8 January – The original airdate of the Only Fools and Horses episode "Yuppy Love" featuring the classic scene in which Del Boy falls through a bar. A 2006 poll names the scene as the most popular of the entire series while it is also named 7th Greatest Television Moment of all time in a 1999 Channel 4 poll.
9 January – Launch of Central News South, a separate local news service for the South Midlands, covering Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and parts of Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire. The programme is broadcast from a new computerised news centre in Abingdon.
22 January – ITV launches an omnibus edition of Coronation Street which airs on Sunday afternoons; however, the repeat is not stranded across the network, with different regions airing it at different times. Some regions, including Central, later move the episode to a Saturday afternoon slot and the omnibus is dropped in some areas from September 1990.
24 January – BBC1 airs an episode of EastEnders, featuring a mouth-to-mouth gay kiss between the characters Colin Russell (Michael Cashman) and Guido Smith (Nicholas Donovan), the first time such a scene is shown in a British soap. It causes uproar among viewers and in the press.[6]
26 January – Debut of the sitcom Joint Account on BBC1.
The US drama series Midnight Caller makes its UK debut on BBC1; it is one of the first television shows to address the dramatic possibilities of the growing phenomenon at this time of talk radio.
February
5 February – At 6pm, the world's first commercial DBS system, Sky Television, goes on the air. Three new channels, Sky News, Sky Movies and Eurosport all launch, as well as the flagship Sky Channel, later renamed Sky One.
6 February
Launch of the Sky News flagship breakfast programme, Sunrise, which will run until 2019.
Sky Channel begins a rerun of its popular Australian medical soap opera series The Young Doctors, starting with the first-ever episode.
11 February – The Australian soap Home and Away makes its UK debut on ITV. It is the second networked Australian soap on that channel, following the short-lived Richmond Hill which is still airing during the afternoon. Home and Away is crucially scheduled in early evening slots of either 5:10pm, 6pm or 6:30pm across the ITV network and it immediately becomes the counterpart series to BBC1's Neighbours airing at 5:35pm. This scheduling continues thirty years later with both series now in these same slots but together on Channel 5.
12 February – ITV launches its Find a Family campaign to help find permanent homes for youngsters in care.
14 February – Debut of Out on Tuesday on Channel 4, the UK's first weekly magazine series for gay and lesbian viewers. Later changing its name to Out, the show airs for four series before being axed in 1992.[7]
23 February – Some 23 million viewers tune in to watch the exit of the hugely popular character Den Watts (Leslie Grantham) from EastEnders. Grantham filmed his final scenes in the show in the Autumn of 1988, but his exit has been delayed into 1989 to avoid the show suffering the double blow of losing Den so soon after his former wife, Angie (Anita Dobson), who exited in May 1988. The character falls into a canal after being shot, but the character's exact fate is left unconfirmed. He will make a return to the show in 2003.
24 February – Debut of the children's game show Fun House on Children's ITV, presented by Pat Sharp.
25 February – The long-awaited WBA Heavyweight title fight between Britain's Frank Bruno and the USA's Mike Tyson is held at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas. Because of the time difference between Britain and the US, the fight is televised in the UK in the early hours of 26 February. Tyson wins after the referee stops the bout in the fifth round.[8]
Channel 4 begins broadcasting in NICAM digital stereo, initially from the Crystal Palace transmitting station, prior to a national transmitter-by-transmitter roll-out during 1990.
Anglia and Central reschedule Emmerdale Farm to 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
March
2 March
My Brother David, an edition of the BBC2 schools series Scene, is first broadcast in which Simon Scarboro talks about the life of his brother David Scarboro, who originally played the EastEnders character Mark Fowler and who fell to his death from Beachy Head in 1988. The programme is repeated on 19 June for a general audience as part of BBC2's DEF II strand.[9][10][11][12]
After much publicity, a two-minute advert for Pepsi featuring Madonna's latest single "Like a Prayer" is shown during a commercial break on ITV, 12 minutes into The Bill.
6 March – Debut of the three-part ITV drama Winners and Losers, starring Leslie Grantham. The series is his first post-EastEnders role.
