A Ghost Story For Christmas (For Children)

Between 1971 and 1978, it was something of a tradition for BBC1 to scare festive viewers out of their wits with A Ghost Story For Christmas. Inspired by Jonathan Miller's superlative 1968 adaptation of Whistle And I'll Come To You, these were chillingly atmospheric and painstakingly realised short films, primarily directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and mostly drawn from the works of writer M.R. James. They continue to be held in high regard and their influence has been obvious everywhere from Doctor Who to The League Of Gentlemen. And they were very definitely not intended for younger viewers, or for those of a nervous disposition.

What is less well remembered, however, is that in the early eighties, the Children's Department had a go at producing their own Ghost Stories For Christmas, which in all honesty were only slightly less disturbing than their adult counterparts. Masterminded by producer Anna Home, who was responsible for a number of well-regarded science fiction and fantasy serials for children's television in the late seventies and early eighties, the putative strand ultimately only ran to two one-off specials; although it seems to have been restructuring of their output, rather than any concerns about their suitability, that led to this short duration.

On 23rd December 1980 - six days after the final episode of an adaptation of L.T. Meade's A Little Silver Trumpet - BBC1 broadcast The Bells Of Astercote. Based on Penelope Lively's 1970 children's novel Astercote, this concerned a village that, according to legend, had lost its entire population to the plague. This becomes something of a pressing concern to the modern day residents of nearby Charlton Underwood when a man claiming to be six hundred years old and the guardian of The Chalice Of Astercote turns up displaying some disconcertingly familiar symptoms. Needless to say, the village is gripped by paranoia and apocalyptic visions, and it is only when some sceptical local bikers elect to involve themselves that the bizarre truth finally comes out. Directed by Home's regular collaborator Marilyn Fox, The Bells Of Astercote was broadcast from 16:40pm and was very nearly the last children's programme shown that day; doubtless a fair few viewers were relieved to see Paddington straight afterwards.

There was no repeat of the experiment in 1981 - the equivalent slot in the schedule was filled instead by a repeat of Rentasanta, which you can read more about here - but New Year's Eve 1982 brought an adaptation of Edward Chitham’s 1973 novel Ghost In The Water. The 'ghost' in question is that of Abigail Parkes, a young Black Country girl who had drowned in the late nineteenth century; although officially recorded as a suicide, Abigail was in fact trying to retrieve a ring given to her by her true love, who had died in a mining accident. A series of coded messages point two youngsters studying local history towards the truth, though whether they have simply discovered this or have been guided towards it by Abigail's restless spirit is another question, and one that needless to say comes to dominate the story. Not exactly traditional New Year's entertainment, Ghost In The Water - transmitted in more or less the exact same timeslot as The Bells Of Astercote - was produced by Paul Stone and directed by Renny Rye; two years later, the same pair were responsible for BBC1's acclaimed adaptation of John Masefield's The Box Of Delights.

Sadly, although The Bells Of Astercote was repeated over Easter 1982 and Ghost In The Water in March 1983, neither have ever been commercially released; collectors might however wish to keep an eye out for the tie-in reprint of the original novel of Ghost In The Water, and for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop album The Soundhouse, which included Roger Limb's soundtrack for the play. Both however are strong efforts that deserve to be more widely seen, so perhaps it might be worth repeating them instead of the next inevitable attempt at reviving A Ghost Story For Christmas.

---

If you're interested in spooky BBC children's dramas with a Radiophonic Workshop soundtrack, you might also enjoy this piece on the music from The Changes.

---

This is adapted from Winter's Tales, a longer piece looking at all of the BBC's supernatural/sci-fi children's serials of the seventies and eighties, in my book Well At Least It's Free. You can get Well At Least It's Free in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Christmas With BBC Records And Tapes

RESL124 Orville's Song/I Didn't - Keith Harris And Orville (December 1982)

Although a TV regular since the mid-sixties, ventriloquist Keith Harris’ career didn’t really take off – ironically – until he introduced bashful luminous green duck who couldn’t fly Orville into his act in the late seventies. By 1982 he, or rather they, had landed a prominent variety slot on BBC1 with The Keith Harris Show, although he remained a popular and enthusiastic stage performer, which gave rise to this single written by pianist and former talent show winner – and old friend of the ‘duo’ – Bobby Crush. Taking the form of a dialogue between Harris and his puppet charting the latter’s inability to take to the skies, Orville’s Song is certainly cloying, sentimental and delivered by a gratingly-voiced character that not all of the target audience found quite so loveable, but is in its own way an effective and endearing composition that in no way deserves the deluge of ‘Worst Record Ever’ accolades that have been heaped upon it since. Certainly record-buyers at the time didn’t seem to agree, sending the single to Number Four over Christmas 1982.


