3 January – Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles makes its debut on BBC1.[2] The show's original US title, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is changed for the UK market because of controversy surrounding ninjas and related weapons such as nunchaku.[3] The intro sequence is heavily edited because of this, replacing the word ninja with hero or fighting, using a digitally faded logo instead of the animated blob, and removing any scenes in which the character Michelangelo wields his nunchaku.[4] Scenes of Michelangelo using his nunchaku are likewise edited out of the episodes themselves, leading the American producers to drop the weapons from the series entirely, in order to make the show more appropriate for the international market.
6 January –
Baywatch, a series made by NBC in the United States, makes its British television debut on ITV. The series proves popular with ITV viewers, with audience figures regularly reaching 13 million. When NBC cancels the series after its first season, ITV teams up with an international consortium of broadcasters to sponsor the show for further seasons.[5] The series comes to an end in 2001, following an eleven-year run.[6]
8 January – The popular classic children's song Nellie the Elephant has been spawned into a 5-minute animated cartoon series on ITV featuring the voices of singer Lulu and veteran actor, comedian, author, presenter, historian and political activist Tony Robinson. The first episode "Nellie and the Ghost" airs on ITV and was shown every Monday and will keeping until 9 April with "Nellie Rescues Mrs Maple's Moggy". The series will return on 5 September with "Nellie Goes Ballooning" and will be shifted onto a Wednesday timeslot. The last three episodes will be broadcast in January 1991 with the final episode being shown on 21 January.
14 January – The Observer reports that TVS have started searching for a buyer for a 49% stake in US production company MTM Enterprises, which it bought in 1988.[7]
24 January–3 February – The BBC broadcasts the 1990 Commonwealth Games. BBC1 stays on air all night to provide live coverage.
January – For the first time, Emmerdale is networked across almost all of ITV, airing at 19:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
January – Chrysalis Television takes over the contract to produce LWT News.[9]
February
2 February – The BBC Schools gay-themed television film Two of Us is given its first daytime showing on BBC2. It is shown in two parts, on consecutive Friday lunchtimes.[10] The channel had previously shown the film late at night in March 1988.[11]
5 February – Sky Movies is encrypted and becomes Sky's first pay channel.
4 March – The Observer newspaper reports that it has formed a partnership with Central Television to create Central Observer, making environmental themed films for British Satellite Broadcasting and terrestrial channels, with funding from the charity Television Trust for the Environment.[13]
26 March – The science fiction soap Jupiter Moon makes its debut on the Galaxy channel. 150 episodes are commissioned, but only 108 are aired before the series is cancelled in December.
27 March – BBC 1 airs the first of two flashback episodes of EastEnders as part of the storyline in which Diane Butcher (played by Sophie Lawrence) ran away from home. The episodes show Frank Butcher (Mike Reid) going to meet his teenage daughter at King's Cross station after she contacted him following a three-month absence. Scenes showing Frank waiting for Diane and their subsequent reunion are interspersed with flashbacks to January showing her leaving home and living rough on the streets.[16] Sophie Lawrence did research among real homeless people for the storyline.[17]
3 April – ITV airs the First Tuesday documentary Sonia's Baby, the story of a woman's fight with the medical establishment to have a test tube baby using her late husband's sperm.[20]
6 April – UK television debut of Australian children's sci-fi comedy Round the Twist on BBC1.[21]
14 April – BBC2 begins showing the 91-part 1988 Indian serial, Mahabharat, a dramatisation of the epic poem the Mahabharata. The programme is shown in Hindi with English subtitles, and repeated the following day in a late night slot on BBC1.[22][23]
BBC1 airs Wogan on Ice, a special edition of Terry Wogan's chat show that gives viewers a rare chance to see ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean performing together. The pair, who achieved success during the 1984 Winter Olympics, are appearing together in the UK for the first time since 1985.[25]
21 April – Closing episode of the third series of ITV's You Bet!, and the last to be presented by Bruce Forsyth.
6 May – Airdate of the Everyman episode A Game of Soldiers, a documentary concerned a group of soldiers exploring their feelings about being trained to kill.[26]
10 May – The Broadcasting Bill receives its third reading in the House of Commons and is passed with 259 votes to 180.[27]
22 May – ITV airs "Trojan Horse", an episode of The Bill in which the character PC Ken Melvin (played by Mark Powley) is killed off while trying to park a booby trapped car, when a bomb explodes.
