This is a list of British television related events from 1985.
Events January 1 January BBC1's New Year's Eve special Live into 85, broadcast from Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland, ends broadcasting in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as scheduled 40 minutes earlier than in Scotland after a series of disasters brought on by poor organisation from the production team. New Year's Day highlights on BBC1 include the World War II film The Guns of Navarone and the Alan Ayckbourn play Absurd Person Singular. Channel 4 airs It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, a theme night celebrating the 1960s. Brookside is moved from Wednesdays to Mondays which means the soap can now be seen on Mondays and Tuesdays on Channel 4. 2 January – Channel 4 begins airing the acclaimed series A Woman of Substance, a miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Barbara Taylor Bradford. The series airs over three consecutive nights and garners the channel an audience of 13.8 million, its largest to date. 3–6 January – The UK's last VHF 405-line television transmitters close down. Transmissions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland end on the 3rd, although a few relays continue to broadcast on 405-lines until the 6th. 405-line transmission in Scotland ends on the 4th. 4 January The network television premiere of the 1980 smash hit sequel Superman II on ITV, starring Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman. Channel 4 achieves its highest ever audience as 13.8 million viewers tune in for the final part of the miniseries A Woman of Substance. 6 January – The first Screen Two broadcast takes place. The first film to be broadcast as part of this anthology is Alan Clarke's Contact, a largely dialogue-free film about the British military presence in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. 7 January – The BBC ends its experiment with afternoon broadcasting and from that afternoon Pages from Ceefax is shown on BBC1 between the end of lunchtime programmes and the start of children's programmes and on BBC2 Ceefax pages are shown continuously between 9am and 5:25pm apart from when Daytime on Two is in season and when sporting events are being shown. 11 January – Debut of the comedy sketch show Victoria Wood as Seen on TV on BBC2. 12 January Channel 4 debuts a one-off comedy and music show, Saturday Live, hosted by Lenny Henry and based on the same format as the long-running US comedy show, Saturday Night Live. A full series isn't commissioned until a year later. The crime fighting duo Dempsey and Makepeace made their debut on ITV. 17 January – Thames makes a deal with international distributors for American production company Lorimar to purchase the UK broadcasting rights for the drama Dallas, thus taking it from the BBC and breaking a gentlemen's agreement between the BBC and ITV not to poach each other's imported shows. Thames have paid £55,000 per episode compared to the £29,000 paid by the BBC. The deal is condemned by both the BBC and other ITV companies who fear the BBC will poach their imports in retaliation and push up prices.David Hewson "Thames deal angers ITV network", The Times, 17 January 1985 In response to the Thames deal, the BBC plan to delay transmission of the episodes they already have so that they will clash with the episodes being shown by Thames. Ultimately, however, pressure from several ITV companies, especially Yorkshire Television to the Independent Broadcasting Authority forces Thames to sell the series back to the BBC at a loss. The controversy leads to the resignation of Thames managing director Bryan Cowgill who feels the board have not supported him, he leaves the company on 12 July.David Hewson "Thames TV head leaves in dispute over Dallas", The Times, 12 July 1985 18 January – Debut of The Practice, a twice-weekly medical drama intended to become Granada's second soap produced for the ITV network. But viewing figures are not as healthy as had been hoped and the series first run ends in May. It returns for a second series in 1986 before being axed. 20 January – The American sitcom The Cosby Show makes its UK debut on Channel 4. 23 January – A debate in the House of Lords is televised for the first time.BC Genome Project – BBC1 listings 23 January 1985
February 4 February – The American detective series Miami Vice, starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas, makes its UK debut on BBC1 with the feature-length episode Brother's Keeper. 12 February – Debut of Television, a 13-part Granada documentary series narrated by Ian Holm that explores the history of the medium. 16 February – The British television premiere of John Landis' 1981 horror comedy film An American Werewolf in London on BBC1, starring David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter, John Woodvine and Brian Glover, with special appearances by Frank Oz and Jim Henson from The Muppets. 18 February BBC1 undergoes a major relaunch under controller Michael Grade: An element of stripped and stranded programming is introduced. At 5:35pm, the legendary mechanical "mirror globe" ident, in use in varying forms since 1969, is seen for the last time on regular rotation on BBC1, although the regional versions are seen for the final time an hour later. Its replacement, the COW (Computer Originated World), makes its debut at 7pm. The first usage of the COW ident introduces the first edition of the relaunch of Terry Wogan's eponymous talk show which is now shown as a thrice-weekly live primetime programme. Computer-generated graphics replace magnetic weather maps on all BBC forecasts. 19 February – Debut of the long-running soap opera EastEnders on BBC1, set in the East End of London.
