interactively bend – literally – to their hilariously chaste desires. They doubtless grew up to shout much the same at Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary, which funnily enough is on the same channel precisely twelve hours later. Anyway, think Anthony Andrews encountering Professor Yaffle and you’re halfway there.

BBC4

21.00 Sam West Remembers... Prunella Scales

21.15 Funny Women: Prunella Scales

21.45 A Question of Attribution

We’re being passed around the networks here tonight as the tributes to Pru on BBC2 are followed by some more here, including some moving family memories. The documentary Sam’s introducing comes from 1998, one of a series on comedy stars, which is small but perfectly formed with contributors including John Cleese, and then two tributes for the price of one with the last programme produced by Innes Lloyd, which was broadcast posthumously and garlanded with awards.

ITV4

10.30 The Big Match Revisited

Looks like this will be our last visit to 1976, where we end the season with presumably the winner of Goal of the Season which these days is done and dusted in five minutes on the last Match of the Day with Alan Shearer saying “yeah, that was a good goal”, but in these days took almost as long to complete as the FA Cup with extensive and heated discussion from a distinguished panel. We should end the season with QPR top of the league and looking odds on for the title, but after they’d all gone on holiday Liverpool won their games in hand and just pipped them, so it’s a bit of an anti-climax. Been a fascinating series, though, and it looks like there’s more to come in 2026.

BBC Radio 4

20.00 How The Muppet Show Began in Britain

Page one of the Boys and Girls’ Bumper Book of Telly Facts does of course mention that when Jim Henson pitched the idea of a Muppet series to the US networks they all turned them down before Lew Grade invited them to do it at ATV in Elstree, and then the same US networks all clamoured to buy it. We’re not sure how many viewers at the time knew it was a British show, mind, with Not The Nine O’Clock News making reference to how nobody had ever heard of any of the guests. But there was a heavy British influence off camera, with all the Muppet team absolutely delighted with the enthusiasm and high standards of the ATV crew, while a load of British puppeteers learned the ropes too, including Louise Gold who presents this programme and speaks to Lew’s nephew and Muppeteer Dave Goelz.

SUNDAY 28th DECEMBER

BBC2

19.30 Celebrity Mastermind

Another trillion episodes of this before we’re finished. Looks like there’s some kind of rule about how Gladiators are billed because she’s down as Montell Douglas in the billing but she’s in costume on the show so she’s appearing as Fire here, answering questions on Lauryn Hill, last seen as one of the least dreadful aspects of the World Cup Draw with Jonathan Pearce expressing his fondness for her discography, while Matt Edmondson’s challenged on board games. Answering questions about them, we mean, not actually playing them.

01.20 The Wicker Man

Edward Woodward arrives by Fisher Price Adventure People Air Sea Rescue Copter on a remote Scottish island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a ship in a bottle, a ‘Hamish’ and some random scraps of metal that are apparently either a princess’ errant crown or a cat unsuccessfully chasing a bird until they turn into a sort of collapsing kaleidoscope whirlpool, and a billion arguments instantly break out between wielders of ‘Merrie England’ iconography that they’ve bought from one of those shops that have those annoying ‘Mellifluous to look at, so dainty to hold, but if you should breakykins it, considerre it ensold!’ signs about whether it is a horror film, a musical or a lost instalment of Bob Hope’s ‘Road To…’ series, about whether the edit that makes no fucking sense for about the last fifteen minutes is better than the one that has an entire sodding episode of Z Cars wedged in at the start, and most importantly of all which of them is best at liking it. We on the other hand will always associate Corn Riggs and their apparent bonnieness with the incomprehensible Radio Times/Points Of View straddling controversy when Moviedrome were forced by technical circumstance to show a different edit of the film to the one advertised, which in turn reminds us of the gentleman earlier this year at a Moviedrome retrospective who booed whenever a clip of Mark Cousins appeared on the screen. Our thoughts are with you at this difficult time. Incidentally we did consider billing Shakespeare In Love on BBC1, but that was honestly just so we could say ‘Gwynneth Spinneth!’.

