Posted by: @narnian78

@courtenay 

I can’t say that I completely dislike David Suchet’s voice as Aslan. But he was certainly exaggerating the role.  He was overacting his voice, which can irritate people.

Yes, that's what I found irritating. As I said, there are some lines — usually when he's speaking more quietly — where he does seem to capture the character of Aslan much better. I listened to the FOTF version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe just recently (and have just started listening to it again, to be followed directly by the BBC version this time!) and while some of his lines in that are also overdone, his delivery in the scene where the girls walk with him to the Stone Table is much more believable and moving.

I was just going to say that perhaps he received some feedback after they recorded The Magician's Nephew and he decided to tone down the acting a bit for the next play, but ah, I'm wrong — I just looked at the copyright dates on the individual CDs and FOTF recorded LWW in 1998 and MN in 1999! Now that's interesting, since I confirmed just yesterday that the BBC productions were broadcast in chronological order, not publication order. Obviously FOTF didn't record them in chronological order and I was mistaken in assuming that's the order the audience was intended to hear them in!

But I gather they've been broadcast on a number of radio stations over the years (Coracle, our NarniaWebber from New Zealand, has mentioned hearing them on the local Christian radio station in her country) and presumably each station would have chosen which order to broadcast them in, unless they were picking each play up as it was newly recorded. The CDs in my box set are numbered on their cases in chronological order (MN first), the same way the books are now officially numbered, so that's why I assumed that was the order they were made in. Whereas the BBC productions were made by and for a specific broadcaster — BBC Radio 4, to be exact — and so I'm pretty sure they've never been played on any other radio station, unless they were licensed to one of the BBC's equivalent stations overseas.

(In Australia, where I grew up, we have the ABC, which often plays material from the BBC on TV, but I don't remember ever hearing anything from the BBC on any of the ABC radio stations. I don't think radio dramas are as popular in Australia as they are here in Britain — I know BBC Radio 4 still plays new ones from time to time. It's a pity, as I would have LOVED to hear these Narnia plays on the radio when I was a kid!)

Ronald Pickup and Liam Neeson were definitely more pleasant for listening.

Yes, I agree. There are things I like and things I don't like about their performances too, but I won't go off topic here!  

 I haven’t heard the BBC dramas so I cannot judge Stephen Thorne in the role.

Interestingly, he also played the voice of Aslan in the late 1970s cartoon of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! I believe the voices for it were recorded with both a British and an American cast, but they kept Stephen Thorne as Aslan in both versions. So if you watch that cartoon version, you'll hear what he sounds like in the role! I haven't seen it for a few years (must watch it again some time), but as far as I can tell, he didn't do "radio Aslan" noticeably differently from "movie Aslan".  

I think Ron Moody was quite good as Puddleglum, although Tom Baker was the best.

Oh yes!!!   I still visualise and hear Tom Baker in that role whenever I read The Silver Chair!

I think the people who chose the cast had some experience in making the selection and I think they would have known what they were doing. Maybe they could have read the books more carefully to understand the character of Aslan better. Or maybe David Suchet should have read more of C. S. Lewis to better understand the character he was playing.  But I am not the person who has the knowledge to criticize something like that. I am no expert, but I just know what I like and what I think could have been better. 🙂

Well, same with me. I don't know why they made the casting choices they did, or indeed how much prior knowledge David Suchet had of the role and the books and why he made the voice-acting choices he did. I just checked and according to Wikipedia, he wasn't raised with any religion but became a practising Anglican as an adult; he was born in 1946, so he was the right age to read the Narnia books when they were first published or soon after, but I don't know if he was familiar with them from childhood.

I do know that when Suchet agreed to take the role of Poirot in the TV series, he diligently read every single book and short story that Agatha Christie wrote about Poirot and made extensive notes about every little quirk of character he could find, so that he could really get into that role, and most Christie fans would agree he did a superb job! That's why I find it surprising that his turn as Aslan comes across as so inconsistent and, in too many places, so over-acted that it sounds out of character. But there it is, and it's obviously how he decided to play the role, for whatever reasons at the time.

@Courtenay: (In Australia, where I grew up, we have the ABC, which often plays material from the BBC on TV, but I don't remember ever hearing anything from the BBC on any of the ABC radio stations. I don't think radio dramas are as popular in Australia as they are here in Britain — I know BBC Radio 4 still plays new ones from time to time. It's a pity, as I would have LOVED to hear these Narnia plays on the radio when I was a kid!)

