TV review: The Borrowers; The Royal Bodyguard
This whimsical fantasy piece has very tiny to do with the book it is based on
Once you realise that BBC1′s latest adaptation of The Borrowers is going to have very tiny to do with the classic 1952 tale by Mary Norton on which it is based, you can start to enjoy the thing a lot more.
This time around, Homily, Pod and Arrietty Clock live under Victoria Wood’s floorboards in the traditionally Heath Robinson-esque miniature world of security gates made of cheese graters and paperclips, a single strawberry cream serving as pudding two nights in a row and cotton reels for tables. Wood plays the grumpy, loving grandmother of James, a lonely tiny lad whom Arrietty meets when she sneaks out into the world of Human Beans. Thus begins a plot that involves the escape of the Clocks to a city of Borrowers in a defunct tube station, pursuit by the villainous anthropology Professor Mildeye (who was a villainous Gypsy who turned up in the second book, but you cannot do that sort of thing these days, and especially not when he is being played by Stephen Fry) who is bent on making his name in the world by proving the existence of “Homo sapiens redactus”, entrapment (of Homily and Pod) in a laboratory beaker and rescue by Arrietty and Spiller, a character from later in the book series who has transmuted from reticent repository of country lore to ebullient wide boy (played by ebullient wide boy specialist Robert Sheehan, giving it his customary joyous and joy-inducing all), in James’s remote-controlled plane.
And one final note: Pod has “a round, currant-bunny sort of face”, not Christopher Eccleston’s bony beauty: cosy 50s baker, not Gotterdammerung in physiognomical form. I know I stated viewers should let go of the idea that it had much to do with the book, but sometimes too much is asked of us. I have to draw the line somewhere.
It was a part that required much gun-in-hand rolling under beds, leaping on to horses and hiding in hostess trollies and not much in the way of droll delivery of verbal gags. Writing the part for – or giving it to – Jason was to play to all of his weaknesses and none of his strengths. Superbly comically deft and nimble, no one could claim – even before he turned 71 – that he was an athletic actor. It’s all in the timing and fleeting flickers across his vividly labile face. Don’t give him broad slapstick – unless it’s That Fall, 30 years ago, through That Bar – it’s too agonising a waste.
Beyond that, the ideal way to describe The Royal Bodyguard is that for those that like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. People saying “Please tell me it’s not Hubble, sir” and it turning out to be Hubble. Hubble trying to eat a whole lobster with a knife and fork. A man described by his superiors as “a walking disaster” accidentally saving the Queen from an assassination attempt to their furious disbelief (you nearly expected an instruction to “Press the red button if you want comedy steam graphics coming out of their ears!”) and so, terribly on. The ideal the spirit of Christmas can lead me to state about it is no more.
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Submited at Monday, December 26th, 2011 at 11:00 pm on Entertainment by jessica
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