An extraordinary profile of a curmudgeon with a heart
Life is beautiful, but it is also tough and generally ends with death. Raymond Briggs knows this better than most, passing this information on to audiences of all ages through his formidable bibliography. Why do so many of his books deal with death? “Can’t avoid it, I suppose,” said the 84-year-old Briggs, pottering around his kitchen, every bit the pantomime curmudgeon with a “Go Away, I’m Writing” mug. But this grumpiness, reckoned his long-time editor Julia Mcrae, “concealed a great heart”. Evidence of this duly poured out in Raymond Briggs: Snowmen, Bogeymen & Milkmen (BBC Two) – he even keeps his fan mail.
Louise Lockwood’s film documented five decades and 26 picture books of frequent brilliance, as time after time Briggs found the ordinary in the other-worldly (Father Christmas, Fungus the Bogeyman), the remarkable in the everyday (Ethel & Ernest, When the Wind Blows), and sometimes both at once (The Snowman). Briggs is a masterful storyteller whose books are sentimental but never silly, passionate but never hectoring, nostalgic but never rose-tinted, both mundane and profound.
He is also, of course, an illustrator of rare talents and versatility. While The Snowman showcased his gift for purity and simplicity, Fungus was a quagmire of clutter and grotesquery; Father Christmas (the closest character to a Briggs alter ego) was comically, affectionately crotchety, When the Wind Blows boiled with anger and throbbed with empathy. They all had moments of breathtaking pictorial imagination, celebrated here in depth.
His output was irrevocably informed by his own experiences, many of them very trying indeed as anyone familiar with the heartbreakingly intimate Ethel & Ernest – “a perfect book,” reckoned cartoonist Steve Bell, and not a bad film either – will know. The tender, thoughtful tribute to his parents (his milkman father made regular cameos in his picture books) also told of his first wife Jean’s schizophrenia. She died of leukaemia two years after his mother and father. “I thought of doing myself in a few times, but one battled on courageously,” said Briggs in an archival excerpt.
It could have been rather a glum hour, but Briggs was never less than engagingly lugubrious during a new, if unrevealing interview. If Brenda Blethyn’s voice-over was well-meant but irritating in its quirks, articulate contributors (Nick Park, Andy Serkis, Posy Simmonds), searching interviews from the Desert Island Discs archives and a few discreet new animations from Chris Riddell complemented an extraordinary life and career. Brimming with the love and melancholy of the season, this was a festive treat to savour.
How appropriate that BBC Four chose to see out 2018 with Dr Hannah Fry, who’s just pipped to the title of ubiquitous television face of the year by Romesh Ranganathan. Her intonation may be becoming worryingly arch and Clarksonian (“fortunes can be won… or lost”, “We can’t forget about the other 29 per cent of the Earth’s surface – you know, the stuff we walk on”, and so on), but Fry has the popular touch and the expertise to back it up. Broadcasters who can make maths both comprehensible and interesting for the average viewer are to be cherished.
Her final documentary of the year, A Day in the Life of Earth extrapolated a typical 24 hours not in the life of its inhabitants, but of the planet itself – its rocks, its glaciers and its oceans – not eternal and immovable but constantly pulsating, shrinking and growing.
Fry was the fulcrum, explaining, contextualising and linking the clips from around the world as assorted scientists and explorers “made geology fun”. A day, we discovered, encompasses the creation of 72 cubic metres of lava, the transportation by air of half a ton of mud across the Atlantic and 55 tonnes of space dust is added to the Earth courtesy of meteorites burning up in the planet’s atmosphere. And this was just for starters.
The visuals helped it all slip down like a glass of bourbon, but the message was stark. The underlying impression was one of delicate balance, where forestry growth is managed by naturally occurring wildfires and oceanic erosion is precisely offset by volcanic lava creating new land. It was a humbling reminder of, on the one hand, our insignificance, and, on the other, our disproportionately damaging impact on the planet. A sobering but significant note on which to welcome in the New Year.
Raymond Briggs: Snowmen, Bogeymen & Milkmen ★★★★
A Day in the Life of Earth ★★★★