BBC One Christmas 2018

It's continuity if anything. You wouldn't see a Christmas tree with lights on outside at 11am.

20 year old Doctor Who repeats on BBC1? Those were the days.

Speaking of dodgy pres the CA last night promo'd the Strictly results, saying it was about finding out who was going forward to Musicals Week. But this week was Musicals Week...

You do in my town centre. Once they switch the lights on (they did on 18th November) then they never switch them off! We ask all the time why they are wasting so much energy.

Does anyone have any idea how many idents are in the package?

Four I think. Pier nighttime, Pier daytime, Christmas Tree and Bumper Cars. Unless they are going to gradually introduce more (what was the point of the helter skelter if they don't use it?) then those are all that have been shown.

Technically five, with the pier version that leads into the news.

I agree. Saw the daytime version for the 1st time before the 1pm news. The shot is that far away from the pier, plus no lights either, you would be forgiven for being totally oblivious to the Xmas link in the ident. How does the Daytime and Nighttime Pier ident illustrate "Oneness"? Bring back the Sea Swimmers!!

I'd hope there may be more than that because they had a crowd filming on the pier and a set that doesn't appear to have been used much yet , apart from at a very good long distance and about 1 second in the main film. The set is a Christmas market/fair.

https://twitter.com/back_the_BBC/status/1068479370526900224?s=19

The version they are using on TV right now is a quite a narrow bland shot, the set appears more detailed than that being used. Of course it's possible they've dropped shots or it's all just for effect

After last year's fantastic pres, I think there was always going to be a likelihood that we would be disappointed by whatever they tried to do for 2018.

Last year's idents didn't necessarily require you to have watched the back story video. They could stand alone as features, but with the same characters, same music, and some element of Christmas to link them together in familiar scenes.

This year's set hasn't really achieved that. Without the back story, and 20/20 vision, you'd be hard pushed to spot the distant Christmas tree or the relevance of a pier on two of the idents; and 'dodgems' is rendered meaningless.

I'm sure the concept was well intentioned as a media course project, but the execution has been poor as pres for the national broadcaster's premier channel.

Sometimes 'trying too hard to be clever' completely backfires.

I also think last year had such a distinctive sound which really stuck in your head. OK, these are still quite new but as well as not looking that spectacular they don't sound that great either.

I agree the execution has been poor - creating some kind of magical Christmas Wonderland on a pier isn't that awful an idea - but as the wonderland has extended to little more than a fairly average Christmas tree it just doesn't work.

I can totally understand the Beeb can't do great animations every year - but it sort of helped that last years idents were "after the story". You could watch the small film about the characters, but it wasn't fully required as only one ident referenced the mini film and that's of dad and daughter dancing to "Symphony" while washing the dishes, the rest of them are setting up for Christmas or having fun together. You don't need context for that beyond dad being willing to engage his fun side for the holidays

Like I said, biggest problem with this year is being too dependent on the short film for ident shorts while the film has a bit of a half-baked premise that seems more an excuse to use the time-pause effect than actually presenting a well storyboarded plot.

So we have 6 idents?

Dodgems, Tree, daytime pier, nighttime pier, news daytime pier and news night time pier?