As a matter of interest, the BBC film versions were shown on ABC, I think it was, round about 1989 to 1990, in serial form, which even our older children watched. I don't think it was on the commercial channels when I don't remember what ads went with it.  I don't know about the radio versions, but it was from the ABC shop that I bought them. They were great for listening to on long car journeys. For the FoTF tapes I had to get them somewhat later, after I joined Narnia Web in September, of 2009, or earlier. 

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

As a matter of interest, the BBC film versions were shown on ABC, I think it was, round about 1989 to 1990, in serial form, which even our older children watched.

I know. I watched them avidly on the ABC at that time, as a primary school kiddie, and repeatedly for years thereafter thanks to the then-relatively-new magic of VHS!  

I don't know about the radio versions, but it was from the ABC shop that I bought them. They were great for listening to on long car journeys.

I think I do remember seeing the BBC Radio version available on CD in Australia, years ago, but it was probably during my teenage "I'm not into Narnia and all that religious stuff any more" period, so I didn't take a lot of notice. (Yes, I did go through such a period, which is why I don't believe Susan's situation at the end of the Chronicles is hopeless and I know Lewis didn't intend it that way either.) I'm just not sure whether they were ever actually broadcast publicly on ABC Radio, or if they were simply available from the ABC shop as something of interest from the ABC's British equivalent.

@Courtenay: I'm just not sure whether they were ever actually broadcast publicly on ABC Radio, or if they were simply available from the ABC shop as something of interest from the ABC's British equivalent.

I'm afraid I can't help with whether or not the Narnia stories were broadcast on ABC Radio. The trouble is that I got out of the habit of listening to the radio, except of a morning, & it was usually 2GB, hubby's favourite station, for the news bulletins. I did morning & afternoon shifts about that time, with starting times varying from 9.00 am or 10 am, to 1.00pm or earlier, finishing at 8.00 pm, closing time of the library. Afternoon TV was a different matter, but when I went to the ABC bookshop, I was almost in seventh heaven, when I first bought the tapes of all of the Narnia books, then later bought the CD's as well. One of the joys of driving to work was to have my own choice of listening material, & yes, the Narnia tapes were good company. 

Later on, I got the American variety, featuring David Suchet. The best part of those CD's for me was the actor who played Mullugutherum. That earthman's gravelly, dark voice really hit the spot, in my imagination.

My guess is that the Focus on the Family radio dramas were broadcast on the same stations that aired the series with Dr. James Dobson.  I know that NPR (National Public Radio) carried The Hobbit and  The Lord of the Rings in the 1970’s and ‘80’s.  But to my knowledge they probably never broadcast any programming about Narnia.  And the PBS station here in western Michigan showed the BBC Narnia from 1988 - 1990.  The commercial networks apparently didn’t want much to do with Narnia since it wasn’t much of a money maker for them. There is an ABC network here in the USA, but it doesn’t have much interest in Christian broadcasting.  Anything that has to do with C. S. Lewis would most likely be broadcast on a Christian channel or network.

@narnian78 The ABC in Australia — Australian Broadcasting Corporation, that is — doesn't have any connection with the ABC network in the US, to my knowledge. PBS is the American equivalent of the BBC, which would be why PBS picked up the BBC TV adaptations of Narnia, in the same way the (Aussie) ABC did in Australia.

I don't think Narnia being "Christian" has anything much to do with which TV channels or radio stations choose to broadcast an adaptation of it; the books are widely acclaimed as children's classics and, while it's pretty common knowledge that the stories have underlying Christian themes, you don't have to be Christian, or religious at all, to appreciate and enjoy them. That's one of their greatest strengths, really. They certainly weren't written as vehicles for preaching the faith. They'd have a far smaller audience if they were (and it wouldn't include my own family, that's for sure).

I assume the BBC chose them for both radio and TV adaptations in the late 1980s / early '90s because the BBC was making a whole lot of adaptations of classic British children's books around that time, and the Chronicles of Narnia fit that category perfectly. Other BBC TV adaptations I remember from that era (and I also watched them avidly on the ABC and videotaped them to watch again and again!) were Tom's Midnight Garden and The Children of Green Knowe; I'm aware there were several others around that time, including The Borrowers, The Box of Delights and The Secret Garden, but either those weren't shown in Australia, or else I missed them. But it was something the BBC was known for doing — usually almost word for word and scene by scene from the books, and on a hopelessly low budget, but lovingly done — at that time.