27–28 May – ITV stages its second nationwide Telethon.
20 June – Archie MacPherson commentates his last football match for BBC Scotland with the Scotland v Brazil World Cup match in Italy which Brazil won 1–0 leaving Scotland eliminated from the finals. He was later replaced by Jock Brown as main commentator who had commentated the same match on STV when Sportscene returned on 25 August. Brown was replaced by Gerry McNee for Scotsport which was shown the following day.
6 July – Channel 4 introduces a third weekly episode of its soap Brookside, airing on a Friday evening. The soap now airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
9 July – Anglia Television replaces its news programme About Anglia with Anglia News. The programme is a new dual news service, with both editions of Anglia News broadcast from Norwich. Journalists are also based at seven regional newsrooms and a Westminster bureau.[35] Anglia also begins providing separate news services for the East and West of the Anglia region from this date.[36][37]
13 July – Network television premiere of Michael Schultz's sci-fi adventure Timestalkers on BBC1, the film having been postponed from 25 June.[38]
19 July – MPs vote to make televised proceedings of the House of Commons a permanent feature.
21 July – Debut of ITV's Stars in Their Eyes, a series presented by Leslie Crowther in which members of the public impersonate their favourite singers.
The long-running animated series The Simpsons is broadcast in the United Kingdom for the first time, making its debut on Sky1.[44]Call of the Simpsons is the first episode to be shown on Sky.
5 September – New BBC building at White City opens.
8 September – Ahead of the UK screening of the 1,000th episode of Neighbours, BBC1 airs Neighbours 1,000th Episode Celebration, a TV special produced by Australia's Network Ten which brought together past and present cast members to mark the occasion.[46]
10 September - ThunderCats returns to BBC1 with the second half of the first series. However, because of the concerns involving the use of weapons brought about by Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, this next batch will have all scenes of Panthro with his nunchakus entirely cut out.
13 September – BBC1 screens the 1,000th episode of Neighbours. The episode features a storyline in which the characters Des Clarke and Jane Harris (played by Paul Keane and Annie Jones) become engaged.[49]
17 September – BBC1 airs a special edition of Blue Peter in which Yvette Fielding travels to Montserrat to report on efforts to rebuild the island, which experienced widespread damage when it was struck by Hurricane Hugo on 17 September 1989.[52]
23 September – Debut of the Screen One drama Sweet Nothing, which deals with the subject of homeless young people in London.[53]
24 September –
Yorkshire Television launches a third sub-regional news opt-out for south Yorkshire and north Derbyshire called "South" and is broadcast from Sheffield while "East" (Hull) continues to air in east Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and North Norfolk and Calendar News is broadcast to the rest of the region (west and north Yorkshire).
30 September – The BSB channel Galaxy airs the pilot episode of Heil Honey I'm Home!, a controversial sitcom featuring a fictionalised Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. The show attracts much criticism and is cancelled after one episode. Several other episodes were recorded, but none have ever been broadcast.
BBC1 launches a new weekday morning service called Daytime UK.[57] Linked live from Birmingham and running for four hours, from 8.50am until lunchtime, the new service includes hourly regional news summaries, broadcast after the on-the-hour news bulletins.
Fireman Sam returns to BBC 1 for a brand new series with a new character named Penny Morris being introduced.
18 October – The day's edition of BBC 1's Question Time from Edinburgh becomes the first edition of the programme to feature six panellists after delays require the last minute substitution of two guests. Tony Benn, Margaret Ewing, Andrew Neil and Malcolm Rifkind were originally scheduled to appear, but Menzies Campbell and Magnus Linklater are drafted in when Benn and Neil are late. Benn and Neil then arrive 20 minutes into the programme, and join the discussion.
