We extend the alternating minimization algorithm recently proposed in [38, 39] to the case of recovering blurry multichannel (color) images corrupted by impulsive rather than Gaussian noise. The algorithm minimizes the sum of a multichannel extension of total variation (TV), either isotropic or anisotropic, and a data fidelity term measured in the L1-norm. We derive the algorithm by applying the well-known quadratic penalty function technique and prove attractive convergence properties including finite convergence for some variables and global q-linear convergence. Under periodic boundary conditions, the main computational requirements of the algorithm are fast Fourier transforms and a low-complexity Gaussian elimination procedure. Numerical results on images with different blurs and impulsive noise are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithm. In addition, it is numerically compared to an algorithm recently proposed in [20] that uses a linear program and an interior point method for recovering grayscale images.