Meanwhile, I've re-listened to the FOTF radio play of LWW and thoroughly enjoyed it again — I won't have much at all to gripe about with that adaptation — so I'm about to see (or hear) how the BBC version holds up!  

@courtenay 

Yes, ABC here in the U.S. is the American Broadcasting Company, which is a commercial television network. It is not an educational network like PBS so don’t expect to find any Narnia on it unless they would decide to broadcast the movies, although that isn’t very likely.  I would actually like to see Narnia broadcast on PBS or NPR so that a wider audience could view a television show or listen to a radio drama.   It would be a better option than Netflix. But I doubt if that would ever happen now.  I think the 1979 cartoon of The Lion, the.Witch, and the Wardrobe was on one of the major networks (I remember it was on CBS) when it was first broadcast here in the U. S. in the 1970’s.  But that was so long ago when the networks offered more quality programs. 

@narnian78: There is an ABC network here in the USA, but it doesn’t have much interest in Christian broadcasting.  Anything that has to do with C. S. Lewis would most likely be broadcast on a Christian channel or network.

That is my fault for any confusion, when I forgot that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (as it is now), before 1956 ran radio programs on 2BL & 2FC, in New South Wales, along with other programs for country radio stations, across Australia, especially in Melbourne, where it would be 3AW or whatever it was. The call number for NSW was 2 & it was 3 for Victoria, & 4 for Queensland, you see. There was a time when I could rattle off all the Sydney Radio stations, from 2CH, the Christian station, 2KY, 2UE & 2UW, but I've forgotten much since then, when we have AM & FM radio, & it is all to do with their wavelength number on the radio dial, which no longer shows the stations. 

I can't remember which station it was that often ran children's programs, reading aloud many of my favourite books, including Enid Blyton's 5 Findouters, for example. Later on, when my children were young, they were so engrossed in a radio production of The Lord of the Rings that I ended up buying the program at the ABC bookshop. 

The Australian Broadcasting Commission which runs all this show, was the Australian equivalent of the BBC in UK, with which it has many ties. 

I just bought the BBC version and I started to listen to it yesterday. I was very surprised by the first person narration in MN. Having Digory tell the story kind of leaves out some details that although not crucial to the story are in the story none the less and I was surprised they were left out. But, it has been fun to start listening to another adaptation and I am enjoying this version quite a bit.  Focus on the Family does not have first person Narration so, that is the biggest difference I hear right now.

Now I’ve listened to both radio versions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and… my assessment of the two is totally the other way around from what I thought of the respective versions of The Magician’s Nephew.

I’d listened to the FOTF version of LWW only just recently and enjoyed it, and in fact I liked it even more on hearing it yet again! And honestly, I don’t have very much more to say about it that I haven’t said already elsewhere.

I did still find Elizabeth Counsell’s voice for the White Witch a bit too high-pitched and at times not quite convincing, but either she gets better as it goes along, or else I just got used to it. Also, there’s the way they made her seem more “nice” towards Edmund when he first meets her than the book does (I commented on that in the other thread about radio adaptations), but interestingly, the BBC radio version does much the same thing. Both of them left out the part where she initially looks like she’s going to do “something dreadful” to Edmund (and he fears as much), but then changes her mind — though of course that would probably be harder to portray in sound alone than with visuals — and both versions also leave out any mention of the Turkish Delight being enchanted and that being a major factor in why Edmund can’t resist the temptation to side with the Witch.

(I still wonder whether that’s down to something theological (wanting to make Edmund more at fault for his own sins), or avoiding bringing “addiction” into a family-friendly radio play, or just an attempt to simplify the story a bit. Or were they afraid that the manufacturers of Turkish Delight in our world might sue for defamation??? )

But apart from that and a very few other minor quirks, the FOTF radio production of LWW really is magnificently done. The voices of the four children are excellent and believable (Lucy — played by Elizabeth Eaton — perhaps sounds a bit too little-kiddish at times, but she needs to be obviously the youngest and very sweet and innocent, and overall she does a fine job). Most of the wording is taken straight from the book, with very little left out or noticeably changed, and this particular production did a great job of balancing the narrator with the characters’ dialogue when it comes to telling the story.