RESL138 Come To My Party – Keith Harris, Orville And Dippy/Thank You For Telling Me ‘Bout Christmas – Keith Harris And Orville (December 1983)

A seasonal outing for Keith Harris and his many puppets, with the a-side again written by Bobby Crush. Although the single did enjoy some minor chart action, climbing to number forty four over the festive season, it surprisingly failed to corner the lucrative Christmas market and ultimately caused few worries to Paul McCartney and David Essex.


RESL162 The Box Of Delights/The Carol Symphony - The Pro Arte Orchestra (December 1984) 

Marked out by top-drawer acting and pioneering video effects, BBC1’s 1984 adaptation of John Masefield’s 1935 festive children’s novel The Box Of Delights – something of a favourite with the BBC, having been adapted seven times across several media – was rightly fanfared as a landmark production and remains held in high regard by audiences and critics alike to this day. For theme music, the production team elected to use an extract from the third movement of Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s 1927 Carol Symphony, an extended piece based on orchestral arrangements of themes and motifs from numerous traditional Christmas Carols which had in fact originally been written as a contribution to an early BBC radio broadcast. The extract featured a variation on The First Nowell, and was taken from a 1966 recording of The Carol Symphony for EMI by The Pro Arte Orchestra; it was, however, subjected to minor manipulation by Roger Limb of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to make it more in keeping with the mood and style of the serial. Limb’s modifications were frustratingly absent from the direct edit featured on this single, which featured another excerpt from the movement, this time based on a segment of the Coventry Carol, on the b-side. Selling in small quantities at the time, and one of only a handful of pieces of official The Box Of Delights-related merchandise, this is now one of the most eagerly sought-after BBC Records And Tapes releases.


RESL179 The Ballad Of Sandra Claus/The Goulash Break – Bryan Joan Elliott and The Elf Service (December 1985) 

American comedian Bryan Joan Elliott was something of a minor star in the UK in the mid-eighties, largely thanks to her regular appearances on the ITV game show Punchlines. This unusual attempt at cornering the Christmas market for 1985 came about as a result of some recent well-received appearances on high profile BBC chat shows, notably BBC2’s The Bob Monkhouse Show.


RESL234 Christmas Is Here Again/Awake Zion Awake - Bryn Coch Primary School (December 1989)

The first release after a gap of almost a year – suggesting that all was not well at BBC Records And Tapes in the new John Birt-led regime – was a Yuletide-themed offering from the pupils of a Welsh primary school accompanied by harpist Glenys Lightfoot, recruited by the label following popularity with local radio listeners, in an attempt to create yet another school-sourced singing phenomenon and indeed to secure a hit in the lucrative Christmas market. Sadly, this single fell short of expectations on both counts.


RESL236 Christmas Past And Christmas Present/Christmas Past And Christmas Present (Festive Fun Mix) – Euphoria (December 1989)

Seemingly determined to corner the Christmas market for 1989, BBC Records And Tapes put out a staggering third Yuletide-themed single in the form of this choral effort based on Kings College Cambridge’s traditional Festival Of Nine Lessons And Carols service. Unsurprisingly, this one didn’t sell very many copies either. The ‘Festive Fun Mix’ fails to live up to its title. RESL237 was set aside for yet another Festive-friendly single – Glory Be To God On High, a re-recording of the EastEnders theme with yet more new lyrics by Simon May, performed with a choir of children and premiered on BBC1’s Songs Of Praise. Contractual difficulties saw to it that this was instead released by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful label; however – perhaps mercifully – it still failed to make the charts. This all took place, however, late in 1988, suggesting that some or all of the preceding singles may have been in the works since the previous Festive Season – a sure sign that the writing was on the wall for BBC Records And Tapes...

