THAT'S TV MAGIC

With stunning special effects and a whole coven of top-notch stars, CBBC’s The Worst Witch will cast a spell on young and old alike

HBella Ramsey as Mildred Hubble arry Potter creator JK Rowling was but a babe in arms when Jill Mur phy fi r st conceived her idea of a school of witchcraft. Jill was still at school herself, and came up with the idea when her mother said she and her two best friends looked like a trio of witches with their crazy hair, dark uniform and big boots.

Once she started seeing potions in her chemistry lessons and chanting in her singing classes, it wasn’t hard for this imaginative 15-year- old to come up with stories about witches. She was a workingclass child who’d got into a middle-class convent school, so it wasn’t difficult for her to imagine a girl feeling out of place, either.

And so her heroine Mildred

Hubble was born. She’s not everyone’s idea of a witch, though. She’s from a nonwitching family, she’s afraid of the dark and prone to accidents. Yet with her friends she manages to uncover several attempts by malevolent witches to take over her school, Miss Cackle’s Academy For Witches, while also batting off the nasty deputy head teacher Miss Hardbroom and school bully Ethel Hallow.

Jill was 18 when she finished writing the book, and after being rejected by several publishers who thought it would frighten children too much, it was finally released in 1974. The Worst Witch books – there are now seven in the series – became an instant hit. ‘The story is basically the female Harry Potter,’ says Bella Ramsey, the Game Of Thrones actress who beat 400 other actresses to play Mildred in an ambitious new CBBC 12- episode adaptation. ‘But that doesn’t mean boys won’t like it. We don’t mention Harry Potter here. It’s an unspoken rule.’

We meet at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire, where most of the exteriors for the series have been filmed. Bella, 12, is in almost every scene, but she wears the pressure lightly. ‘It can b e pr et t y manic but I enjoy it,’ she says. ‘I don’t even mind the repetition of doing a scene lots of times. I’m a perfectionist and I like to do each scene slightly differently every time.’

The books were first adapted for a Miss Hardbroom and Miss Cackle 1998 series in which Star Wars actress Felicity Jones played Ethel, but this series, which has been created with Jill Murphy’s help, delves further into the Worst Witch world. The first hour-long episode looks at how Mildred ends up at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches after a young witch accidentally lands on her balcony. While taking the exams to get into the school she discovers a secret plot which would see the school being taken over by Miss Cackle’s evil twin – but can a novice witch really save the day? Over the series Mildred struggles to get to grips with witching life, has to learn how to ride a broom side- saddle and cast spells without injuring herself while staying out of the way of the bullies who think she has no place there because she’s not from a witch family. The story has also been updated to the 21st century – Mildred has a mobile phone and lives in a highrise flat with her hard- work ing single mother.

The show has been co-produced by Netf lix and the German company ZDF, while the special effects have been created by the Doctor Who team. The series has also attracted acting talent including Wendy Craig, Amanda Holden and Raquel Cassidy, who played maid Baxter in Downton Abbey. But Bella takes it all in her stride. ‘I don’t get starstruck,’ she says. ‘They’re just normal people. I think the only people I might get nervous around are Jedward [the Irish twin brothers who were laughing stocks on The X Factor but have reinvented themselves on children’s TV]; they’re the best.’

Wendy Craig, 82, best known for the sitcom Butterflies, plays the delightfully dotty and ancient head of chanting Miss Bat. ‘She’s a sweet old thing,’ says Wendy. ‘She’s been around for a couple of hundred years. She’s not quite with it. The girls are fond of her but think she’s a bit of an old fool.’

In contrast Wendy’s still whipsmart. She says working keeps her young and she took on The Worst Witch for her grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren. ‘ They all thought it was cool,’ she says. ‘I thought, “Why not? They won’t know what I’ve done in the past.” Before I go to the great actors’ theatre in the sky I’d like them to see me in something they can appreciate.’

Wendy’s worked with scores of young actors over the years and says being with a bunch of noisy girls on the set was fabulous. ‘I really like working with children,’ she grins. ‘I find them very disciplined, more so than the grown-ups! And Bella is a natural. She knows instinctively what’s expected of her. And she’s not particularly aware of it herself. She’s a very modest, quiet girl; she’s delightful.’

Bella has another fan in Downton actress Raquel, 48. In The Worst Witch she plays the stern deputy headmistress Miss Hardbroom, a foil to kind but gullible head teacher Miss Cackle (Clare Higgins). ‘This is not the most subtle performance I’ve ever done,’ she laughs of her over-the-top character. ‘But the lovely thing is that Bella’s an absolute treat to work with.’

As Miss Hardbroom everything is long and black about her, from her fingernails to the bun on the top of her head. ‘I’m actually the same size as Clare, but I’m wearing high heels and a tight black dress, while Clare’s in flats with a fat suit on,’ she laughs. ‘At first I wasn’t so sure about doing it as I’ve never been in a children’s show but with the broomsticks and magic, pointy hats and pure energy it’s been one of my favourite jobs ever.’

Over 200 costumes were made for the series along with 100 witches’ hats. Each cape needed 6m of black fabric and was lined with a cobweb design. A special ‘witch’ language was created, called Witchenese, while producers bred their own snails for the school’s biology classroom. For a scene in which Mildred’s hair grows uncontrollably, 820 wigs were joined together to create almost a kilometre of hair.

‘The world that’s been created is extraordinary,’ says Raquel. ‘If you pick up a copy of The Witching Times, every page has different stories about the witching world. The books of spells are amazing. At one point I had to walk into a room and the script said I was holding a book in front of me. I said to the producers, “I’m not sure she would be holding it” and the next thing I knew they had worked out a way to make it look like the book was floating in front of me. It all does feel a bit magical here.’

‘They even bred snails for the biology classroom’