There are quite a few places where extra dialogue is written to fill in parts that the book covers with narration, and most of those work well. For example, after Lucy first visits Narnia and the other children don’t believe her, there’s a long added sequence where they’re obviously out swimming (by the sound effects) and Peter tries to convince Lucy to join in and she refuses, then gets upset when he warns her against spoiling their time in the countryside through “a bad joke”, as he calls it. Edmund then starts ridiculing Lucy by asking her if she’s discovered any new worlds in the kitchen cupboards or desk drawers, and Susan cuts in and tells him to be quiet. It’s a really nice dramatisation of what the book only skims over briefly, and it brings out the individual characters of the four children very well, which of course is all the more important in a radio production where we can only hear them, not see them.

The background music in the FOTF version is also very well done — unobtrusive but very effective in setting the scene, building up the suspense (for example, when Tumnus admits who he works for and what his real motive was in inviting Lucy to tea), and so on. It’s one of those things you only half notice as you’re listening, because it blends in so well as part of the story. The only surprising and slightly incongruous part, I thought, was when Tumnus plays his flute for Lucy — the music he plays (which is also used as the background music when he first meets Lucy at the lamppost) is something like an Irish dancing tune, which is fun, but sounds far too bouncy to put anyone to sleep!

And the thing that REALLY had my teeth on edge in FOTF’s version of The Magician’s Nephew — yes, David Suchet’s legendary over-acting as Aslan… is, honestly, hardly a problem in this production. There are some lines where Suchet hams it up too much and sounds silly and totally un-lion-like — I think the worst instance was when, after Peter kills Maugrim, Aslan calls for the centaurs and eagles to pursue the other wolf “and rescue the fourth son of Aaadaaam!!” That just sounded dreadful. But almost immediately after that, when he knights Peter and adds “And whatever happens, never forget to wipe your sword,” he delivers those words in just the right kind of tone, solemn and deep with a hint of humour at the end. (That final remark about never forgetting to wipe one's sword has always made me chuckle from the first time I heard it, as a kindergarten kid having the book read to me by my mum!)

In fact, I would say that about 80% of the time (rough estimate!) in this whole production, Suchet does Aslan’s voice in a very convincing way: quite deep, slow, resonant, and with the right kinds of emotion at the right times, and often very movingly. Almost all the way through FOTF’s MN, I was squirming at his rendition of Aslan and feeling totally unable to picture the great Lion saying these words as I heard them. Almost all the way through FOTF’s LWW, I had no trouble imagining Aslan himself speaking like this. Kudos to David Suchet, who really is a wonderful actor. I just wish he could have kept that level of delivery throughout all his lines in all seven productions!!

I want to do a few direct comparisons between specific scenes and other aspects of the two radio versions — what worked well and what really didn’t — so first, I’ll do a run-down of what I thought of the BBC version overall. But I’ll put that in another post.

The beginning of the BBC radio version of LWW more than confirmed that these radio plays were intended to be listened to in chronological order, not in the order in which the books were originally published. As I had already picked up, the narrator in this one is adult Digory again, now the Professor. That was one of the aspects of the BBC’s radio adaptation of MN that I felt worked very well, on the whole — having the narration filled in by an older version of the main character in the story, who experienced or witnessed nearly all of the events in it. That was fine — and very credible — for the one story in which Digory is the original book’s point-of-view character almost 100% of the time. But to have the same narrator tell a story that he can only have heard second-hand from the Pevensie children after it happened… that really, really doesn’t work. 

The worst of this is when the Professor as narrator is describing what the individual children thought or felt at any particular moment — the sorts of things that generally do need to be covered by an impersonal narrator, since it would usually be far too awkward, scripting-wise, to have the characters describing their own inward thoughts and emotional states out loud, no matter how important these are to the plot. But when the narrator himself is a character in the story, and yet he wasn’t actually part of any of the events he’s describing, it just comes across as forced and clunky, so many times throughout the play. I kept on muttering “Excuse me, how on earth is he supposed to know all this when he wasn’t there for any of it??”  

