The first in a holiday double-bill starring the young Elizabeth Taylor also starring
Mickey Rooney. Donald Crisp
Velvet Brown wins a hunter in a raffle and determines to turn him into a champion race-horse with the help of her young friend Mi.
A classic story of the open air and the warmth and gentleness of family life in the country.
Screenplay by THEODORE REEVES and HELEN DEUTSCH
Based on the novel by ENID RAGNOLD Produced by PANDRO s. BERMAM Directed by CLARENCE BROWN
(Elizabeth Taylor is in Little women at 3.45)

starring Brian Cant who invites you to join his guests in an entertainment of comedy and music, with Peter Purves , Julie Stevens and Jonathan Cohen and the Play Away Band
Musical director JONATHAN COHEN Designer ALAN SPALDING Director JOHN SMITH Producer ANN REAY

Elizabeth Taylor plays Amy March in this all-star version of Louisa M. Alcott 's much-loved classic story about the fortunes of four sisters in America in the 1860s. also starring June Allyson
Janet Leigh , Margaret O'Brien
Screenplay by ANDREW SOLT
SARAH Y. MASON and VICTOR HEERMAN Directed by MERVYN LEROY Films: pages 16-17

The Second Test from
Melbourne RICHIE BENALD introduces highlights of the first day's play.

JOHANN STRAUSS 'S operetta based on MEILHAC and HALÉVY'S Le Riveillon
Text by HAFFNER and GENÉE
Revised by GERHARD BRONNER starring with Dancers:
Merle Park and Wayne Eagling
Choreographer SIR FREDERICK ASHTON
Additional choreography and movement DAVID DREW
CHORUS OF THE ROYAL OPERA chorus-master JOHN BACON
ORCHESTRA OF THE ROYAL OPERA
HOUSE leader JOHN BROWN conducted by Zubin Mehta
On New Year's Eve 1977, BBC2 broadcast live from the Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden, the first night of Die Fledermaus produced by LEOPOLD LINDTBERG and designed by JULIA TREVELYAN OMAN .
Tonight we are showing again that star-studded occasion. It is introduced by BENJAMIN LUXON who sings the role of Dr Falke. English sub-titles PETER BUTLER Sound GRAHAM HAINES
Stage lighting WILLIAM BUNDY
Television lighting HUBERT CARTWRIGHT
Directed by BRIAN LARGE at 8.30 News; Weather and Sport

'There is great store of gold and silver in the country and precious stones and pearls which the sea cast us up upon the shore. Here is silk enough to furnish all the world.'

Early in the 17th century, reports like this brought Europeans to the lands of South-East Asia. More than 1,000 years earlier, the promise of unlimited wealth in gold and spices brought Indian traders, and the Hindu and Buddhist religions.

For 2,000 years South-East Asia has been the battleground, but the civilisations which nourished there have left behind them an awesome legacy of temples, sculpture and paintings. These ancient cultures are still alive - the Khmer race which built Angkor Wat, the world's largest and most magnificent temple, are the forebears of the Cambodian people now fighting desperately for their life.
In this preview, David Attenborough goes to Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Indonesia in search of the cultures which lie behind the news headlines and introduces the new series, Spirit of Asia, which begins in two weeks - on 13 January.

by Thornton Wilder
Starring Ned Beatty, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robby Benson, Ronny Cox, Glynnis O'Connor, Sada Thompson
and Hal Holbrook as The Stage Manager

A distinguished American television production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic about 12 years of life at the turn of the century in a fictitious New Hampshire town, Grover's Corners. This deceptively simple play centres on the two families of the Gibbs and the Webbs as they experience birth and death, love and marriage, youth and middle age. These threads are woven into a moving affirmation of life by the Stage Manager, beautifully played by Hal Holbrook.

Produced and directed by GEORGE SCHAEFER
Films: pages 16-17

Weather

Starring Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter
with Akim Tamiroff and Erich von Stroheim as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

It is June 1942, and Rommel's Afrika Korps is advancing swiftly into Egypt. Corporal John Bramble, the only survivor of a British tank crew, staggers into an Arab village that has become Rommel's headquarters. In a dingy desert hotel there, the fate of the desert campaign hangs on Bramble discovering the secret of Rommel's 'Five Graves'. Erich von Stroheim plays Rommel with his usual flare and panache.
Corp John Bramble.FRANCHOT TONE
Screenplay by CHARLES BRACKETT and BILLY WILDER based on a play by LAJOS BIRO Directed by BILLY WILDER
. Films: pages 16-17

The Christmas Tree Suite by FRANZ LISZT. On the fourth day of Christmas RHONDDA GILLESPIE plays the fourth movement from this little-known suite for piano.
The March of the Three Wise Men