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Roald Dahl’s scary-tale Christmas
Snow White’s a gambler, beanstalk Jack’s in love with Cinderella – and Little Red Riding Hood gets her revenge. Yes, it’s Roald Dahl at his deliciously twisted best in a new TV animation
You can only wonder how Roald Dahl would have perceived the mollycoddled children of today; what would this RAF fighter pilot, a Second World War hero, have thought of schools banning pupils from playing conkers in the playground because it’s dangerous or parents admonishing their little ones for climbing trees?
In his stories children have proper adventures. They rarely listen to their parents and people end up dying, often hilariously. His tales are dark, and yet – perhaps because of all that – Dahl remains one of the world’s best-selling children’s authors of all time, 26 years after his death.
On Boxing Day we’ll get to see Dahl’s bizarre imagination in all its glory in one of the jewels in the BBC’s Christmas crown. Since 2009 the production company Magic Light Pictures has provided festive family viewing with its adaptations of Julia Donaldson’s works The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo’s Child, Room On The Broom (which won a BAFTA Children’s Award) and last year’s Stick Man. Now, for 2016, the centenary of Dahl’s birth, the company has turned its attention to his Revolting Rhymes.
The stories in the book, which was first published in 1982, are Dahl’s twisted takes on six of the best-loved and most enduring fairy tales (although only five feature in the new show – Goldilocks didn’t make the cut). In Dahl’s version of these stories, Red Riding Hood isn’t saved by the huntsman – she pulls a pistol from her knickers and shoots the wolf before skinning him and turning him into a coat. Snow White steals the magic mirror from her stepmother and uses it to go out gambling. Jack realises all he needs to do to beat the giant at the top of his beanstalk is have a bath so he no longer smells, while Cinder el la’s Prince Charming is a bloodthirsty brute she ends up running away from… and two of the three little pigs get eaten!
‘ This project is scary in exactly the right kind of way,’ says Luke Kelly, the author’s grandson and the managing director of his literary estate. ‘I think Dahl would have loved it. It’s very, very true to his work and it doesn’t, in any way, patronise children. He believed that fairy tales are a way for children to confront their fears. His work isn’t preachy but good wins in the end. It combines being scary with being cautionary and it’s allowed to do that because it’s funny.’
He says that while there’s always been death in Dahl’s work, it’s never tragic. ‘He wrote about how you can never have someone die in your story; they must disappear into a sausage machine,’ laughs Luke, the son of Dahl’s daughter Tessa and half-brother to model Sophie Dahl. ‘People don’t just get killed; they’re eaten in one gulp. Heads don’t just roll, they bounce. That’s the perfect embodiment of Dahl – bouncing heads. It sums him up.’
The new adaptation weaves the five fairy tales into one fantastic mega-tale, which runs over two parts. The first episode merges The Three Little Pigs, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, while the second features Cinderella and Jack And The Beanstalk, the two parts brought together by the Big Bad Wolf as narrator.
The action begins when Miss Hunt, a babysitter, is having a cup of tea in a café. She’s joined by the Big Bad Wolf and he tells her his life story, which takes in his encounters with best friends Red Riding Hood and Snow White, and reveals why his two nephews ate Red Riding Hood’s grandma and two of the Three Little Pigs.
Picking up where episode one left off, the second part sees the wolf holding court again, this time telling about a boy called Jack who’s secretly in love with his neighbour Cinderella. She has her head turned by a prince at a ball
while Jack’s been distracted by the beanstalk that’s appeared at the bottom of his garden. Will Jack and Cindy find true love?
As a child himself, Dahl was influenced by far darker stories than most children would hear today. ‘Revolting Rhymes was a favourite of his because it related so fondly to the folk tales told to him by his Norwegian parents when he was a child,’ says Luke. ‘They’re fantastical, grotesque tales of wicked trolls and nasty creatures in a stylised natural environment. He also read stories by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.’