I guess it’s meant to be implied that the children told the Professor absolutely everything about their adventure, in so much detail that he can now describe everything they saw and heard and felt and said and did, just as much as if he had been there with them. But that honestly stretches credibility so far that it makes it hard to sit back and enjoy the story for what it is. Having adult Digory as the narrator of his own story made it feel far more real; having adult Digory as the narrator of four other people’s story made it feel far less real. And that was only one of the most problematic elements of a production that turned out to have a lot of other problematic elements…

Apart from that issue — which I might have been able to overlook if everything else about this version had been done well — the other big drawbacks to the whole thing were sloppy scripting and poor voice acting. This was a surprise, as all the BBC radio plays of Narnia were adapted by the same writer (Brian Sibley, who also wrote a couple of very enjoyable Narnia commentary and activity books for young readers), and as I said before, I found The Magician’s Nephew to be really well done overall and very enjoyable, with only a few things that fell flat. But I almost couldn’t believe this version of LWW was done by the same script writer and producers. There were just so many instances in it where added dialogue (i.e. not in the original book) was unconvincingly worded, or even if it was lifted from the book, it was unconvincingly delivered by the voice actors. It felt as if those involved in producing this adaptation just rushed through it and did a really amateurish, poorly thought-out, near-enough-is-good-enough kind of job. After the deeply enjoyable rendition of MN, this was a stunning let-down. 

There were already some alarm bells clanging in my head even in the opening scene. It begins with the Professor launching straight into the story without any explanation: 

“It was many years after my adventures in Narnia that I heard of the place again. I’d grown up and become a Professor; in fact, I was quite an old man and lived in a big old country house. It was during the war, when lots of bombs were being dropped on London, and children in London were sent away to live in the country where it was safer. Four young people came to live with me, and with their visit began the second Narnian adventure.” 

Not nearly as compelling as the way the book begins — they were obviously banking on the audience having already heard the adaptation of MN, since a new listener would have no idea who this is and what he’s talking about. That’s already a poorly thought-out piece of scripting. As far as I can tell (I haven’t listened to all of them yet!), the FOTF plays were written so that they can be listened to in any order, with no assumed prior knowledge of the other stories; any info we need to know from a previous adventure is filled in by the narration along with way, as it is in the original books. (And him referring to Narnia as simply "the place" in the first line sounds almost dismissive, especially when you consider what amazing things he saw and experienced there. Why not "I heard of that magical land again"? Or even just "that land", without any adjectives, would sound more respectful of it...)

Then directly after that, there’s another badly devised bit, this time in invented dialogue for the Professor. After the four children introduce themselves, he informs them: 

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about children. So long since I was a child myself, I’ve forgotten most of what I knew, and I never had any children of my own.” 

This from the guy who, in the previous instalment of this series, has just spent ages telling us about the extraordinary adventure he had as a child, which showed he clearly hadn’t forgotten very much of what he knew and how he felt as young Digory. It just makes it feel almost like this can't be the same character. And considering this "forgotten most of what I knew" line isn't in the book (nor is anything like it implied anywhere) and it doesn't improve the story — if anything, it weakens it — why was it put in at all?

All this was a very unconvincingly handled start, which I couldn’t help feeling was an ominous sign that the rest of this adaptation of LWW would probably not be much better, and possibly worse. I wasn’t wrong.

More to come (with comparisons to the FOTF version, where relevant) in another post…

Getting onto some more specific things that made the BBC radio version of LWW a huge disappointment — another ongoing problem throughout the whole thing was the quality of the voice acting, particularly the Pevensie children. Peter and Susan were OK in general but not outstanding; Edmund and Lucy, though, really let the whole thing down. Both of them regularly sounded too loud and over-excited, even to the point of being shouty and screechy (Edmund outright sounded like a girl at times), and so many of their lines just weren’t delivered convincingly.

The bad scripting throughout didn’t help — for example, when Lucy enters the wardrobe, the sequence is done entirely with her commentary and not the narrator, but as she’s alone and therefore either talking to herself or talking in her head, the overdone squeals of “Mothballs!... The wardrobe’s full of fur coats!... There’s another row of fur coats!” (and so on) just sound silly. But even on a lot of the lines that were either lifted straight from Lewis or at least better written, she and Edmund still sounded like they were over-acting it in a really amateurish way. And as they’re the two characters we hear from the most in this story (apart from inherently-problematic-Digory-the-narrator), that really wasn’t helpful. 

I’m aware that Camilla Power, who played Lucy in this production, went on to be Jill in the BBC TV series of The Silver Chair a few years later — and Edmund here is played by Henry Power, who I assume is Camilla’s brother. But whether at this stage they were too young to have had much acting training, or whether they were just so excited to be playing the lead roles in a story they presumably loved… I just reckon they sadly didn’t do a very professional-sounding job in this instance.

