Thoughts on rewatching BBC 1988 TV version of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"

[vivdunstan]

We've started watching the new remastered Blu-ray version of the BBC 1988-1990 Narnia TV stories. Working slowly through the three televised serials (Lion, Caspian & Dawn Treader, and Silver Chair), before watching the new extended combined making of documentary on the final disc.

First "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe". Which I watched in 1988, and later on video with Martin who'd never seen it. He's never seen the other Narnia TV stories at all.

Some quick thoughts, more about the production side of things than the story itself (mostly):

• Relatively little happens in quite a few of the earlier episodes, at least compared to 1984’s “The Box of Delights”, which admittedly I adore.
• I wondered where I recognised the Professor from. Seymour in Last of the Summer Wine! Which my family was glued to on Sunday nights back then.
• Barbara Kellerman’s White Witch stretches things too much towards overacting.
• Aslan’s camp looks to older me now more like a 60s hippies commune.
• Ronald Pickup - yay!
• Aslan moves his body well but his mouth movements are very stiff.
• I do like the special effects of the creatures and phantasms that the Witch conjured. But many of the other special effects are less successful for me, and often clunky. Again not overall as good for me as in the earlier Box of Delights.
• The direction could be better in a lot of places, to smooth how the child actors are handled. It just often feels awkward.
• And it is so unsubtly Christian. In the whole Narnia book series that is most true of this book and, above all, the final one. But I’m finding it harder to watch as an adult.

Despite all those thoughts I'm enjoying this rewatch, though am less appreciative of it now as an adult than I was as a child back in 1988. And I definitely don't think it's anywhere near as successful, or as good to rewatch years later, as my admittedly beloved Box of Delights.

Martin stunned me tonight by saying that he doesn't think he'd ever read any of the original Narnia books, even as a child, growing up in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.

He also wouldn't have noticed the Christian/religious elements in this Narnia story, without me hinting. Despite growing up in a more religious and consistently church going household than me. Though we're not sure how much of that side of things sunk in.

Comments

[watervole]

I only noticed the Christian stuff as an adult when I was more aware of these things.

I read those books so many time and loved them.