Christmas Night with the Stars (partially found annual BBC television series; 1958-1972)
Title card of the 1972 edition of the program.
Status: Partially Found
Christmas Night with the Stars was an annual television program produced by the BBC that was broadcast on the night of December 25th every year from 1958 to 1972 (with the exception of 1961, 1965, and 1966). The program was a variety show designed to celebrate the Christmas season, and featured performances from popular UK musicians of the day such as Cilla Black, Adam Faith, and Russ Conway alongside specially produced, Christmas themed short episodes of other well known BBC programs like Steptoe and Son, The Likely Lads, and The Two Ronnies among others.
Christmas Night with the Stars proved to be immensely popular in its heyday, ultimately producing 12 editions between 1958 and 1972, with the program later being ranked as the 24th greatest Christmas moment in a program broadcast by UK TV network Channel 4 in 2005.[1] Such was its popularity that numerous attempts to revive the program's format have been attempted in the decades since; rival network ITV produced their own annual Christmas variety show from 1969 to 1973 entitled All Star Comedy Carnival, while the BBC themselves broadcast a one-off special similar to the program in 1982 titled The Funny Side of Christmas, before later producing two more special editions of Christmas Night with the Stars in 1994 and 2003 respectively.
Availability
But despite its popularity with audiences and its status as a UK Christmas tradition for over a decade, Christmas Night with the Stars would later become another victim of the BBC's infamous tape wiping practices that similarly left other popular BBC programs such as Doctor Who and Dad's Army with missing episodes. As a result of these procedures, only the 1958, 1964 and 1972 editions of the program are available to be viewed in full, with video and audio segments from the 1967, 1968, 1969 and 1970 programs also being accessible. To date, the 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963, and 1971 editions of the program remain completely lost with no known archives, and may remain so indefinitely.
List of Episodes[2]
| # | Air Date | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | December 25th, 1958 | Found | |
| 2 | December 25th, 1959 | Lost | |
| 3 | December 25th, 1960 | Lost | |
| 4 | December 25th, 1962 | Lost | Recreation of Steptoe and Son segment. |
| 5 | December 25th, 1963 | Lost | |
| 6 | December 25th, 1964 | Found | |
| 7 | December 25th, 1967 | Footage: Lost / Audio: Partially Found | Audio mistakenly labelled as being from 1962. |
| 8 | December 25th, 1968 | Footage: Lost / Audio: Partially Found | Audio from Dad's Army segment available on Dad's Army: The Lost Tapes CD.[3] |
| 9 | December 25th, 1969 | Partially Found | |
| 10 | December 25th, 1970 | Footage: Lost / Audio: Partially Found | Audio from Dad's Army segment available on Dad's Army: The Lost Tapes CD. |
| 11 | December 25th, 1971 | Lost | |
| 12 | December 25th, 1972 | Found |
External Links
References
- ↑ 100 Greatest Christmas Moments 1-25. Retrieved 21 Dec '22
- ↑ Archived page for Christmas Night with the Stars on the Lost UK TV Shows Search Engine. Retrieved 21 Dec '22
- ↑ Amazon UK page for Dad's Army: The Lost Tapes. Retrieved 21 Dec '22