One of the better voice actors in this version, I thought, was Tumnus (Norman Bird); unlike several other renditions of Tumnus I’ve heard (including the FOTF one), he didn’t have an Irish accent. (Why so many producers of LWW adaptations seem to think Tumnus should sound Irish, I really don’t know. Unless they reckon he’s a Leprefaun??) But while almost all his lines were delivered well, the scripting in much of this section — one of the most iconic scenes of the most iconic book in the series — was surprisingly bad. 

Here’s an example of what happens when a script writer draws on the original book, but cuts it indiscriminately so that the remaining lines don’t make proper sense (that occurred a few times in this adaptation). The moment Lucy tells Tumnus that she got in “through the wardrobe in the spare room”, Tumnus cuts straight to “Spare Oom? War Drobe? Daughter of Eve from the far country of Spare Oom, where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe…” It’s obvious from the context, of course, that he’s mistaken those words for the names of places, so it’s not absolutely necessary to include his remark that he should have worked harder at geography when he was a little Faun at school. But as they’ve cut out the part where Lucy adds that it’s summer where she came from, it then doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Tumnus to imaginatively describe her homeland as having “eternal summer”! 

That’s not a huge error in the scheme of things, and if it had been the only silly slip with the scripting, I’d hardly have noticed. But there were just so many other flubs like that, that the effect was cumulative — and even a small one like this suggests that someone was basically hacking away at the dialogue from the book to make it shorter, without stopping to think how cutting out certain lines would affect the meaning of other lines.

Then once they’re in the cave, Lucy and Tumnus’s conversation starts out well but then turns quite strange. Tumnus talks about his father, who “was a very well-educated Faun and knew so many tales of Old Narnia”; Lucy then asks Tumnus to tell her about Narnia in the old days, and then the Professor / narrator just cuts in to say “As he did, Lucy wanted to cry and laugh and go to sleep all at the same time. So beautiful was it, Lucy hardly noticed the hours slipping by…”

It’s odd enough that it’s heavily implied that Tumnus himself never experienced Narnia in the “old days”; I assume this is because we find out from Lewis’s later writings (it’s first mentioned in Prince Caspian) that the Witch’s winter lasted one hundred years, and Tumnus doesn’t seem to be that old. Unless, of course, Fauns don’t age at the same rate as humans, which is entirely possible! But more to the point, we're given none of the actual content of these "tales of Old Narnia”, so we don’t get any idea of what a joyous and “jollification”-filled land Narnia used to be before the eternal winter began.

That whole paragraph in the book, where Tumnus tells these "wonderful tales" to Lucy, sets us up to realise just how evil and heartless the White Witch is — even before we hear about her specifically — and to understand how vital it is that this magical land is restored to the way it should be. The FOTF version has Lewis’s descriptions pretty much in full (including Silenus and Bacchus and the streams running with wine, which you'd think some would deem inappropriate for a children’s book!), and it wouldn’t have been at all difficult for this adaptation to put at least some of it in — even if they had it as Tumnus relating things his father told him rather than things he himself had experienced. Without that background being filled in, we lose a big part of the heart of the story.

Then, just to make it even stranger, Tumnus doesn’t play the flute (or any other instrument) to lull Lucy to sleep. It’s implied he simply keeps talking to her — though we’re not given any of the conversation — until she suddenly realises how long she’s been there and exclaims that she must go, at which point Tumnus starts crying (and then his admission of what he was going to do is, by contrast, almost word-for-word from the book and very well done). Leaving out the flute-playing just cuts down further on the magical and mysterious atmosphere of this whole scene; instead of Tumnus doing something that possibly puts an enchantment on Lucy, all he does is talk, and we're not even told what he was talking about. Who knows... maybe, with all the wonderment stripped out of this scene as it is, he in fact bored her to sleep??  

Moving on to the White Witch, I do still prefer the BBC voice actor for her (Rosemary Martin) to the FOTF one overall. But the conversation between her and Edmund — much of which was scripted from scratch in both adaptations, as Lewis tells most of it indirectly in the book — doesn’t come across as convincingly in this version as it did in the FOTF (which was very well done at this point). And yet another example of needlessly bad writing when the Witch asks Edmund for the name of the Faun whom his sister met, and when he remembers it and tells her, she hisses “Tumnus! I’ll have his tail.” That is just far too clunkily obvious. We have already heard from Tumnus himself what will happen if the Witch finds out he let a human go; now she’s finding out. The chill should hang in the air without anything more needing to be spelled out, just like in the book.