---

This is an extract from Top Of The Box - The Complete Guide To BBC Records And Tapes Singles, which is available as a paperback here, or from the Kindle Store here.

Well At Least It's On The Kindle Store

Well At Least It's Free, a book collecting some of my features on archive TV and pop music, is now available on the Amazon Kindle Store. Doctor Who fans may be interested to know that it includes huge features on the sixties historical stories, The Underwater Menace, The Daleks' Master Plan and the entire Russell T. Davies era. Everyone else may be interested to know that it also includes huge features on Lost, Heroes, The Flashing Blade, Primeval, Ashes To Ashes, The Secret Service, Bagpuss, Watch With Mother, Zokko! and lots more besides, including a rundown of all of the BBC's sci-fi/supernatural-themed children's series from The Phoenix And The Carpet to The Watch House, and what would have been the booklet for the cancelled DVD release of Hardwicke House. There's also some handy tips on what to do if you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a marching band in Quality Street getup.

You can get Well At Least It's Free from the Kindle Store by clicking here. Or, if you'd rather, the paperback is still available from here.

---

If you've aready got Well At Least It's Free, you can find out about other books by me here.

---

Well At Least It's Free is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Time And Tide Melts The Snowman: Part Five

Whether you like or dislike the Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who, it's important to remember that it wasn't alone. In the mid to late eighties, TV was awash with dramatically updated takes on old favourites. There were the direct remakes, of course, with Star Trek: The Next Generation and The (New) Twilight Zone succeeding where The Saint tumbled headlong into a bin while Simon Dutton did his 'wryly amused' face. There were the revivals of tried and trusted characters, with Robin Of Sherwood's literal sword and sorcery makeover proving a rare triumph alongside the overly violent hidden-away-on-ITV-Nighttime William Tell reboot and the Salkind-profferred franchise-flogging post-Bratpack empty-headed teen melodrama of Superboy. There were the bewildering reappearances of Alf Garnett and Mind Your Language at a time when their attitudes and comedy could scarcely have been less welcome. There was the notoriously disastrous attempt to reposition Play School as a whizz-bang satire-fuelled knockabout blast of anarchic energy for the under-fives. And then there were those that simply gave a quick spraypaint to an actual existing format.

What's My Line?, Juke Box Jury, Opportunity Knocks, New Faces and The Generation Game would all put in suitably rejigged return appearances around this time, while somebody somewhere decided that having the Royal Family fall into paddling pools in giant inflatable cow costumes would serve as a suitable salute to the legacy of It's A Knockout. More intellectual viewers got to sit back and say 'aaaaaaahhh!' as Late Night Line-Up rebranded itself as The Late Show, while over on Radio 1 Pick Of The Pops would suffer the ultimate pop-picking indignity, relegated from the status of hip and happening up to the minute chart show to one that traded exclusively in music from the past.

Above and beyond that, there were the shows that simply updated a basic idea. For no readily obvious reason, this was particularly prevalent in Children's BBC, from Sylvester McCoy's inter-Doctor Who engagements on What's Your Story?, a show that took the tried and tested 'viewers write in to suggest what happens next' concept and encouraged its audience to think about 'issues' as they did so, and What's That Noise?, a hipped-up jazzed-up take on the introducing-the-band music-can-be-fun approach as favoured by Schools' TV. Notoriously, this eclectic genre-jumping extravanganza could feature anything from Young Flautist Of The Year types to Napalm Death, Then Jerico, and - unforgettably - Craig Charles leading some sub-King's Singers choristers, scat-yodelling jazz vocalist Cleveland Watkiss, and Nathan Moore out of Brother Beyond through what is best described as an idiosyncratic reworking of The Tears Of A Clown. He probably won't appreciate being reminded of the 'rap' he improvised over the intro. Or actually, come to think of it, he probably WILL, as he'll just start using it as a 6Music jingle.