23 October – David Lynch's critically acclaimed serial drama Twin Peaks receives its British television debut at 9.00pm on BBC2.[58]
30 October – Debut of The Sentence, an eight-part BBC2 documentary series looking at life inside Glen Parva Young Offenders Institute near Leicester, Europe's largest prison of its type. It is the first time a television crew has been given access to the prison.[60]
November
2 November – BSB merges with Sky Television, becoming British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). Of BSB's five channels, only two, The Movie Channel and The Sports Channel, remain on air long term, though both are eventually renamed. Galaxy is closed with its transponders handed over to Sky One, Now is replaced in the most part with Sky News and The Power Station remains on air until 8 April 1991 before being replaced by MTV.
9 November – The Word is moved from 6pm to a late night timeslot.
11 November – At 10.40pm ITV airs an ITN News special in which Trevor McDonald talks to Saddam Hussein. In his first interview with a British broadcaster since his country's invasion of Kuwait in August, the Iraqi President calls for talks and attempts to link the ongoing Gulf crisis with the Palestinian issue.[61]
12 November – British/Swiss children's television series Pingu debuts on BBC1.[62]
18 November–23 December – The BBC's serialisation of the Chronicles of Narnia concludes with the fourth and final story, The Silver Chair, being aired in six parts.[63][64]
BBC1 airs The Maze – Enemies Within, an Inside Story special looking at life inside Northern Ireland's Maze Prison.[65]
Episode of Emmerdale in which Malandra Burrows (as Kathy Merrick) sings "Just This Side of Love", a song later released by Burrows as a single. Released on 26 November, the song enters the UK Singles Chart at #44, before spending eight weeks in the top 60 and peaking at #11 on 22 December.
Episode three of the ninth series of Spitting Image concludes with a film showing footage of Britain's homeless crisis over which plays a parody of Dionne Warwick's 1964 song "Walk on By". The piece is introduced as one of the legacies of Margaret Thatcher's government, and is rare for the series in that no puppets were used.[67]
November – The Broadcasting Act 1990 receives Royal Assent. The Act paves the way for the deregulation of the British commercial broadcasting industry, and will have many consequences for the ITV system.[68][69] The Act also sets out the terms of a license for a fifth UK television channel, which would need to be a general entertainment channel with a remit for some public service broadcasting. Additionally, it is estimated that the channel's coverage would reach only 74% of the UK, and a video retuning operation would need to be undertaken.[70]
December
1 December – With the media watching, the two ends of the service tunnel of the Channel Tunnel are joined together, linking Britain and France for the first time since the Ice Age. A handshake then takes place between Englishman Graham Fagg and Frenchman Phillippe Cozette, after which British and French workers board trains to complete the first journey between the two countries.[71][72]
Galaxy and Now are closed down and are replaced on the Marco Polo satellite by Sky One and Sky News although arts programmes are shown for a short time as a weekend opt-out service from Sky News.
7 December – BBC2 broadcasts Your Move, a pioneering interactive show in which the home audience are invited to play chess against grandmaster Jonathan Speelman using telephone voting to select each move.[73]
9 December –
Cilla Black hosts Happy Birthday Coronation Street, an evening of entertainment on ITV to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the long–running soap.[74]
Steven Spielberg's 1982 science fiction adventure E.T. makes its British television debut on BBC1.[77]
Channel 4 airs The Coronation Street Birthday Lecture, a talk delivered by Labour politician Roy Hattersley in which he discusses aspects of the soap in front of an invited audience, which includes some Coronation Street cast members. The programme also includes some classic clips from the series.[78]
26 December –
BBC1 airs the network television premiere of the supernatural horror film Poltergeist II,[79] and Toto – Live in Paris, a rare live performance from Toto.[80]
31 December – New Year's Eve highlights on BBC1 include the network television premiere of the romantic comedy Roxanne, a modern retelling of Edmond Rostand's 1897 verse playCyrano de Bergerac.[83]
^Barnes, Steve. "Anglia Television – News". TVARK: The Online Television Museum. Archived from the original on 1 April 2012. Retrieved 25 January 2012. Website contains video of original promotion of the new service.
^Brown, Maggie (23 July 2010). "Channel Five: a timeline". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Archived from the original on 22 November 2018. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
^"Chunnel birthday". Evening Mail. Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd. 2 December 2000.