ITV

20.30 Torvill and Dean: The Last Dance

Easy to forget quite how huge figure skating was in Jayne and Chris’ pomp, their world championship routine in 1984 – which ended up taking place at 4am UK time as the rink melted – being such a big deal that it was broadcast live on their home station of Radio Nottingham. Skating on the radio, there. Presumably the commentary was just “they’ve not fallen over yet, still not fallen over, ooh... no, still not fallen over”. They were such big box office ITV got in on the act as well, both channels covering all the big events like it was the World Cup, though seemingly those British skaters who followed in their footsteps ended up being overhyped somewhat by ITV, unfortunately for them. Anyway, what with Dancing on Ice being axed again they’re finally calling it a day, and the cameras have been present throughout the preparations for their final tour, for a documentary which might be a bit less eye-opening than the one they did thirty years ago and got a lot of headlines because Chris came across as a bit of a git.

21.30 Top Gun

The subject of much discourse already, not least from ourselves even though we apparently have mysteriously never mentioned it so much as once in decades of archived Filmguides, so let us press ahead with the one remaining unanswered question about Tom Cruise’s soft rock-soundtracked aerodynamics – what exactly is going on in the video for Take My Breath Away? We get Terri Nunn standing in the middle of an airfield with her clothes constantly on the verge of taking off in tribute, then the other two blokes out of Berlin – as seen in apparently arbitrary configurations in that photo from the Top Of The Pops countdown – sort of nudge each other as if they have just realised they are in a pop group and proceed to walk across towards her at odd angles like some sort of Adrian Hedley stuck on slow motion. None of which has ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE FILM.

CHANNEL 4

13.05 Dad’s Army

Early seventies remanglification of the earlier episodes – though not any of the wiped ones, amusingly enough – and by association the effective origin story of the Walmington-On-Sea Home Guard, which even the most fastidious and unremitting blockhead calling for the BBC to be banned whilst toting an avatar of themselves saluting next to a wildly disproportionate Captain Mainwaring would have to admit lacks that extra oomph that the cramped sets and hysteria-addled studio audience enhanced their flimsy small-screen antics with, but even so found its way into rotation repeat circulation alongside proper Dad’s Army itself. You don’t get that with the bloody Rising Damp film. Also, why did nobody ever explain how they travelled in time for those Pelican Crossing thingymajigs?

CHANNEL 5

10.30 The Glenn Miller Story

Hot shoe-shuffling biopic action following the legendary trombonist from the early days of The Cat That Chewed Your New Shoes, In The Mood only without The Two Ronnies adding lyrics about “did you hear the gossip about her over there/she’s just had an operation down you-know-where”, and that 01-811-8181 thing up to his mysterious disappearance whilst attempting to see it from Barry Mani-low’s an-gle and secretly being inducted as ruler of those blokes in that Thunderbirds episode with the ‘Z’s on their hats or whatever it was, of one-time perpetual enforced watching due to the under-honoured viewing preferences of a ‘guest’ when Bring ‘Em Back Alive or something was on the other side.

BBC Radio 2

15.00 Johnnie Walker: A Celebration

We lost Johnnie Walker almost exactly twelve months ago, dying on New Year’s Eve surely the obvious time for such a renowned hell-raiser to go out. Happily he managed to keep broadcasting right until the end, and got to hear all the tributes when he retired, a fondly remembered figure who enjoyed a great career despite some ridiculous decisions. He wasn’t the only person in the sixties to be a bit naïve about the whole thing and think world peace would be achieved if only everyone just sat down and listened to the latest Country Joe and the Fish LP, but he decided to stick with Radio Caroline after it was outlawed and everyone got proper jobs on officially licensed radio because he didn’t want The Man to tell him what to play, only to find himself required to play back-to-back crap from the people who were bankrolling it, before it then sank both financially and literally and he found himself driving a bread van. Still, he bounced back from that and other amusingly daft sackings, and he was so respectable at the end he gets the honour of a tribute at the BBC Radio Theatre, with Bernard Butler, Kiki Dee, Rick Wakeman and other friends in attendance, before Goodiebags spins some of the FM rock he loved so much.

