8pm, 13 December, 1984. BBC2 aired
The Battle For Santa's Software. The penultimate episode of documentary series
Commercial Breaks. It is brilliant
. A 30 minute time capsule of eighties excess, corporate culture, and success and failure. It would have been a real ripped-from-the-headlines watch at the time because the fallout from Imagine's liquidation continued into 1985. The production team must have been simultaneously delighted and stressed out when the company they were documenting imploded, spectacularly, and right in front of them. Copies of
The Battle For Santa's Software. have been available on Youtube for years but on 13th June 2025 the
BBC Archive channel uploaded a copy in
pristine high definition. It looks lovely and understandably has grabbed a lot of attention; at the time of writing on 22nd June it's already racked up 64,000 views. Obviously I want to surf this zeitgeist but how? What can I say that hasn't already been said? How about if I just watch it and write about whatever comes to mind. Welcome to
The Battle For Santa's Software the slightly annotated version.