Stars On Sunday

  • Directed by Ian Bolt
    Produced by Peter Max-Wilson

    Broadcast: 12 January 1975
    Yorkshire Television Production

  • Frank Finlay
    The Archbishop Of Canterbury
    Anita Harris
    Millican And Nesbitt
    James Pegler
    Robert Dougall



    • Frank Finlay on The Journey the Magi.

      Frank Finlay for once playing himself instead of a vast catalogue of characters, appears in Stars on Sunday with a reading of the first Sunday after Epiphany of T. S. Eliot's famous poem The Journey of the Magi.

      Finlay, one of our best actors, has had a busy and varied year of television. He has played Christ, Voltaire, Casanova, Hitler, Shylock and Sancho Panza in the award winning Don Quixote.

      Epiphany, January 6, marks the end of the Christmas season and is one of the three principal and oldest festival days of the Christian Church: Easter and Pentecost being the others. It commemorates the first manifestation (the Greek translation of Epiphany) of the Lord Jesus to the Gentiles.

      Magi literally means "Wise Men". The Three Wise Men of the East, Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar, who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Saviour, Jesus. Medieval legend calls them the Three Kings of Cologne:, and the Cathedral there claims their relics.

      T. S. Eliot movingly captured their journey: "Cold coming toe had of it, just the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a journey; the way is deep and the weather sharp, the dead of winter ..."

    • Robert Dougall introduces leading personalities, with favourite religious songs and music, and readings from the Bible. The Stars on Sunday Singers are joined by the Stars on Sunday Massed Choirs, conductor John Warburton, and the Leeds Parish Church Choir, conductor Donald Hunt. The religious advisers are the Rev. Brandon Jackson and Mgr. Michael Buckley. The music associates are Nigel Brooks and Robert Hartley.

      Stars on Sunday is a religious request programme produced by Yorkshire Television (YTV) and broadcast on the ITV network from 1969-1979. It aired on Sunday early evenings during what was known as 'The Holy Hour' or more colloquially, 'The God Slot', the time in a television schedule set aside for religious broadcasting. Yorkshire Television executive and producer Jess Yates developed Stars on Sunday as a replacement for outgoing show, Choirs on Sunday.