17.00 Pick of the Pops

Last outing for the Christmas records here, starting off with the ultimate pop Christmas of 1984. Then it’s 1997 when there’s another supergroup in the charts, and imagine if Pops was as big and important as it was in 1984 and they decided to do a studio performance of Perfect Day, dragging the likes of Dr John down to Elstree to do it. This is just after Candle in the Wind established supermarkets as a major record retailer and singles sales shot up, and much of the top ten, including Elton, have been there for weeks and weeks.

MONDAY 29th DECEMBER

BBC2

13.30 North By Northwest

If you’re so inclined, you can tune in earlier today and see Robin and Rosie attempting to wrest a cream horn from Ben Gunn in Cockleshell Heroes, and the consequences of Mike’s crockery-reappropriating desecration of the Monopoly board in The Battle Of The River Plate, but we’re more interested in this rare example of much-feted YER LIKE THIS Hitchcock ‘suspense’ that is actually really, really good, albeit one with a standout sequence so widely and heavily homage and pastiched that you half expect Marge Simpson, Gamora or a clearly very narked looking Tom Baker to wander into shot at any moment. It’s still no Just Ask For Diamond, though. Incidentally there is still no news on the recovery or otherwise of The Mountain Eagle, although some bloke on some forum reckons he might have located the word ‘The’.

19.30 Celebrity Mastermind

Not many big events in the Christmas schedules this year, without a Last Ever Episode to hit the headlines, though most of them came back a few years later anyway. One of the shows which were front and centre of the schedules with a grand finale was The Vicar of Dibley, as discussed here by comedian Chloe Petts, while Ashley John-Baptiste talks Donny Hathaway and commentator Robyn Cowen tackles The Karate Kid.

CHANNEL 5

10.15 Hook

Widely-declined outbreak of Pan-rebootage putatively adopted by teenage girls as a liable ‘date movie’, only to discover to their annoyance that the boy they had had their ‘eye’ on was more diverted by the spectacle and indeed implications of Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell in a controversial “Presenter of Children’s ITV ‘Outward Bound’ Game Show” incarnation. Honestly, woman – bully him into going to see Prince Of Tides!

BBC4

21.00 Bob Monkhouse: The Last Stand

Lord Bob died on this day in 2003, when the days fell the same way as they do this year and TVC’s Graham Kibble-White was invited onto Five Live to pay tribute, where Peter Allen tried to goad him into singing the theme tune to The Golden Shot. That same year came his lasting legacy, this famous show where he passed on his memories to a wildly enthusiastic room of the bright young comic talent of that era, many of whom Bob knew personally. It’s been on a million times since but always worth a watch, especially on this of all days, and it now serves as a lovely tribute to Mike Yarwood as well.

TUESDAY 30th DECEMBER

BBC2

11.25 The Third Man

Perhaps fittingly for a day when you’ll be down to the Ferrero Rondnoirs, there’s a lot of this ‘noir’ business around on BBC2 today including The Man Who Knew Too Much and Dial ‘M’ For Murder – which always sounded a bit too much like something The O-Men would have come up with on Jigsaw – but the black and white even by black and white standards honours must inevitably go to Great Big Giant Of The Cinema Horson Welles and his not remotely McGoohan-influencing transformation of a Grahame Green novel into a masterwork of symbolist expressionist plot twist conundra, which in true Private Benjamin tradition went on to inspire an almost entirely unrelated television spinoff where nobody can quite decide whether it was made by the BBC or not, and which, brilliantly, David Frost used to read out a spoileriffic plot summary of as a rebuke to the BBC’s attempt to rein in those TW3 upstarts by scheduling Harry Lime’s zithertastic shenanigans immediately after it. Not to be confused with the Thin Man, in case you were having flashbacks to sitting cross-legged in front of that big TV with the shutters on it.

