27-12-2022, 09:16 PM
I imagine it would be pretty much impossible in many cases to get the productions on many shows the way they wanted if they were mounting a single Christmas episode several months apart from the rest of the production run.
One strange thing when it comes to Christmas specials is with Last Of The Summer Wine, where several of their "Christmas specials" weren't specials at all, just regular episodes either taken from the forthcoming series or held over from the previous one. This shows up the most with the 2002 one, where we get a scene with Entwhistle (along with him making a joke about Hull) even though he wasn't introduced or met the characters until the second episode of the following series- clearly that episode was actually intended for later in the 2003 series but got pulled forward, possibly because of Norman Wisdom's guest spot, similar also happens with Crusher on the 84 Xmas episode.
While many Christmas specials of shows aren't set at Christmas, they're still clearly made as special episodes to be shown at Christmas, Summer Wine seems to be pretty unique in either pulling forward or holding back regular episodes to show around Christmas time separate from the rest of the series (of course Summer Wine did make several proper Christmas/New Year specials too, indeed they made the first feature length sitcom Christmas special back in 83). It's the 1984, 1991, 2001, 2002 and 2008 "Christmas" episodes which seem to fit into this category.
One strange thing when it comes to Christmas specials is with Last Of The Summer Wine, where several of their "Christmas specials" weren't specials at all, just regular episodes either taken from the forthcoming series or held over from the previous one. This shows up the most with the 2002 one, where we get a scene with Entwhistle (along with him making a joke about Hull) even though he wasn't introduced or met the characters until the second episode of the following series- clearly that episode was actually intended for later in the 2003 series but got pulled forward, possibly because of Norman Wisdom's guest spot, similar also happens with Crusher on the 84 Xmas episode.
While many Christmas specials of shows aren't set at Christmas, they're still clearly made as special episodes to be shown at Christmas, Summer Wine seems to be pretty unique in either pulling forward or holding back regular episodes to show around Christmas time separate from the rest of the series (of course Summer Wine did make several proper Christmas/New Year specials too, indeed they made the first feature length sitcom Christmas special back in 83). It's the 1984, 1991, 2001, 2002 and 2008 "Christmas" episodes which seem to fit into this category.