Next Sunday (November 22nd) we'll sit down and watch the first episode of The Box of Delights.
It's the first Christmassy thing we do. Every year, before the decorations go up and before any presents are wrapped, we start watching The Box of Delights. There are a lot of traditional things we won't be able to do this year, but we'll still be doing this one.
We
watch one episode every Sunday night in the last few weeks before
Christmas (usually aiming to watch the final episode on Christmas Eve).
My wife and I started this tradition just after we moved to South
Shields in 2004. Totally by chance I found the DVD in our local branch
of WHSmith.
For anybody who doesn't know, The Box of Delights is a Children's BBC drama - made in 1984 and based upon a book by John Masefield.
I'd alwaysthought it was one of those programmes that nobody remembered. When people talked about their memories of children's TV they usually mentioned Rainbow, Grange Hill or Tiswas - The Box of Delights didn't get much attention. Fortunately, the DVD release seemed to rectify that. In recent years facebook groups have started popping up - places for fans to share memories and plan visits to the original filming locations.
I'm
old enough to remember the very first broadcast of the series - it was
just after I started at Woodham Comprehensive School in Newton Aycliffe.
It was the one bright spot in my scary first term at a scary big
school. Those dark Wednesday evenings in November and December became
something to look forward to. Away from the drudgery of home-work,
Technical Drawing, dead-arms and cross country runs, The Box of Delights was a little sliver of Christmas magic.
I wasn't usually a big fan of BBC Children's Dramas. They always seemed to be about posh kids being rude to their servants in big houses. And to begin with The Box of Delights seemed to follow the same pattern. There was a posh kid and he went to boarding school and when he went home for Christmas he had a chauffer and a maid and a huge posh house. And wasn't I getting a bit old for kid's TV?
The first thing that made me want to watch the series was Patrick Troughton. As a Doctor Who fan it almost felt like my duty to watch anything featuring an old Doctor (see also: Worzel Gummidge and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad). And Patrick Troughton is every bit as magical as Cole Hawlings as he is as the Second Doctor Who - he's a mysterious and impossibly old man in possession of a powerful box... It's pretty easy to see how I was hooked.
The star of the series - Devin Stanfield - makes the main character (Kay Harker) likeable
and funny. Yes, he's a posh kid in a big house, but he genuinely seems to be enjoying himself. Robert Stephens and Patricia Quinn also enjoy themselves as
thoroughly despicable villains - they remain a credible threat without
making things too scary for an audience of kids. There's also a fantastic 'bloodhound of the law' - a completely hopeless local Police-man played by James Grout. As usual, the grown-ups are useless and the kids have to save the day.
As the series goes on it gets more and more bizarre. Like the characters in the story, we just have to accept that magic is real and that totally inexplicable things can happen. There are animated dream sequences, paintings come to life, and there's a lot of flying - and it's all done on a 1980s BBC budget.
There are also some brilliant (and funny) examples of old fashioned language - and these seem to have been lifted directly from the John Masefield novel. When Kay realises his money has been stolen, he says he hasn't got 'a tosser to my kick' (and gets told off for using slang). Trying situations are described a 'the purple pim' and Kay himself is described as an 'idle muff' by his former guardian. We also find out how to make a posset - but I've never been tempted to try buttered eggs.
This
is the 17th(!) year we've done this. Our son has been joining in for the last 7 of them - before that he was too scared
of the wolves. And the rat. And the bad guy. And the music.
The opening credits are just a little bit too creepy for younger kids, and the music is both Christmassy and slightly sinister. The main theme is a riff on the First Noel - inspired by Hely-Hutchinson's Carol Symphony and arranged by Roger Limb of the BBC Radiophonc workshop. The soundtrack album was finally released in 2018 - and that seemed to be another sign of the renewed interest in the series.
No matter what kind of year we have, we always get together and watch The Box of Delights on the last few Sunday evenings before Christmas. Sometimes we even have mince pies (splendiferous!) and talk about not having a 'tosser to our kicks'.
This year more than most, it feels like we need to keep this tradition going.
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