18.00 Hercules the Bear: A Love Story

Hercules the TV Bear, get it right! Actually for those who complain they’ve never heard of anyone in Strictly, if it was going in the late seventies they might have got Hercules on it, because he was a bloody big star, and when he went missing in 1980 it was such a big deal that his return was the lead story on the ITN News, with Jon Snow adding suitable gravitas to the report. A fascinating story all round, wrestler Andy Robin and his wife Maggie rescuing him from a safari park initially to use him as part of the act, but instead becoming a real part of the family and one of the world’s most famous animal actors.

19.30 Celebrity Mastermind

Top telly moment earlier this year when the news did some vox pops at a Trump protest in London and were seemingly completely unaware that the old bloke they’d just interviewed was Sylvester McCoy, but inevitably thousands of Whovians noticed. He’s one of the subjects tonight, as chosen by... Sophie Aldred! More on this in great deal in a future issue of Doctor Who Magazine no doubt, and elsewhere journalist Mobeen Azhar is quizzed on Prince.

CHANNEL 5

20.00 Geoff Capes: Britain’s Greatest Strongman

No doubt for many people World’s Strongest Man remains a festive tradition, the latest heat on before this programme, and the last knockings of those weird TV sports where everyone involves takes it very seriously and it’s covered like a proper sports event but they’re happy to leave it on the shelf for ages to reveal the results and you don’t read about it in the papers or anything. In the eighties it was a much bigger deal, thanks in part to the celebrity of Geoff Capes, one of the most famous faces in sport and a constant telly guest, not least for the endless amusement that this powerful and imposing figure had such a genteel hinterland with his interest in budgies and antiques.

21.00 Ken Dodd: The Lost Tapes

Doddy never really had that starring TV vehicle a comedian of his popularity and stature probably deserved, but the shows would have to have been about five or six hours long to fully reflect why his live act was so spectacular. Despite him suggesting that when he died he wanted all his notes and tapes destroyed, we’re pleased to see his wife Anne completely ignored him, and indeed contributes to this new show which showcases some recently uncovered footage of the great man in action.

Sky Arts

21.00 Billy Idol Should Be Dead

Safely after the watershed, it’s the full and unexpurgated story of Sir Billiam Idol. Looking back at footage of Generation X we always think Sir Billiam must be one of the least threatening punks of all, with his fluffy hair and pathetic bleat of a voice. Actually we’re not sure he had much in the way of punk cred in the UK, but he found a much more appreciative audience in the US with his MTV-friendly image. Fair play to him for seemingly still going strong despite, as the title suggests, taking ten million drugs a night and breaking every single bone in his body, but he seems a suitably self-deprecating figure so this should be an entertaining doc.

NEW YEAR’S EVE

BBC1

14.00 Back To The Future Part III

We’ve inevitably already had the first two earlier this week, and we’ve already billed them about seventy four million times with the same ‘The Complete Collection is now yours to own’ – ‘But I only li-‘ – ‘YOURS TO OWN’ on each occasion too (and we’re also swerving the Indiana Jones films for much the same reason, not least on account of the fact that they appear to be on seventeen times apiece in a nonsense order), so instead let’s direct our critical reserves towards the one nobody mentions. It’s the Doc-centric frontier days-set concluding instalment of Marty McFly’s timeline-breakage and fixage big-shoed shenanigans, possibly most notorious now for the earliest DVD pressings featuring a fault where it kept on looping back seamlessly to the start of ZZ Top doing that sort of ‘old timer’-pleasing hoedown which provoked more than a few opinions-for-money film critics to scoff that this big bolshy new format was not going to last and we should all go back to VHS as ‘they can just put all the extras on there too’ – never quite clarifying how this would work in terms of commentaries – while somehow also missing the point that you could probably consider it entirely in keeping with the conceits of the films themselves and that it could only be resolved by Marty, presumably, standing in for Frank Beard or somesuch.