10 March – On the second Red Nose Day, BBC1 airs the eight-hour telethon, A Night of Comic Relief 2.[13]
15 March
BBC1 airs John's Not Mad,[citation needed] an edition of the QED documentary strand that shadows John Davidson, a 15-year-old from Galashiels in Scotland with severe Tourette syndrome. The film explores John's life in terms of his family and the close-knit community around him and how they all cope with a misunderstood condition.[14]
Debut of the drama series Children's Ward on Children's ITV.
16 March – Debut of the children's sitcom Mike and Angelo on Children's ITV.
31 March – The last Oracle on View transmission takes place on Channel 4.
March
The Independent Broadcasting Authority recommends that the headquarters of a fifth channel should be situated outside London, preferably at a location north of Birmingham.[15]
The Children's Channel launches free-to-air on2 Astra 1A,[16] airing from 5am to 10am on weekdays and from 5am to 12pm on weekends, time-sharing with Lifestyle.
April
1 April
Five Star appear on CBBC's Going Live! to promote their latest single With Every Heartbeat. During a live phone-in, a teenage caller verbally abuses them and asks why they are "so fucking crap". Presenter Sarah Greene quickly cuts off the call as the tirade continues.[17][18][19][20][21] On 23 September 2019, an individual claiming to be Eliot Fletcher, the caller, apologises to the band for the incident via a social media account.[22] However, doubt is then cast on the authenticity of the apology after several other people claim to be the notorious caller.[23]
2–3 April – ITV airs The Heroes, an Australian-British television miniseries based on the World War II Operation Jaywick, starring John Bach and Jason Donovan.
3 April
Channel 4 launches its breakfast television show The Channel Four Daily. The programme is based heavily on news and current affairs, with segments focusing on sports, finance, lifestyles, arts and entertainment and discussion. It is axed in 1992 after failing to gain enough viewers and was subsequently replaced by the much more popular The Big Breakfast.
The Australian children's series The Bartons makes its UK debut on BBC1.[24]
4 April – TUGS, a children's model animated series made by Clearwater Features (the British company behind the first two series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends), makes its debut on Children's ITV. Also on the same day, the final episode of Hill Street Blues is broadcast on Channel 4 for the last time.
15 April – Hillsborough disaster. The BBC's cameras are at the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield to record the FA Cup semi-final clash between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest for their Match of the Day programme, but as the disaster unfolds, the events are relayed to their live sports show, Grandstand, resulting in the extreme emotional impact on the general British population.
21 April – BBC2's 25th anniversary. Programming includes an edition of Arena in which the author Graham Greene sets out to trace a namesake who posed as him for many years and an edition of The Late Show which looks at the early BBC2 jazz programme Jazz 625.[26]
24 April
The BBC's Ceefax runs as a partial service only, due to a strike by broadcasting unions.
Jon Snow joins Channel 4 News as its main newscaster, replacing Peter Sissons, who had presented the programme since its launch in November 1982.
26 April – BBC1 airs A Case of Spontaneous Human Combustion, a Q.E.D. documentary which sets out to investigate apparent instances of the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion, combustion of the human body without an apparent external source of ignition.[27]
27 April – BBC2 airs the 40 Minutes documentary Inside Broadmoor, a film showing life inside Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire.[28]
2 May – ITV airs an edition of the First Tuesday documentary strand investigating the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War called Four Hours in My Lai which is later shown in the US as part of the Frontline series with the title Remember My Lai.[29]
The High Court rejects a legal challenge to overturn the prohibition on broadcasting the voices of representatives of Irish terrorist organisations introduced in October 1988 after deciding the Home Secretary acted lawfully.[30] In December, the Appeal Court upholds the ban.[31]
ITV airs live the last Football League game of the season, between Liverpool and Arsenal at Anfield. Arsenal win the League title with the last kick of the season, thanks to a late goal from Michael Thomas. More than 8 million people are said to have tuned in.
June
3 June – Sky Television and The Walt Disney Company come to an arrangement which allows Sky to broadcast movies for a five-year period. This agreement comes a few weeks after plans to create a full-time channel were scrapped, although the channel itself eventually launches on 1 October 1995.
19 June – For the first time, BBC2 broadcasts during the morning when not showing Daytime on 2. Programmes begin at 10am as opposed to lunchtime.
22 June
John Craven presents his final edition of the children's news programme John Craven's Newsround. After his departure, the show continues under the name Newsround.
