A welcome return for the scarecrow with a real heart
Words to chill the blood: “a Worzel Gummidge reboot”. How (and why) would the BBC take a beloved children’s television series and give it a 21stcentury makeover? Would it feature a Cgi-enhanced scarecrow, children in hoodies and multiple references to the availability of wi-fi in rural areas? It turned out that Worzel Gummidge
(BBC One) had all those things – and it was wonderful.
Mackenzie Crook had already written one hymn to the English countryside, Detectorists; here was another, in which he also starred as the eponymous scarecrow. For many, the character is indelibly linked to Jon Pertwee. But Crook has gone back to Barbara Euphan Todd’s books and given us something tonally different to the ITV series that ran until 1981.
Instead of mimicking Pertwee’s goofy antics, Crook’s Worzel was a gentle, reflective soul in an adaptation that drew on nature and folklore. It took a while to warm to him, and his look was initially alarming: a face of prosthetic make-up that brought to mind A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger. It was also the only face he had: no interchangeable heads here. (Nor, for that matter, was there anything but the briefest of meetings with Aunt Sally.)
Worzel’s first encounter with Susan and John (India Brown and Thierry Wickens), the two children at the heart of the story, was prompted by John leaving his mobile phone in Ten Acre Field. The kids had arrived from their urban foster home ignorant about country life. “Is there a wi-fi code?” asked John. “A what-fi-what?” replied a baffled Mrs Braithwaite (Rosie Cavaliero), the farmer’s wife. But the show did exactly what it set out to do: to demonstrate that there’s more fun to be had in the great outdoors than with your eyes glued to a screen.
This was a rare thing: a family drama that every generation could enjoy together. A simple storyline about a bad harvest for the little ones; characters with whom older kids could identify; gags to entertain the adults. “We’ll survive,” Susan reassured John. “It’ll be like the olden days. Like the Nineties or something.” And the overt environmentalist message will have chimed with a younger generation.
You may grumble about the BBC remaking a classic, but watch some of the newer stuff on Nickelodeon or Netflix and you’ll wince. I only wish that the national broadcaster did this kind of thing more often, rather than confining it to Christmas specials.
Susan Hill’s Ghost Story (Channel 5) was initially called The Small Hand, and based on her 2010 novel of the same name. Perhaps the unfortunate association with Donald Trump, nicknamed “Tiny Hands”, prompted them to alter it. Regardless, the revised title wasn’t even close to being the clunkiest thing here.
In her best books, such as The Woman in Black, Hill effectively builds a creeping sense of dread. Here, my principal fear was that this adaptation would never end. The first time we encountered the ghost of Denisa (Neve Mcintosh) and her young son, it was mildly diverting; by what felt like the 70th time, it was supremely irritating.
Douglas Henshall, so good in the detective drama Shetland, was given nothing decent to work with in this unconvincing production. He played Adam, an antiquarian book dealer who stumbled across a seemingly abandoned house that inexplicably drew him in. Adam had a lot on his plate, in the form of a secret affair with Alice (a client’s wife) and a brother struggling with mental health issues. Maybe that explains why he seemed almost totally unperturbed by the fact that a woman who had been dead for 40 years was popping up for a chat, while the hand of an invisible ghostly child kept slipping into his.
The mark-up on second-hand books must be pretty good, because Adam had soon found enough money to buy the house. He suffered nightmares in which he was being held under water, a blood-soaked Denisa appeared in the bath and the creepy ghost boy began channelling Damien from The Omen
– yet still Adam’s main preoccupation was whether Alice would leave her husband. The final scenes explained how all this led back to a shocking, forgotten event in our protagonist’s childhood. “Repressed emotional trauma!” said a monk included among the characters for no obvious reason.
Television is capable of delivering genuine chills – see last year’s Inside No 9 “live” special. I watched this one alone with the lights off, willing myself to be frightened. No such luck: I found myself idly admiring Adam’s radiators and wondering about his heating bills.
Worzel Gummidge ★★★★ Susan Hill’s Ghost Story ★★