BBC1 Scotland

22.00 Being Stanley Baxter

Stanley died the other day at the world’s worst age, 99, but this programme was already scheduled as part of BBC Scotland’s Hogmanay line-up and it should be a fitting tribute. He was a huge star in his day, though as it was pointed out he had the misfortune to be dropped by LWT due to his shows being too expensive so defected back to the Beeb before they too realised what a huge budget the lavish parodies required. That said, we’re not sure if he would have lasted much longer as while Mike Yarwood was still wheeling out Harold Wilson in the mid-eighties, we noticed one of the obits quoting Kenneth Williams writing about one of Stanley’s Christmas shows and mentioning how old some of his favourite subjects were, pondering if anyone under the age of fifty would appreciate impressions of the likes of Mae West. But he remained much loved, especially in his native Scotland, as illustrated by the admirers paying tribute here, as well as for the first time his sister Alice.

BBC2

13.10 West Side Story

Answering a longstanding mystery that had long plagued the denizens – whatever they are exactly – of TVC Towers, we can now confirm that the Children’s BBC show that featured an interstitial involving the yappy bits from America was in fact Record Breakers, which used it to transition into its pre-Ron Reagan Jr reports of broken records from across the ‘pond’ accompanied by a hideous Copydexed-together mish-mash of Stateside pop-cultural icons from Woody Woodpecker to Captain America which looks staggeringly slapdash even by the blunt scissor standards of the mid-seventies BBC. Quite what Norris would have made of the complicated immigration-related interactions underpinning all the finger-clicking and shouting ‘WACKO! JACKO!’, however, is something best left unspeculated on. Tonight, tonight, it all began tonight, I saw you and the World’s Biggest Leaf…

19.30 Celebrity Mastermind

The current incarnation of Top of the Pops is on before this show, very much these days most resembling the Noel-in-the-office show from Christmas 78, while later tonight it’s Ronan Keating seeing us into 2026. Let’s hope he doesn’t do I Love The Way You Love Me, as seen on Pops the other week, or we’ll be sound asleep by midnight. If you’re opting out of all the rowdiness, here’s the second Who-related subject in two days as Tia Kofi is challenged on Chris Eccleston’s Doctor.

ITV

09.25 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Wings-shooting-out-of-Corgi-toy-at-elderly-relative-startlingly-inopportune-moment-a-go-go as Truly Scrumptious and the gang whizz off in their prototype Robo Machine for a series of garishly realised vignettes, most notoriously the celebrated – if that’s the right word – interlude in which a crooked-hatted Robert Helpmann goes treacle tart-profferingly hunting for The Curious Orange, although for our money the most nightmarish bit is that doll on a music box that’s wound by a key thing in which Dick Van Dyke starts serenading Sally Ann Howe whilst apparently cosplaying as ‘Hokey’ and/or ‘Cokey’ off of that early eighties See-Saw show. Let’s just say Gordon Murray’s lawyer was probably watching closely.

12.35 The Goonies

G! They’ve got a pirate ship! O! None of them are called Chip! Fantasy adventure shenanigans for all the family with only the occasional moderate flash of kid-says-something-mock-‘blue’ inserted for no good reason and which ITV will probably have blunt-scissoredly hacked out for this time on a peak viewing day anyway as juvenile iterations of Short Round, Thanos, Bobby Keller, thingy out of Encino Man and that kid who was in about seventeen billion episodes of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories head off in search of neighbourhood-saving lost treasure and Martha Plimpton’s hand in hand-holding. One of those films that everyone pretends was a much bigger deal at the time than it actually was, but unlike most of those that were, it’s actually quite good.