Debut of the game show Interceptor on ITV, hosted by former tennis player and Treasure Hunt sky-runner Annabel Croft with the eponymous Interceptor played by actor Sean O'Kane. The series will run for seven episodes until it ends on 1 January 1990 with a New Year special.
The BBC documentary series Panorama accuses Shirley Porter, Conservative Leader of Westminster City Council, of gerrymandering.
25 July – ITV airs "Don't Like Mondays", an episode of The Bill, featuring a storyline in which several characters are caught up in a bank robbery. The episode sees the exit of PC Pete Ramsey, played by Nick Reding, who is shot in the chest by one of the robbers while protecting a colleague. The fate of the character is left unresolved.
28 July – London Weekend Television's current affairs programme Friday Now! is axed after ten months on air due to poor ratings. From the Autumn, it is replaced by Six O'Clock Live.
31 July
Sky Channel is rebranded as Sky One and confines its broadcasting to the UK and Ireland.
Satellite subscription movie channel Premiere ceases broadcasting due to losses of around £10 million and increased competition from Sky Movies. It thanks the viewers as well as a few businesses that helped with the channel's transmission.
August
18–20 August – Michael Aspel presents Murder Weekend, a five-part televised murder mystery series for ITV. The show, devised and written by Joy Swift, sees celebrities attempting to solve a murder, with viewers also invited to identify the suspect.[35]
25 August – Rupert Murdoch delivers the MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in which he launches an attack on the narrow elitism within the British television industry.[36]
26 August – ITV airs Michael Lindsay-Hogg's science-fiction mystery television movie Murder on the Moon, starring Brigitte Nielsen, Julian Sands, Gerald McRaney, Jane Lapotaire, Celia Imrie and Brian Cox. It focuses on American and Soviet mining companies teaming up with several human settlements to exploit the satellite's resources for survival as investigators from NASA and KGB are forced to solve a case together.
BBC1 airs News '39, a week of news-style programmes hosted by Sue Lawley, marking the 50th anniversary of the start of World War II. Each edition is presented in news format reporting on events as if they are occurring in the present time. The bulletin ends on 3 September.
The BBC is accused of censorship after banning an interview with Simon Hayward, a former Captain of the Life Guards who spent several years in a Swedish prison after a drug smuggling conviction, just hours before he is due to appear on the Wogan show. The decision, taken by BBC1 Controller Jonathan Powell followed protests from several MPs. The BBC says the subject is not appropriate for a family programme, but will be discussed on other shows.[40]
The children's stop-motion animated series Postman Pat makes its debut in Ireland on Network 2 as part of Dempsey's Den. The animated series The Adventures of Spot also begins airing in Ireland on this day with an Irish language dub called Echtrai Bhrain.
The third and final programme in the trilogy to be produced by Maddocks Cartoon Productions, Penny Crayon, debuts on BBC1.
15 September – Ceefax AM is broadcast for the final time.
25 September – BBC2 airs The Interrogation of John, Malcolm McKay's 1987 ScreenPlay, starring Dennis Quilley, Bill Paterson and Michael Fitzgerald. The film, about the police questioning of a murder suspect and first shown in 1987, now forms the first of a three-part series titled A Wanted Man which further develops the story. The second part of the trilogy, The Secret, airs on 27 September, while Shoreland concludes the series on 28 September.[42][43][44]
26 September – Debut of Capital City, a drama series about investment bankers produced by Euston Films for Thames on ITV. Thames has spent an estimated £500,000 to run newspaper and billboard advertisements to promote the series launch, believed at the time to be the largest advertising spend for a programme in the history of ITV. Full-page advertisements are taken in six national newspapers including the Financial Times, The Times and The Independent, promoting Shane-Longman, the fictitious company of the series and featuring images of cast members in character.[45]
The largest entertainment company in Britain as HIT Entertainment which was originally a Jim Henson production company called Henson International Television launches. They specialise in acquiring rights and distributing television series for children such as Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder, Barney & Friends, Fireman Sam, Pingu, Angelina Ballerina and The Wiggles.
Launch of RTL Veronique, a Dutch private commercial television station broadcasting from Luxembourg. The channel airs to Europe via the Astra satellite and attracts attention in its early days due to its late-night lineup of erotic programmes. The station changes its name to RTL 4 in 1991.[48]
Launch of the second generation of the Rover 200. Part of its promotion includes an advert in which a man halts his lover's wedding to someone else before the pair drive off together in that car, accompanied by the track "Up Where We Belong".
