Just William

From the ages of about eight to eleven, I was obsessed with Richmal Crompton’s Just William books – and I mean obsessed; I could practically recite them, and every birthday book token was spent in the local bookshop on another William book. In retrospect, this was probably both good and bad. The books are so well-written, and I remember having to look words up in the dictionary, which no doubt helped my vocabulary no end. On the other hand, it did lead me into some emulatory mischief which probably made my parents wonder why they ever taught me to read at all. I was also a member of the Outlaws club (which, as I recall, meant sending off a postal order for 45 pence and getting a badge in return, which I refused to take off).

Consequently, I was really quite excited to hear that the BBC were doing a new televised version, with Daniel Roche from Outnumbered as William Brown, and even more pleased when I read that Roche had read the books and was very pleased to be playing William. But I was also somewhat trepidatious, as we’ve all seen childhood favourites massacred by newer versions. This one, however, didn’t disappoint. The writer Simon Nye (Men Behaving Badly) did a good job, as did Roche; the four episodes seemed absolutely faithful to the spirit of the original. I did find it slightly odd that they have been updated to the 1950s, but I suppose the rather grand 1920s house, with staff whom William loved to bait, would have seemed very remote to children now. And the updating was done carefully – Robert, William’s brother, no longer apes Rudolph Valentino, but Marlon Brando; his sister Ethel is glamorous and somewhat less langorous as a Fifties bombshell rather than Clara Bow. Violet Elizabeth Bott is a bit less annoying in the BBC version than in the book, and consequently slightly less funny, but still she does look the part perfectly.

And Daniel Roche as William is a star – he’s got it spot-on. The books talk a lot about the expressiveness of William’s face, and Roche has got that down to a tee. He also has the general crossness and air of indignation with the world which William seems to constantly feel. The well-meaning bad behaviour of William is both hilarious and kind of touching; William lives by his own code of chivalry and fairness, and sees no obstacle as insurmountable. I really hope that these four episodes will have whetted the appetites of a few children – not just boys – to read the books.

Also, I’ve just discovered there is still a Just William Society – see here!

NB Has anyone out there read the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge, or any of BB’s books? – other favourites of mine, which I have recently revisited and still really enjoy!

Preview of “Desperate Romantics”

The BFI screened a preview of the BBC drama Desperate Romantics earlier this week, with a discussion afterwards with the cast and writers. Based on the book of the same name by Franny Moyle, the series focuses on the dramatic lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The series, following on from the recent BBC4 programmes on the art of the PRB, is clearly designed to appeal to those who know nothing about the PRB as well as those who are already aficionados. It is encouraging, though, that the series aims to show how novel the PRB’s approach was (suggesting that they are “comparable to the punks a hundred years later”).

I wasn’t expecting to be particularly enthused by it, but actually, I rather enjoyed it. It’s loud and rollicking, with a script by Peter Bowker (Occupation, Blackpool) that is sometimes a little too concerned with quick-fire humour, but it certainly entertained me. There is evidently a desire behind the series to show the PRB as real people, not stuffy long-dead painters, and it certainly achieves that end. Sometimes it goes rather over the top, and of course salacious detail is prioritised, but in this first episode at least, the characters of Holman Hunt, Rossetti and Millais are appealing if a little exaggerated.

In the discussion after the screening, the writers, Peter Bowker and Franny Moyle, made it clear that it is the contemporary relevance and resonance of the story behind the PRB which they wanted to get across to the viewer; certainly they have presented it with a strong contemporary appeal, all sex, drugs and rock’n'roll, but personally I feel too much is made of trying to link the past with the present. Nonetheless, Moyle discussed the human elements of ambition and love which feature in the series, along with the group dynamic, which she feels gives it an appealing mythic quality. She wanted to “dust down” the academic perspective of the PRB and bring the intense emotions of the artists back to life. Ben Evans, the producer, added that it was the aspects of human nature – and the sex – which interested the BBC in it! The series has a dangerous appeal, he suggested, which is stronger than the average period drama.