14.55 Dirty Dancing

Astonishing to think that the title alone would once have caused incalculable nervousness in pretty much any timeslot – and, while we’re about it, whither Shag? – but there’s bound to be some cuts to a mid-afternoon showing to put it mildly, which will doubtless placate that teacher who once confiscated an issue of Smash Hits from two girls before double physics as she did not consider Patrick Swayze ‘appropriate’.

21.00 Pretty Woman

Gere and Roberts-smooching social boundary-crossing literal suited and booted respectively romanti-wiggage adopted en masse by a generation of sixth formers as a marker of soul and depth that would finally impress the frankly unimpressable object of your heart’s desire despite the fact that you would probably have much rather been going to see Joe Vs. The Volcano and in any case that girl who was always writing everyone notes with one of those pens with about five inks in it slash that boy who was always reading bound volumes of Peanuts for reasons nobody could fathom were as good as saying outright that they were ‘sweet’ on you but you took no smittage-smitten notice. We can only hope that they eventually got together and wrote each other notes saying “You’re still my Number One, Charlie Brown” with the Charlie Brown in purple ink.

BBC4

20.15 Talking Pictures

We already had the apparently definitive story of Jaws the other night, but this consistently entertaining series reckons it can find another angle on it. And given we’re promised clips from Film 74, which were there lurking behind the scenes pretty much from day one, it sounds like they probably have.

NEW YEAR’S DAY

BBC2

19.35 Celebrity Mastermind

Always a bit of a disappointment that the Beeb follow the first MMXXVI copyright date with a swift return to the boring normal idents, but this show is trying to keep the festive feeling going with loads more episodes still to come. Most boring controversy this Christmas was football columnists with pages to fill spitting feathers over the fact the game’s gone because the top flight is playing a full fixture list on 27th December rather than Boxing Day, even though this apparently unmovable tradition was moved every five years or so in the seventies and eighties when Boxing Day was a Sunday, and you can do everything you normally do on Boxing Day on the 27th which is also a day off for everyone, and you don’t need to get up first thing for an away trip after the excesses of the big day. All this we mention here partly because we’re struggling a bit to find new things to discuss in these endless billings, and partly because actor Ekow Quartey is answering questions on Arsenal.

CHANNEL 5

17.55 ‘Crocodile’ Dundee

Traditionally billed with trademark hilarious inaccuracy as “oh pipe down, Greedy so-called Smith”, the great big end of level boss of all those box office record-smashing eighties comedies that were never quite as funny as everyone else told you they were. In other words, “Belouis” “Some”.

21.00 Dave Allen: In His Own Words

Like Doddy, Dave was fiercely protective of his own work and while there were often complaints we didn’t get enough repeats of his shows, we think that was at least partly because Dave didn’t allow it and would only permit the odd extract to be rescreened. In recent years we’ve happily got a bit more, with BBC4 repeating the 1985 special they’ve shown a few times elsewhere this fortnight, and this new doc which includes some lesser-spotted spots alongside comment from the likes of Tarby and Paul Jackson.

BBC Radio 2

12.00 Pick of the Pops

All the sixes from Goodiebags here, as we’re in 1976, 86 and 96, though it’s the best-selling singles of the year which we’re never especially bothered about as we get some pretty overplayed records. That said, 1986 especially should be quite interesting as it was a pretty disappointing year for singles sales with no act or record especially dominating, so you may not be able to guess the entire chart before you hear it. Either side of that is the countdown for a year Radios 1 and 2 were simulcasting loads due to the Beeb running out of money, so it rarely ventures from the middle of the road, and the height of Britpop though you probably won’t see that reflected here.