Although it would be best to draw a line under the idea of drawing a line between Craig Charles joining Hue & Cry for a cover of Ordinary Angel and whatever was going on in Doctor Who at that point in time, other areas of the Children's BBC schedules should not be disregarded so lightly. As much as it would pain many fans and their it's-not-a-children's-programme! fumings to admit it, in some ways it's worth viewing the 1987 relaunch of Doctor Who as being more in line with the more acclaimed and successful redevelopment of the traditional sci-fi/fantasy-themed Children's BBC drama serials that also happened around this time. From The Box Of Delights onwards, they had dramatically upped the production values and widened both the sense of ambition and the storytelling scope. It was with Aliens In The Family - broadcast later on during this particular run of Doctor Who - that they really hit their stride, escaping the all-too-familiar BBC Children's Drama trappings to present a new and thoroughly contemporary story that concentrated as much on feuding step-siblings fond of near-the-knuckle language as it did the Wirdegen-dodging Top Shop model-esque stranded alien that they befriended; and which included a contemporary pop culture gag that was both more successful and more funny than anything in any post-2005 Doctor Who episode. In fact, there was a rumour around this time that Paul Stone, the producer who had overseen the bulk of these serials, had been approached to take over as showrunner for Doctor Who. It could all have been so very different. But then again, we probably wouldn't have got Time And The Rani.

Anyway, whatever the fact of the matter was, John Nathan-Turner was inevitably 'persuaded to stay', and we did indeed get Time And The Rani. And although we've spent much too long singing the praises of all of those contemporaneous serials already - if you want to read more about them, then you'll find a massive overview of them in my book Well At Least It's Free, covering everything from The Phoenix And The Carpet to The Watch House with a couple of interesting diversions (and ITV shows) along the way - there are still some parallels worth drawing between the two unlikely Time Screen-friendly extremes. Time And The Rani - and indeed the entire Sylvester McCoy era - is dominated by acting, effects, costumes, music, locations, sets, and if we're being completist about it a videotape format, that attract widespread derision and scorn, and yet are more or less directly equatable to what you will find in those more fondly and fairly remembered serials. The Lakertyans look no less convincing or above ridicule than The Galgonquans. Paula and Narinder's quest to stop Charlie Elkin from recovering his lost 'bins' came punctuated by hefty doses of Keff McCulloch-style sampler mechanics. One or two of the effects in Kay Harker's pre-Christmas escapades looked distinctly ropey compared to those spinning globe traps. Even The Mint Juleps' acapella guiding of Billy towards his errant pawned electric guitar was only a marginally more credible and Red Wedge-conscious variant of the sort of stunt-casting that John Nathan-Turner was regularly foisting on Doctor Who around that point. Yes, people knew who they were back then. They did. Stop arguing.

So what exactly is being suggested here? That Time And The Rani seems acceptable if you pretend that it was something aimed at much younger viewers? Well no, not really. Even aside from the fact that this would be doing an enormous disservice to the Children's Department's concerted efforts to improve and update their entire output in the late eighties, much of which could have held its own against family or adult programming from any genre, it's also more a question of context. Did people, perhaps ridiculously, expect 'more' from Doctor Who than they did from an unexpectedly impressive six-parter about a boy befriending some Restoration-era ghosts (or are they?) that they'd caught by accident? Were they yearning for the dazzling visual depth of Meglos, the bracing good clean fun of The Two Doctors, and the Stoppard-rivalling narrative strength of Four To Doomsday? Probably, knowing Doctor Who fans, but that's by the by.

Much like how Stock, Aitken And Waterman productions are never quite allowed into the 'great pop music' bracket because of mysterious and vigorously-held 'reasons' that nobody ever seems willing or able to elucidate on, so the Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who remains stuck outside a locked door while other shows that share both its weaknesses and its strengths - be they Moondial, The Tripods, Star Cops or - yeah, go on, I'm spoiling for a fight here - Press Gang - waltz on merrily through. Even the rebooted Play School probably gets to wedge its foot in the gap, on account of the short-lived Breakfast Time parody 'TTV' having been quite funny. That did, however, lead directly to the inexcusable spinoff series TTV, in which diseased-looking puppet cat Scragtag presided over unfunny bits of filmed insert nothingness while sitting on a bin, so please slam that door on Big Ted's foot with maximum force.

Can we get Time And The Rani through that door though? Never mind giving it a fairer crack of the whip by considering it on the same level as other 'lesser' programmes, is there enough good stuff in it to actually make it work considering in the first place? Well, that's what we'll be getting around to in the next part... probably.

Top Of The Box

Top Of The Box is the story behind every single released by BBC Records And Tapes, from Every Loser Wins to Awesome Dood!.