Bowker explained that he wanted to get across the “laddishness” that Moyle had implied in her book, and commented that when writing Millais he had been thinking of David Blunkett – that is, a clean-living character who turns out to be having an unexpected affair! Rafe Spall explained that to a certain extent playing the members of the PRB presented the actors with a blank canvas, since we don’t know what their voices or mannerisms were like, and so the actors have worked hard at their interpretations. In Holman Hunt, Spall aimed to create a mixture of control and precision with sex and violence, which provided an interesting challenge. Clearly Spall has done some considerable research on Hunt, and has grown to love his character. Amy Manson suggested that in portraying Elizabeth Siddal she had attempted to show the desire to achieve more than expected from life, as the milliner became a model. Certainly Manson looked the part, almost uncannily, and was sharp-tongued and blunt, perhaps intending to recreate Siddal as a very modern heroine, rather than the waif-victim she is sometimes portrayed as. Oh, and it was suggested that Barbara Windsor is a modern version of Annie Miller!

The issue of historical accuracy is bound to be one of the biggest questions that any programme like this raises, and Bowker admits that the passage of time permits more liberties with history than biopics of more recent subjects do. A number of direct quotations from Ruskin and others were used in this episode, although I was surprised that Dickens’ comments on Christ in the House of his Parents, which were published in Household Words, were here spoken at an exhibition, as was Ruskin’s reply which appeared in The Times. The biggest liberty taken, which concerns me more, is the invention of a narrator-character, Fred Walters; apparently this was because all the possible narrators – WM Rossetti, Fred Stephens, Walter Deverell - had such stories of their own that Bowker felt it would be best to minimise the part of the narrator by making him up. I’m not sure this was necessary, personally.

The programme also suggests that the PRB first exhibited their paintings together, in an exhibition that they put on themselves. This is patently untrue, though I can see how it works as a device, but of course many viewers won’t realise the liberties that have been taken with the truth. Still, if it leads people to a genuine interest in the PRB, perhaps it will be worth it. Best, I think, to try to suspend personal knowledge and concerns, and just enjoy it as a well-produced and entertaining show. It starts on BBC2 on July 21st at 9pm.

Anne Frank on the BBC

When I was thirteen, I read The Diary of Anne Frank at school, and as soon as I’d finished it, I started again. I can still practically quote sections from it, and moreover it started me in the habit of writing a diary. I was excited to hear that the BBC were producing a five-part series based on it, in the capable hands of Deborah Moggach, and last night’s first episode did not disappoint. No fiction could be better than this true story: the trials of adolescent life are mixed in with the much more serious trials of war, and of being Jewish in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Anne Frank’s enthusiasm for life, not even repressed by the banalities of life in the Secret Annexe, is very well-played by Ellie Kendrick, who even looks spookily like Anne. Her ups and downs, which Anne’s diary records as a dual nature – vivacious on the outside and serious and thoughtful on the inside – is portrayed perfectly. That this journey of self-discovery in hiding leads not to the brilliant career she dreams of, but to death in Belsen, is only one of the tragedies of the narrative.

Anne’s mother, Edith, played by Tamsin Greig, is one of the triumphs of this programme; Anne’s diary is often unsympathetic to her mother, as teenagers often are, but Moggach permits us to see her as a woman on the verge of a breakdown, angry at what was happening in the world and fearful for her family. That the tale of people in hiding, who could never go outside, has managed to capture the imagination of so many readers over the last fifty years is a tribute to the career Anne might have had; it is personality, as much as if not more than war, which makes it compelling, and this series seems to depict that brilliantly.  I hope this production will introduce more thirteen-year-olds to the book as well.

Dickens-Lite?