15.00 Your Ultimate Stevie Wonder Song

Glad to see Radio 2 continue the tradition of playing a big chart on New Year’s Day, bringing back happy memories of us annoying hungover friends and family on the way home from the previous night’s revelries by demanding to listen to Radio 1’s 100 Greatest Songs or 90 From The 90s. Should be something to please everyone in this chart, where we can’t predict the number one and perhaps the most interesting bit is finding out what position his biggest but least credible hit reaches.

FRIDAY 2nd JANUARY

BBC2

10.15 Passport To Pimlico

Stanley Holloway and Margaret Rutherford lead the Ealing-scarpering charge in a hardy veteran of the mid-morning slot in the week after Christmas which resolutely sat there tantalising you from the pages of Radio Times during an enforced multi-hour unproductive family outing to the carpet showroom apparently situated as far from recognisable traces of civilisation as was geographically possible, which probably also occasioned you to miss Battle Of The Planets and California Fever into the bargain. Still, this did also mean no 3-2-1 Contact or Unicorn Tales. Be thankful for small festive mercies.

14.35 Ben Hur

Chariot-hurtling epic to beat all epics and simultaneously the ultimate film that was always on for seventeen years in the background while you were being forced to ‘show’ Big Loader to friends of your parents who neither seemed engaged nor particularly inclined to be impressed by it, and the ultimate film that your teacher who was neither especially hip nor especially unhip would show in twenty minute chunks in the week leading up to Christmas in lieu of lessons, peppering the VHS-sourced pausage with proto-commentary urban myth-tastic ‘facts’ about the making of the film and impenetrable pop culture jokes that were only the seventeen years out of date. Also, despite the best efforts of one enterprising Wikipedia vandal, ALF was sadly not actually in it. If you’re in the mood for further classicism, Paul Scofield will be wearing a big inflatable rubber ring around his waist and speaking not of mild and bitter in this holy house in A Man For All Seasons before it.

19.30 Celebrity Mastermind

Despite the umpteen episodes we’ve had over the fortnight there’s still more to come well into January, so a bit of time yet before we can do our traditional you-can’t-even-recognise-the-celebs-oh-it’s-a-normal-one joke. Stay tuned for that. Blue Peter’s Joel Mawhinney’s on this one, quizzed on fellow magician Derren Brown, along with Grace Campbell on Robin Williams and Colson Smith on Dirty Leeds.

BBC4

19.00 Top of the Pops

Nice in recent years to have seen the return of the (almost) last thing in the Christmas Creamguide being the start of a new year of these repeats, and heavens, we’re in 1999! Not one of the most innovative years of Pops and we’ll end it pretty much as we started it with its own idiosyncratic ideas about the line-up and it more or less running itself. Not perhaps a year many people look back fondly on either, but we’ve got some interesting stuff to come, certainly enough to justify these extended billings taking up half of Creamguide in a quiet week. First show of the year always a bit of a false start with Christmas leftovers and a few acts taking advantage of the low sales, making this one even more repetitive than usual, and if you liked Real Good Time by Alda the other week, you may also like Girls’ Night Out, which is the same.

19.30 Top of the Pops

The music industry always took a bit of time to recover from the Christmas rush, so we can’t just blame Chris Cowey for the repetition in the line-ups here, though it’s fair to say these are perhaps not the best two episodes to watch back to back. A TV tie-in you may have forgotten about in this one, as star of CBBC docusoap Justin gets his five minutes of fame.

20.00 Top of the Pops

Then it’s back to 1978 with Peter Powell’s second ever show so he’s at his most excitable, and there’s some suitably dynamic power pop for him to enthuse over from Eddie and the Hot Rods and Tonight. And if you’d rather tap a sturdy brogue we’ve got a pleasingly bemused performance from Lord Terence.