Between 1970 and 1990, BBC Records And Tapes released almost three hundred singles, ranging from some of the best known and most loved theme tunes in television history to full-length versions of ones that nobody had even asked for a short version of to begin with. Along the way they also put out one-off oddities by everyone from George Formby impersonators and up-and-coming folkies to a 'computer orchestra' and some posh blokes going on about how marvellous The Queen is. Oh and then there's the one that's just the sound of someone hitting a phone.

Possibly the most bafflingly diverse catalogue of singles ever issued, viewed as a whole, it's a fascinating indication of what really was popular - and sometimes unpopular - with viewers at the time. Top Of The Box tells the story behind each of these singles, taking in familiar names, cult artists and obscure bafflements alike, and including the likes of Simon May, Peter Howell, Nick Berry, David Munrow, Roy Castle, Anita Dobson, Fascinating Aida, Aled Jones, Hazel O'Connor, Richard Stilgoe, Spike Milligan, Johnny Dankworth, Eric Clapton, The Grange Hill Cast, The Dooleys, Alan Hawkshaw, Enya, Keith Mansfield, Julie Covington, Georgie Fame, Godiego, Lena Zavaroni, Brown Sauce, Alan Price, Russell Grant, Kenneth Williams, Floella Benjamin, The Not The Nine O'Clock News Team, B.A. Robertson, Paddy Kingsland, Richard Denton & Martin Cook, The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and of course Keith Harris & Orville. So many singles by Keith Harris & Orville. Including one that wasn't even released...

You can get Top Of The Box as a paperback here or as an eBook here, or from the Kindle Store here, and - after thanking Graham Kibble-White for the excellent cover art - I'll just leave you with a couple of personal favourites from the catalogue...

Well At Least It's Free

Well At Least It's Free is an anthology collecting over two hundred pages' worth of highlights from my various and numerous pieces of writing for fanzines, websites, DVD booklets and forewords for other people's books, all of it in expanded and improved form and some of it previously unseen. Yes, you too can catch up on such classic articles, rants and thinkpieces from the archives as...

They Could Have Been Bigger Than Bonekickers - from Star Cops to Strange, a full series by series guide to all of the shows that the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and even some satellite broadcasters tried to make into the next big sci-fi hit while Doctor Who was off the air

Hamble In The Sight Of The Bored - the life and times of television's most hated doll

Do The Russell! - from Eccleston to Tennant, an epic-length overview of the first phase of Doctor Who's comeback

Jacob's Flagger - why the Lost finale was the most pathetic con-trick in the entire history of television

Winter's Tales - an in-depth look back at the BBC's old run-up-to-Christmas supernatural children's serials, with The Box Of Delights, The Children Of Green Knowe and many more

The Sci-Fi That Time Forgot - a tribute to the books, records, films and even board games that used to keep us in outer space thrills while our favourite shows were off the air

School's Out - what would have been the complete DVD booklet for the scuppered DVD release of still-controversial sitcom Hardwicke House

Billy Lyre - why Doctor Who's mostly-wiped black and white historical stories are more interesting than you might think

Plus tons more about Watch With Mother, Zokko!, Heroes, Camberwick Green, Ashes To Ashes, The Secret Service, Jackanory, The Flashing Blade, Belle And Sebastian (the TV series AND the band), black and white Doctor Who, Pink Floyd's infamous interview with Hans Keller, the identity of the books on Professor Yaffle's shelf, and lots more besides...!

You can get Well At Least It's Free in paperback here or from the Amazon Kindle Store.

---

If you've already got Well At Least It's Free, then you can find details of other books by me here.

---

Well At Least It's Free is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Ghosts, Monsters And Legends (And Tennis Prodigies)

One of the big pre-Christmas TV treats of years gone by were the vaguely seasonal children's drama serials that the BBC would put out during those Advent Calendar-accompanied weeks, with the last episode usually going out as close to Christmas eve as schedually possible. Heavy on the child actors, usually adapted from a novel that quickly acquired a cash-in friendly BBC books makeover, invariably CSO-saturated and generally enhanced by the mercifully unique musical stylings of Roger Limb, they were very much of their time but are fondly remembered by those who watched them through a haze of waiting for school to break up and throwing dislodged Christmas tree decorations at your siblings. Here's what you would have been watching instead of Torchwood repeats in days gone by...