March 17 March – BBC2 begins airing a two-part series of The Executioner's Song, a film about the life of killer Gary Gilmore who demanded the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he committed in Utah. The second part of the film is shown on 24 March. 19 March – BBC1 begins showing The Day the Universe Changed, a ten-part series in which science historian James Burke looks at how advances in science and technology have shaped western society over the last five centuries. 29 March – Play School is shown in the afternoon for the final time on BBC1. 30 March – Doctor Who goes on an unexpected hiatus following the broadcast of part 2 of Revelation of the Daleks due to a dispute between the show's staff and BBC controller Michael Grade, a notorious detractor of the show, the long-running science fiction series will resume airing the following year. 31 March – BBC2 begins airing a season of films directed by Francis Ford Coppola, beginning with the network television premiere of the 1979 Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now, a film inspired by the Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella Heart of Darkness and starring Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando.
April 1 April Bertha, a new stop-motion animated series from Woodland Animations, the team behind Postman Pat, makes its debut on BBC1. The final episode of the long-running sitcom Are You Being Served? airs on BBC1. 4 April – Max Headroom makes its UK debut on Channel 4, with the sci-fi television movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. 6 April – The network television premiere of the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy western film Blazing Saddles on BBC1. 8 April – BBC1 shows the 1981 action comedy film The Cannonball Run, starring Burt reynolds and Roger Moore. 10 April – The network television premiere of the 1981 horror movie sequel Omen III: The Final Conflict on ITV. 13 April – Michael Praed appears for the final time as Robin Hood in the ITV series Robin of Sherwood, after being dramatically killed off in the second season's finale. 19 April – The final episode of the game show Odd One Out airs on BBC1. 28 April – The World Snooker Championship Final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis draws BBC2's highest ever rating of 18.5 million viewers. The final goes on past midnight and this broadcast remains a record for a post-midnight audience in the UK.
May 5 May – As part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of VE Day, ITV airs A Royal Celebration: 40 Years of Peace, featuring the music of British artists such as Lonnie Donegan, Paul Jones, Brian Poole, Joe Brown, Wayne Fontana, Marty Wilde and Cliff Richard. 7 May – The American action series Street Hawk makes its UK debut on ITV, while the BBC's Crystal Tipps and Alistair jumped ship to Children's ITV that afternoon. 8 May – The 40th anniversary of VE Day is marked by a service of remembrance at Westminster Abbey attended by politicians and members of the royal family, broadcast on television. 11 May – A fire breaks out at the Valley Parade stadium in Bradford during a football match between Bradford City and Lincoln City. The match is being recorded by Yorkshire Television for transmission on their Sunday afternoon regional football show The Big Match for the following day. Coverage of the fire is transmitted minutes after the event on the live ITV Saturday afternoon sports programme World of Sport. BBC's Grandstand also transmits live coverage of the fire. 17 May – Screensport covers the Football League Trophy Southern Area Final between Brentford and Newport County, the first time a match in an English senior competition has been broadcast exclusively on a satellite channel. The Northern equivalent and the Wembley final will also be shown. 19 May – The long-running American crime detective series Murder, She Wrote makes its UK debut on ITV, starring London-born Angela Lansbury. 29 May – The Heysel Stadium Disaster is televised live by BBC1 at the European Cup final in Brussels, Belgium, between Liverpool and Juventus: 39 Juventus fans are killed when a wall collapses during a riot at the Heysel Stadium. 31 May The British television premiere of Richard O'Brien's cult 1975 musical movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Channel 4, starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Meat Loaf and Charles Gray. Max Bygraves presents his last episode of Family Fortunes on ITV. It will then be put on hiatus until 1987. May – TSW unveils a computerised version of its ident.
June 3 June – ITV London and Southern regions begin showing "V": The Series, the follow-up series to the cult US sci-fi alien visitors drama. Other ITV regions air the show shortly afterwards, with ITV Midlands on 26 August; however, STV do not show it until 10 March 1986 following a repeat of the original miniseries. 5 June – The crime drama Bulman, a spin-off from Strangers makes its debut on ITV. 12 June – David Dundas who composed the Channel 4 theme, wins a legal battle to retain all rights to the music and £1000 a week in royalties. 21 June – Channel 4 airs Europe in Concert, a three-and-a-half-hour sequence of classical performances presented by Peter Sissons. 28 June – The end of the 1984/85 school year sees the closure of the Daytime on Two information service and when it returns in September the gaps are filled by interval captions and, for breaks of more than 10 minutes, the usual Ceefax miscellany.
July 4 July Debut of Tandoori Nights, a sitcom about rival Indian restaurants in London's Brick Lane starring Saeed Jaffrey which is Channel 4's first Asian comedy. June Brown makes her EastEnders debut as Dot Cotton, appearing on-screen until 1993 before returning in 1997 and remaining in the soap until 2020. 6 July – The US sitcom Family Ties, starring Michael J Fox makes its UK debut on Channel 4. 7 July – Debut of The Rock 'n' Roll Years on BBC1, a series that looks at the music and events of a particular year, starting with 1956. 13 July – The Live Aid concerts are held at Wembley Stadium in London and the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and are televised on the BBC. The Wembley concert is shown in its entirety on BBC2 from midday, with BBC1 showing the Philadelphia concert later this evening. Over £50 million is raised for famine relief in Ethiopia.