A traveller in time

Dir Dorothea Brooking, UK 1978

Simply Media, £19.99 (DVD)

Alison Uttley’s novel A Traveller in Time was published in 1939, and has been a favourite of young fantasy readers ever since. The BBC dramatised it in 1978, but it’s not been available on DVD until now.

Recovering from pneumonia, teenager Penelope Taberner (Sophie Thompson) goes to stay with her Aunt Tissie (Elizabeth Bradley – Maud Grimes in Coronation Street) and Uncle Barnabas (veteran character actor Gerald James) on their farm in Derbyshire, and finds herself slipping back in time to the same house in the 16th century. Her ancestor Cicely Taberner (also played by Bradley) is the cook/housekeeper for the Babington family, who are hatching a plot to release Mary Queen of Scots, imprisoned in a nearby manor house. Penelope fits into her (on-off) new life as a servant very quickly, and becomes friends with Francis, younger brother of Anthony Babbington, later executed for plotting against Queen Elizabeth. But she makes an enemy in a jealous visiting cousin who accuses her of being a spy, because she carelessly mentions that she knows that Mary Queen of Scots will die.

Although the basic story is the same as the original novel, the BBC version has some differences, all of which work well. Penelope comes to the farmhouse on her own rather than with her siblings (who are irrelevant to the story anyway), and the present day of the story is sensibly brought up to the present day of the 1970s: Uncle Barnabas drives a Land Rover rather than a horse and cart. This was the first TV role, and very assured at the age of 15, for Sophie Thompson (sister of Emma and daughter of Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law), who would go on to play in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gosford Park, a Harry Potter film and Eastenders. It always adds to TV reissues when they have interviews with the actors; unfortunately this has no extras at all.