BBC One Christmas 2018

Call that a Christmas ident?! It doesn’t even have a half-arsed story behind it that most people won’t have seen in full for it to make sense!

I wasn't the biggest fan of those at the time but playing that just now and it does everything a Christmas ident should do both visually and in audio - as you say it just feels that big magical.

2014 was a fantastic year - no overblown mini-film, lovely surrounding presentation, arguably the last that truly captured that "BBC One at Christmas" feeling.

All very nice as an Art College project, but absolutely nothing to do with the national broadcaster, Christmas or even an identity for the channel. Just clever video work that could have been used for anything, anywhere. Such a drop in standards from last year.


I am surprised by the techniques they used, as I thought they had created the 'still time' shots with the multiple cameras used by other film/TV productions.

Well, 11.35pm on New Year's Eve will be the last time we will have to view the 2018 BBC One Christmas presentation, so just 16 more days, and then we will more than likely return to the dull "Oneness" nonsense once again.

BBC One was a let down this year for Christmas presentation, compared to 2017. If they have gone all John Lewis on us now in 2018, God knows what they will give us in December 1st 2019.

Well, the wonderland video hasn't done very well online. It hasn't even had a quarter of the attention last year's had.

I'd be very surprised if they don't consider the wonderland promo as a viral attempt failure. So they'll have no choice now but to change it up next year. There were some very upset working single mothers commenting on the video also.

If they wanted to make a big statement they should have highlighted the members of family that have to go out to work Christmas day - our emergency services instead they went for stressed woman working in an office who probably gets Christmas Day and Boxing Day off.

The question is do we really need a BBC Christmas film anyway? We never used to. A simple presentation package with decent traditional idents and good trailers is all we need and require from BBC One. Not an attempt to try bring us a two minute John Lewis advert.

BBC One should consider going back to their roots. I remember the very simple 1999 BBC One Christmas ident, Santa Claus appearing in the night sky ringing a bell. Here is a clip of how it looked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwIIDP0SfXk

Simple and perfect. The BBC could have a few variants, maybe a few Christmas figures such as a snowman, reindeer etc. Not hard, but perfect for Christmas, wouldn't some agree?

Here's Santa delivering his presents from the BBC1 balloon in 2000:



And here's one of the Aardman idents from 2001 - which, of course, turned out to be the final balloon idents.

These ones for me are the best christmas idents BBC One ever had. I can vividly remember them.

What annoys me is we have to put up with BBC One’s pound shop presentation the rest of the year, and then they put all this effort and money into something only used for a few weeks.

I loved both, but there is something still about the melody of the short form audio in the 2001 package; a 6 second form up before the announcer comes in. Simple.

Yes idents are for life, not just for Christmas.