It’s a few weeks since the BBC’s Little Dorrit started, and I’ve been meaning to post something about it, but I haven’t because, like many other viewers, it seems, I don’t yet know quite what I make of it. The series seems to have provided newspaper critics with the opportunity to admit, en masse, that they haven’t actually read Little Dorrit, which is, after all, one of Dickens’ lesser-known works. Well, I haven’t read it either; and at the moment I’m rather wishing I had, because I’m both drawn into it, and completely confused by what’s going on. For example, in episode 5 I was sure the inexplicable Frenchman had killed Flintwinch, who appeared, as lugubrious as ever, in episode 6. I must have missed something there.

But on the whole, I think the BBC does Dickens well. I enjoyed Bleak House in 2006 (though in that instance I know the novel well), and as a Dickens amateur, it seems to me that his characterisation, the foibles and oddities which make his characters memorable and unusual, yet strangely familiar, translates well to television. Tom Courtenay, as an inmate of a debtors’ prison who maintains a semblance of pride, has been justly acclaimed for his performance – the right mixture of arrogance and touching sentiment. Matthew Macfadyen as Arthur Clennam has a suitable gravitas whilst no doubt drawing in the female viewers, and young actress Claire Foy is convincing, maidenly and dignified as Amy Dorrit. The rest of the characters are grotesques. Such is the world of Dickens. Mr Pancks, Flora Finching, Maggy, Rigaud, even Mrs Clennam – their exaggerated characteristics – either physical, mental or both – make them ideal characters for TV, developed from Dickens’ excellent sense of the theatrical.

I do wonder if the BBC has made enough of the nature of imprisonment, literal and metaphorical, which seems to be central to the novel, but of course the weight of debt and its related concerns, such as responsibility, respectability and the old-fashioned notion of duty, which afflict the Dorrits is at least highly topical. This is, of course, “Dickens-lite” – but what else could it be? Having said that, for an Andrew Davies production, it’s refreshingly light on sex. It’s entertaining, it’s a good story, and most importantly I hope it will direct people towards the real thing. Reliable and informative discussion of the novel can be found on the Victorian Web, here.

Tess of the BBC

While I am happy to applaud the BBC for its high-minded intentions in its production of Tess (Sundays, BBC One), I am instinctively dubious about any production that describes itself as “lavish”, a word always over-used in conjunction with costume dramas. Since I haven’t read the book for a while now, I decided to revisit it along with the series, which perhaps isn’t the best idea as it has caused some ranting at the television (and thus disturbing my more down-to-earth husband’s viewing). Really, as these things go, it’s not bad. Gemma Arterton (below) actually does look a bit like Hardy’s description, and even the bucolic excesses of maidens in white dancing in a field largely fits with the novel. Actually, the BBC’s Tess is quite close to the plot of the book, so far; what it hasn’t achieved, as the Times reviewer points out, is the “muckiness” – Hardy’s gory scene when the Durbeyfield horse is killed, for example. And what was with the fog during the rape scene? It did cover up things the BBC might prefer not to portray, but I was expecting aliens to emerge from the X-Files mist at any moment.
My problem with it, I think, is neatly summed up in an interesting review of Tess in the Times, “Fun, but is it Hardy?” The review mentions what critic David Thomson calls “the indecency of the visual”, and that seems a brilliant way of putting it; books make good films/TV series, but what they make is films/TV series; the book gets lost no matter how closely they stick to the plot. What they can’t do is genuinely recreate the spirit of the book, and somehow the visualisation loses the nuances and makes it “indecent” – not necessarily in a sexual sense, though sometimes that too, but in a slightly mis-translated way. It’s the old chestnut about “the book is better than the film” – well, nearly always yes, but the film isn’t the book, and serves a different purpose (Sunday evening viewing for the middle-classes, usually). Sadly, some of us (ie those who work with Victorian literature – or me, at least) can’t just be entertained, and just watch crossly as the clunky references to class distinction, gender differences and a bucolic past are swept across the screen for the uncritical viewer. I wish I could just relax and enjoy it.