1976: "Some Indian Things..."

The first such example came along in the form of an adaptation of E. Nesbit's tale of Edwardian youngsters having spiffing bird-and-rug-instigated adventures in time and space (well, bits of the British Empire) The Phoenix And The Carpet, famously starring future Rateometer-toting Doctor Who uberfan turned uberspinoffproducer Gary Russell alongside a jerkily Yafflesque Clash Of The Titans-predicting puppet Phoenix with a very obvious join in its neck. There's not much in it to do with Christmas per se, but in the genteel setting, mundane cliffhangers, disjointed psuedo-classical theme tune ending on disconcerting 'melting' tones and the heaps of shakily realised CSO sequences, you can see the template for the next decade and beyond arrive entirely fully formed. Also on this year, and adhering to much the same production style and indeed production values, was a feature-length one-off rendition of Roald Dahl's James And The Giant Peach, noted for its decidedly unsubtle blend of human-sized insect costumes, CSO-derived 'peach interior' sets, balloon-derived 'peach exterior' sets, and soundtrack of hammy panto-esque song and dance numbers.


1977: "Leave It!"

Definitely the odd one out on this list, King Cinder dispensed with the tendency towards polite Edwardiana in favour of a speedway-riding Peter Duncan taking on local protection racketeers in a hail of car chases and 'villain's drinkers'. Stunts abounded and shouting reverberated in a serial that seemed closer to Quadrophenia than the usual Blytonesque twitterings, and those in search of more festive fare, not to mention less sub-Sweeney soundtracks, were effectively left with the televisual equivalent of a sack of ashes - or, if you will, cinders - this year. Doubtless inspired a wave of dubious bicycle antics come Christmas Day, though.


1978 : "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

As if to make up for the previous year's paucity, this time there were two textbook serials running pretty much concurrently. The Moon Stallion starred a pre-Nyssa Sarah Sutton in a beautifully rendered but virtually impenetrable tale of something to do with a blind girl, the XTC-friendly chalk horse of Uffington, and a real horse locked in a battle of wits with some bloke who blames it for his family's misfortune. Erm, somehow. Added to this there's something about an ancient Pagan deity issuing a warning about Skylab being a tool of the forces of evil. Much raved over by some but remembered with bewildered puzzlement by so many others. Meanwhile, also knocking about the schedules was a word that even today still causes a shudder - Pinocchio. There's little to say about this darkly-hued nightmarish art deco formally-theme-tuned puppet-meets-real-actors reimagining with added overlong shrieky bits par excellence other than that we've yet to meet anyone who carried on watching it past the still-terrifying Land Of Toys sequence.

1979: "It Must Be... Magic!"

Time for a spot of shark-jumping that was even less impressively rendered than Pinocchio's dalliance with a cardboard whale the previous year (itself repeated in omnibus form this year, presumably to a viewing figure of zero), with the Children's BBC bigwigs deciding that as people had liked The Phoenix And The Carpet, they'd probably like The Enchanted Castle too. Fat chance. The same basic lineup of posh children from The Past are put through similar paces, only without a gimmicky puppet to guide them and with the added turnoff of an obvious moral at the end of each wish-fulfilment adventure. The only bits that anyone remembers are some statues coming rather cumbersomely to life, and the celebrated 'Ugly-Wuglies', little more than scary cardboard faces attached to the end of brooms and no more sinister than the average Halloween-themed Blue Peter make.


1980: "Pa-P-Parrrrrrr!"

LT Meade's A Little Silver Trumpet would probably have done nothing bar gather cloth-bound dust on the shelves of second hand bookshops were it not for a viewer who, having enjoyed (and presumably understood) The Moon Stallion, wrote in to suggest that this forgotten children's novel was ideal source material for a run-up-to-Christmas adaptation. No trace in this straightforward Social-Status-Swap melodrama of the huge splurges of olde-worlde-psychedelic fantasy that had dominated other recent offerings, and the discovery of a fifty pound note somewhat implausibly stitched inside a dress was about as dramatic as it got, but they still won tons of awards and got a 'lost' book spruced up and reissued into the bargain, so they must have been doing something right. Also on offer over this Christmas was The Bells Of Astercote, a plague-haunting superstition-debunking yarn that was the first entry in the Children's Department's sadly short-lived attempt at emulating A Ghost Story For Christmas.