20.30 Top of the Pops

Shows from the first week of January are perhaps a bit hard to come by for this slot as it was Pops’ birthday and it often meant showing some unacceptable people, but happily in 1989 all the 25th anniversary hoopla was the previous week so this one’s safe to show, especially with the clean-cut Goodiebags and Crane as hosts. And it’s a new look Pops as well, still with The Wizard as the theme but with a new title sequence, graphics and much inferior set, but the chart itself fails to oblige as it’s pretty much the same as the last chart of 1988. At least Erasure get to open another new look Pops with their best record.

21.00 Top of the Pops

And still it goes on, as we mark the fiftieth anniversary of 1976 with a run through the existing episodes from that year that we haven’t yet seen, from the three months before the repeat run began in April. For various reasons that means there’s only three of them, the first from January with Noel in charge and some familiar faces from the very earliest days of the repeats like Sheer Elegance and Sailor.

21.30 Top of the Pops

And then as luck would have it the next one that’s available is from two weeks later, so it’s got an almost identical line-up, though we’re happy to get Sailor twice in quick succession. We’re lucky to have it, in any case, as we think this was long-wiped and it’s only recently turned up again as David Hamilton taped it off the telly. It’s Diddy’s debut as host, while making only their second appearance of many, many more is Midge Ure, on his way to one of the least remembered number ones of the decade.

22.00 Elvis 68 Comeback Special

Pelvis Parsley’s great big career resurrection after seven years ‘away’ – which involved making fifty four million films all called either Elvis Has A Kiss-Up In Hawaii or Elvis Says It’s Swinging, Pops and scoring chart-toppers with alarming regularity on both sides of the Atlantic – which brought the Elvis the public loved and wanted back to centre stage. So that’s wall to wall appearing on Dick Clark’s American Hoedown from the ears up, singing Ito Eats and wondering why the US Mail keep returning letters addressed solely to ‘Mah Girlfriend’. Something of a landmark broadcast for more reasons than just the music, and the cause of much network nervousness over him starting to read out the script of Doctor Who And he Voyage Of The Damned or whatever it was, and presented here in its most complete form yet as reassembled from various sources. So a bit like The Last Goon Show Of All, then.

YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHING

So, that’s about the size of it, and we hope this has been of use to you. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who’s read and contributed to Creamguide in 2025, and especially those who have joined us this Christmas, all of whom are appearing elsewhere over the festive period.

Graham Kibble-White, who provided the title graphics, is appearing in “Let Sleeping Wives Lie” at the Garrick Theatre, London, and is also appearing in Through The Square Window, the fabulous new podcast, alongside Samira Ahmed, off of the television, looking back at top telly of the past in suitably informed and engaging fashion. Check out their Christmas special with wonderfully evocative memories from special guest Mark Gatiss.

Phil Norman, who reviewed the films in week one, is appearing in “Uproar in the House” at the Whitehall Theatre, London, and is also appearing in The Year of Listing Dangerously, the brilliant newsletter which fillets the schedules of this week in telly history with their unique brand of wit and whimsy.

Tim Worthington, who reviewed the films in week two, is appearing in “The Bachelors’ Show” at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, and is also appearing in Looks Unfamiliar, the long-running and hugely acclaimed podcast where he’s joined by an array of guests to reflect on the odds and ends of pop culture. The latest edition features the great Richard Marson whose book on the story of BBC children’s television (with illustrations from the Kibble-White conspiracy) was at the very top of our Christmas list this year. Two wonderful chroniclers of classic telly for the price of one!

And Simon Tyers, who wins the Creamguide Spotters’ Badge for flagging up stuff from the odds and ends of the schedules all year, is a National Theatre player and is also appearing in Why Don’t YouTube, which does absolutely amazing work in digging out the most amazing items sitting in the nooks and crannies of the internet, and curates it in a far more effective way than most clip shows.

Splendid chaps, all of them. And all the rest of it was thanks to Creamguide, which doesn’t have any other irons in the fire and intends to spend another year churning this out every Thursday (or near enough, we’ve got a holiday booked). Creamguide will return on New Year’s Day, and in the meantime, a merry Christmas to all of you at home!