'Now That's What I Call Christmas Television'

with Fern Britton and Ronnie Corbett ......

One minor technical point, why were virtually(*) all the shows featured BBC programmes?

Where were the ITV ones? Is this programme an indictment of all that ITV has to offer these days?

A reflection on the channel's demise has to be that for Boxing Day Night a compilation of BBC material is all that they could come up with?

(*) maybe all, I couldn't identify ONE clip.

I find it odd that ITV show a compilation of Christmas programmes on Boxing Day. How about showing some actual Christmas programmes!?

This was a Christmas special of the occasional series 'Now That's What I Call Television' which features clips of classic TV from all channels

Tonight's was probably BBC heavy because most iconic Christmas programmes from the past were on the BBC

and there another one to come with Des lynam, on saturday

You could say that it was recycling old material, but me and the rest of the family all sat down to watch it.
I like the series as I get to see what I couldn't see from years gone by, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The press release for this episode said:

Christmas soaps including Crossroads, Emmerdale Farm and Coronation Street will be revisited plus other great Christmas day entertainment classics including Morecambe & Wise, Val Doonican’s Christmas Party, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and of course The Two Ronnies.

There was only short clips of Morecambe and Wise and Val Doonican in the opening best of clips. Didn't see any soaps in there, unless I blinked and missed it, either way it was hardly revisiting them.

It was a one-off bodged together show with a few well-known faces reincarnated from the past. In fact Jan Francis, Paul Nicholas, and the popular Blue Peter three, were the only thing that made it anything worth watching. Fern did a good job as well saying that.

Ronnie Corbett (my old folks seem to hate him!) can still be quite witty when he has his moments. And of course, it made yet another excuse to fill up time with one of his monologues from the chair.

Overall, I'd agree with Mike in the fact it hasn't really "visited" the programmes mentioned in that statement!

They didn't appear to have addressed the problems with the first three episodes - mainly everything going past far too quickly, although they may have recorded this episode at the same time as the first episodes.

Hopefully if they commission any more past Saturday's they'll address the pace issue.

IIRC the only clip they showed of an ITV programme was, strangely, a regional Yorkshire Television programme called "Help Yourself".

They also had quick flashes of a festive YTV ident and a Granada still ident in the opening "teaser" sequence. And that dodgy recreation of the LWT break bumper from the 1970s turned up again.

No this was recorded only a few weeks ago, so the problems - they're not seeing them as such it seems.

The most prominant part of the programme was the sad reminder that the Blue Peter Christmas traditions weren't followed this year.