1981: "You Are A Dirty, Messy, Stupid, Lying Clown!"

Despensing with the traditional vague sense of olde worlde Winter in favour of an altogether different form of chilliness, Adric-riffing Cold War thriller Codename: Icarus concerned itself with a shadowy British military installation covertly recruiting child genii to assist in the development of futuristic weapons for the purposes of Commie-obliteration. With its Nazi allegories, impressive military action sequences and ambitious wrestling with the concept of scientific progress versus the nature of good and evil, this was high-reaching stuff, but writer Richard Cooper was really only warming up for the infinitely more bonkers Knights Of God a couple of years later. If all this Red Menace stuff wasn't quite your 'bag', there was always the first and best Grange Hill Christmas Special, in which Tucker and Doyle united to fight a bigger foe (and stop him from stealing the school's, erm, 'disco equipment'), penned by Professor Phil via some suggestions made by a Blue Peter competition entrant.


1982: "I'm Just As Good As You, 'Beetle'!"

Back to reality for the sport-centric culture clash of Break Point, effectively Billy Elliot two decades ahead of its time, only with fairly realistic tennis taking the place of fairly unrealistic ballet dancing (and indeed real Eighties fashions taking the place of "ha ha, that's how people used to dress back then!" Eighties fashions). Famously, the cast were selected on the basis of playing a few sets against the producer rather than reading out any of the script, and in a real case of life mirroring art, Jane 'Beetle' Pearson went on to become a real life tennis champ. All very well and good for its undoubted feelgood factor, but those in search of the more usual fare had to content themselves with feature length Radiophonic Workshop-submerged spectral possession chiller Ghost In The Water.


1983: "Walk On The Drugget, Children!"

For some reason there was no new Festive fare this year, and instead viewers had to content themselves with a repeat of the decade-old evacuees'n'cursed skellington serialisation of Nina Bawden's much-favoured by older sisters novel Carrie's War, which to be fair was pretty much in line with what had been occupying the same slot in more recent times. Unusually, but thankfully, ITV chose this exact moment to step into the breach with the far more satisfying The Witches And The Grinnygog, light-heartedly charting the attempts of a pair of Rod & Todd Flanders-esque brothers to retrieve a mislaid stone gargoyle thing off their local church wall from a landscape gardening-fixated parishioner. And which, thanks to the rights-buying documentation-trashing hijinks of Disney, is now contractually unavailable to anyone anywhere. Yeah, thanks for that, 'Mickey'.


1984: "Have You Got Any Cheese For Me?"

What is there to say about The Box Of Delights that hasn't been said a million times already? From the first glimpse of that creepy title sequence (especially the flash of lightning across Abner Brown's face) to the very last Roger Limb-boosted orchestral swell, and through every last second of Patrick Troughton's performance, the effects may have aged yet it remains as spellblindingly Christmassy as television is ever likely to get. Plus you can laugh at Nick Berry playing a rat. Pretty much the centrepiece of the BBC's then much-trumpeted 'Autumn Season', something that approximately fourteen million million Radio Times covers and Blue Peter features were there to provide handy reminders of, but it would be churlish not to mention the supporting feature par excellence - the thirteen weeks' worth of shakily-acted flight through non-alien occupied wastelands that was The Tripods.


1985: "........................................"

Hang on a minute... Parky? What's he doing here?! Don't start adjusting your set just yet - unfortunately, despite extensive research, it's proved impossible to locate an image for 1985 for reasons that will soon become obvious, so Mr. Parkinson has generously agreed to appear as an illustration in its place. Anyway, that's the last we'll be seeing of him.

This was the year of big BBC cutbacks to fund the imminent launch of daytime television, which spelt bad news for fans of Pop Quiz, Crackerjack, Juliet Bravo, and of the children's schedules containing anything other than Fame!, The Flintstones and 'Friday Film Special' (which itself scarcely ever seemed to contain anything other than endless showings of Ricky Simmonds' third finest hour, Pop Pirates). Oh, and apparently they cancelled some children's programme this year too. Needless to say there was precious little money to hand to mount any kind of ambitious Christmas-leaning serial, especially one maintaining the high standard of the previous year, and the nearest that the audience got was that decidedly odd Grange Hill For Christmas based around some kind of slapstick shenanigans involving Imelda Davies and a donkey. Yet all was not lost, and the new year would herald the return of Children's BBC drama with a vengance, in the form of Kate Bush-themed search for errant 'bins' Running Scared.