The project has been nearly five years in the making. It took just over two years alone to get the Dahl estate to agree, and another two and a half years to make with teams in London (where the production office is), Berlin (where the directors are) and South Africa (where half the animation team are based). ‘The Dahl estate is rightly cautious because it wants to protect Roald Dahl’s legacy,’ says Magic Light co-founder Michael Rose. ‘But it was a slow process. I remember my partner, Martin Pope, in 2011 saying, “Revolting Rhymes would be great for Christmas” and here we finally are.’
The company had already written scripts by the time they first approached the Dahl estate and even started work on the animation, which was inspired by the original Quentin Blake illustrations for the book. ‘I still remember when they came in to see us and showed us this animation test,’ says Luke. ‘We watched it five times through and didn’t betray to them how happy we were because we were still in a negotiating period. Not only had they understood what is core to Dahl, but they’d also turned Quentin’s vivid, extreme characters into 3D.
‘ I was with them when they showed it to Quentin for the first time. He gave it a really positive response. To our horror, when we were later doing something with a far higher budget he said, “Why can’t it be more like that Magic Light thing you did?”’
After getting approval from the estate, the next thing to do was find the show’s voice stars, and once again the Magic Light team has signed up the cream of British talent. Most of the cast have been given more than one role – BAFTA-winning actor Dominic West, who was chosen for the key part of the Wolf, also voices the Magic Fairy – Cinderella’s fairy godmother – and the Giant. ‘Voicing the Wolf in these wonderful films was a huge amount of fun,’ says the father of four. ‘Roald Dahl’s incredible poems have been brought to life by the production team and I look forward to enjoying them with the family this Christmas.’
David Walliams, a huge Dahl fan and himself the author of several popular children’s books, first heard about the project when he worked with the team on Room On The Broom (he was the Frog), and said he’d love to be involved. His roles include an ugly sister and one of the pigs. ‘I loved working on these films,’ he says. ‘I’m a massive fan of Dahl’s work and to be able to voice his characters was a real treat.’
Another Magic Light alumnus – he voiced the Cat in Room On The Broom and the Park Keeper in Stick Man – is Rob Brydon. ‘Playing an ugly sister alongside David was too good an opportunity to miss,’ he laughs. ‘We settled into the roles with worrying ease and Roald Dahl’s wicked retelling of these fairy tales will be a TV treat this Christmas.’
Other stars include Tamsin Greig, who voices Miss Hunt the babysitter, and Doctor Foster actor Bertie Carvel, who also has several roles. Game Of Thrones actress Rose Leslie is Little Red Riding Hood and Humans star Gemma Chan is Snow White. ‘She’s not just a pretty face,’ says Gemma of her character. ‘She’s brave, smart and finally finds a proper use for that magic mirror.’
Making the cartoons only started in earnest once the voice-overs had been recorded. The scripts cleverly interlace the stories by having the Wolf – who knows all the characters – tell stories from his past.
It was decided early on to get rid of the most controversial aspect of the book. There was outrage a couple of years ago when it was rereleased – and it was even banned from some stores in Australia – because Cinderella’s prince called her a ‘dirty slut’. That was then changed to ‘dirty mutt’ in later editions and the line has been taken out of the Christmas films.
Luke was four when his grandfather died in 1990, but remembers him as ‘a tall looming figure’ who liked to ‘tell a tall tale’. He says he has no doubt Roald, who has sold 250 million books, would have been thrilled to appear on the BBC on Boxing Day. ‘I think he’d have loved the fact that all these years later he’s reaching such a wide audience,’ he says. ‘He once wrote that it gave him a thrill that his hand was reaching thousands of miles around the world into children’s bedrooms and classrooms. The show is stunning, and I think this is his hand reaching into millions of families’ homes at Christmas. He’d have been very proud of that.’
‘Snow White’s not just a pretty face, she’s smart’
Revolting Rhymes starts on BBC1 on Boxing Day at 6.30pm and continues on Tuesday 27 December at 6.30pm.