20 October – ITV introduces a third weekly episode of Coronation Street which airs on Fridays at 7:30pm.
29 October – Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appears on ITV's The Walden Interview with Brian Walden. His tough stance with her during the programme is one of the things that helps to contribute to her downfall the following year.[51][52]
November
1 November – ITV airs One Day in the Life of Television, a documentary filmed by 50 camera crews looking behind-the-scenes of British television on 1 November 1988.[53]
2 November – The last episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, Goodbyeee, is broadcast on BBC1.[54] With one of the moving endings ever seen on British television, it is aired nine days before Remembrance Day. The final scene is also voted the ninth most memorable moment of all time in a poll for The Observer and Channel 4 on 11 September 1999.
19 November–26 November – Prince Caspian becomes the second Narnia book to be aired as a television serial on BBC1 in two parts.[57][58]
20 November – The Ceefax service is relaunched to focus on news, sport and current affairs. The magazine elements are significantly reduced and are mainly restricted to the weekend.[59]
20–24 November – TVS pilots a 30-minute late-night edition of its news programme Coast to Coast called Coast to Coast Late.[60]
21 November – Television coverage of proceedings in the House of Commons begins.
22 November
Following the commencement of televised coverage of the House of Commons the previous day, BBC2 launches a breakfast round-up of yesterday's proceedings. This is preceded by the 8am bulletin from Breakfast News.[61] Previously, the only BBC2 breakfast output was programmes from The Open University. Their programmes continue to be shown on BBC2 at breakfast, but in an earlier timeslot.
The Stone Roses are invited to appear on BBC2's The Late Show. During their performance, the electricity is cut off by noise limiting circuitry, prompting singer Ian Brown to shout "Amateurs, amateurs" as presenter Tracey MacLeod tries to link into the next item.
25 November – Helen Sharman is selected as the first Britain to travel into space in a live programme aired by ITV. She is one of 13,000 people to apply for the chance to become an astronaut after responding to a radio advertisement, and journeys to the Mir space station in 1991.[62]
29 November – Debut of four-part serial Blackeyes on BBC2 which is written and directed by Dennis Potter, adapted from his novel of the same name, starring Gina Bellman as an attractive model with Michael Gough in a key role as her uncle. The series theme is described as the objectification of "young and attractive women as consumer goods in a way that brutalizes both sexes". The serial continues on 20 December.
December
December – The controversial Broadcasting Bill is introduced into Parliament by the Government. It will pave the way for the deregulation of commercial television.[63]
The last episode of the 26-year original run of Doctor Who, part three of Survival, is broadcast on BBC1. The long-running show will be off the air for 16 years until it is revived in 2005 with the only new material during this time being an American telemovie in 1996.
8 December – Alan Bradley (Mark Eden) is fatally run over by a Blackpool tram on Coronation Street, getting the soap's biggest ever audience at almost 27 million viewers, a record that remains to this day.[66][67]
11 December – Debut of The Art of Landscape on Channel 4, a programme that shows slowly changing sceneries, animations and landscapes accompanied by music. Initially lasting for three hours, it is broadcast throughout the morning when ITV Schools is off air; from March 1990, the slot is reduced to 30 minutes and airs prior to The Channel Four Daily. After disappearing from the schedule in early 1991, it makes a one-off return in August 1997.[68]
The iconic British Airways "face" advertisement is first aired. It has been made by advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi, having been written by Graham Fink and Jeremy Clarke, with Hugh Hudson as director. It is often considered to be a television commercial classic.[70][71]
The children's series Playbus is renamed Playdays. The show's name is changed after the BBC received a complaint from the National Playbus Association.
29 December – Deirdre Barlow (Anne Kirkbride) confronts her husband Ken (William Roache) on Coronation Street before throwing him out, ending their decade-long television marriage.
BBC1 says goodbye to the 1980s with Clive James on the 80s, a special two-hour programme reviewing the decade.[74]
BBC2 has its own review of the 1980s, with The Late Show Eighties, featuring highlights of 1980s rock music.[75]
The animated special Granpa, based on the book by veteran English children's author and illustrator John Burningham and produced by John Coates and directed by Dianne Jackson (best known for working on the animated Christmas special The Snowman) is shown on Channel 4 at 6:30pm.