1986: "It's Alexander's Flute!"

Quite unlike what was regrettably unfolding in Doctor Who world at the same time, the eighteen month 'hiatus' had clearly done the world of good for the Yuletide yarns, as this year brought arguably the very finest of the lot - The Children Of Green Knowe. On face value the ageing novel-derived tale of a Fifties public schoolboy spending Christmas with an elderly relative in the family's ancestral home, and meeting some of his Charles II-era ancestors along the way, wouldn't appear to have much going for it, but rarely has such a gentle story been so beautifully and atmospherically realised (well, apart from the rather naff 'walking statue' sequence right at the end, but we'll overlook that for now), and with a misleadingly eerie title sequence and theme tune thrown in for good measure. And pity any of your classmates who had the misfortune to closely resemble Alex 'Tolly' Christie. A textbook offering from the real 'Golden Age' of television, and this might be seen as heresy by some, but we're seriously suggesting that this might even be better than The Box Of Delights (welcomely repeated in fifty-minute chunks over this Christmas). Meanwhile, ITV threw in some welcome Sunday-before-Christmas distraction in the form of an hour-long special of James Galway-heralded Liliputian comedy-drama, Return Of The Antelope.

1987: "Solita?" - "Nah Mate, It's Kim Wilde!"

And we could so easily have gone for "...and Young Ladies shouldn't daub themselves with Gro-Bust!". Yes, it's superior sci-fi thriller Aliens In The Family, in which an alien-in-training bumped into a trio of squabbling step-children (See? They were 'aliens' too!) whilst trying to avoid the marauding 'Wirdegens', a Flying Pickets-in-cowls-resembling bunch headed by Granville Saxton from TV's Hardwicke House. Unlike most of the above, this was set squarely in the here and now, and how - practically every five seconds there's a reference to Phillip Schofield, Morten Harket or that Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot character. No Phil Cool drinking Citrus Spring though.


1988: "Oh Aslan, You're Not Dead!"

Blimey, where to start!?? The main draw was obviously The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, the first instalment of the over-acclaimed The Chronicles Of Narnia, which even made the front page of the Radio Times. All very well made and that, but were its 'Five Go Mad On Turkish Delight' stylings and endless wittering about fauns really suitable for audiences that had become more used to the thrills of Kaye Harker, Bond & Solita and 'Green Noah, demon tree, evil fingers, can't catch me!'? Well they'd been catered for too, in the form of oft-forgotten adolescent-angst-meets-ghosts-of-old-seadogs lighthouse-based spookfest The Watch House, and the inevitable repeats of The Children Of Green Knowe, not to mention the seriously unhinged one-off Billy's Christmas Angels, which had something nonsensical to do with Nabil Shaban, Will from The Tripods, a pawn shop-bound guitar, and mid-eighties variety show mainstays The Mint Juleps doing acapella versions of Bruce Springsteen songs. On top of all this, ITV scored a rare pre-Christmas victory with an impressive Saturday afternoon double bill; visually arresting but impenetrably storylined frost-festooned Welsh folk tale The Snow Spider, and the totally off-the-sensibility-scale How To Be Cool, an explicability-defying The Prisoner/A Clockwork Orange-inspired effort about the attempts of 'The Mighty Gobbo' and his Beastie Boys-attired pals to overthrow sinister fashion-controlling 'Cool Board' mastermind Mr Cashman, starring Roger Daltrey, Tricia Penrose, Freddie Jones and a very young Perry Fenwick as a football-obsessed sub-Droog henchman. And, unfortunately, Gary Glitter, which means it'll never be repeated now.

1989: "Howay Mon Winston Mon Yeen Canna Do That!"

Odd that 1988 should have been such a bumper year, but also quite fitting, as within twelve months the faint odour of Caspar Berry was drifting across the horizon. Yes, Byker Grove was here to block-book those vital few weeks in November and December into perpetuity, and things were never quite the same again...

You can find an in-depth history of all of these shows and more in my book Well At Least It's Free - get it in paperback here or as an eBook here.