There was further unsatisfactory scripting “back on this side of the door” (as the chapter is called), when Peter and Susan go to the Professor with their concerns about Lucy. In the structure of the story, it’s a fairly brief but very important interlude, in which the good-hearted but sceptical older siblings are confronted with some very deep philosophical questions about the nature of reality and the possibility of other worlds, which neither of them were expecting! It’s the pause for reflection before the main adventure, with all four children in Narnia, gets underway at last. The FOTF version does this part almost straight out of the book, with the Professor (whom we haven’t heard before in that adaptation!) sounding just like I imagine him to. The BBC version cuts it short and rushes through it and makes it a lot less resonant and enjoyable than it should be. 

And then the following sequence, with Mrs Macready and the “whole gang of people” pursuing the children until there’s nowhere left to go but the wardrobe, also just felt sloppily scripted and terribly rushed. (Again, the FOTF version did a fine job.) Honestly, in so many places it’s almost like this BBC adaptation blunders through the story, grabbing a line here and a line there out of the original book and ticking off the boxes of the basic sequence of the plot, without taking any time to build up the beautiful atmosphere that this classic story should have. It comes across like a badly written and badly acted school play. 

One thing I did like about this version was that it includes the robin that guides the children to Mr Beaver (which FOTF leaves out), and with the real song of a European robin too! A very familiar and lovely sound for those of us who live in the UK. Unfortunately, however, all other animal sounds in this play are made by human actors, very unrealistically. The Beavers — who, in the inexplicable manner of many adaptations, talk with stereotypical Northern English accents* — both repeatedly make strange tsk-tsk-tsk sounds in between their sentences as they talk, which is just weird and distracting. And those weren’t the worst vocal effects in this version by a long shot, as I found out soon enough.

In the conversation at the Beavers’ house, once again, most of the voices are too loud and exaggerated and not very well done; Lucy in particular shouts a lot (as she does in most of her scenes), which sounds completely out of character for her. More interestingly — this was discussed recently in another thread — once they realise that Edmund has gone to the Witch, this version does have the other characters complaining about Mrs Beaver’s preparations for the journey and yelping “Please, please hurry!” and so on at her; the FOTF adaptation leaves that aspect out entirely. But this version makes clear enough that Mrs Beaver is thinking things through and is the only one of them who isn’t panicking.

Unlike every other LWW adaptation I can think of, this one includes Edmund, at the Witch’s house, pulling out a pencil and drawing glasses and a moustache (describing them as he does so) on the stone lion. It also includes one of this version’s very few added (not in the book) lines that actually come across as effective and thought-provoking — Edmund says to the stone lion (thinking it’s Aslan): “I’m going to be king of Narnia, not you.” That really captures Edmund’s instinctive animosity towards Aslan (at this stage!) and points up one of the implicit reasons for it: Edmund is drawn in by the Witch’s (false) promise to make him a king, and he knows Aslan, as the Witch’s enemy and the rightful king, stands in his way.

Very soon, however, we get to the next example of voice actors making unnecessary and totally egregious animal noises. Maugrim, in between speaking, makes lots of bizarre “graaahhh” sounds that don’t sound a thing like a wolf. In fact, a lot of the time, he snarls and splutters like a bad imitation of an angry wildcat. And as we go on to Edmund meeting the Witch again, Maugrim and his hench-wolves are graaahhh-ing in the background in an increasingly ludicrous fashion. And no, I honestly don’t know what the producers of this play were trying to achieve by this.  

*Absolutely nothing against Northern English accents, I should add. I live in that part of England myself and some of my best friends in this world are Northerners. But none of them sound at all like Talking Beavers, so I don’t know where anyone gets the impression that Talking Beavers should sound like Northerners.  

True to the book, both radio adaptations of LWW include Father Christmas (possibly the single most controversial figure in the story, as far as critics from Tolkien onwards are concerned; the 1979 cartoon cuts him out entirely). In both versions, I felt he could have been given a somewhat deeper voice, but that’s probably just personal taste. Both of them handled this scene well overall, I thought, so I’ll focus on what is definitely the most controversial line in the entire book: “Battles are ugly when women fight.” The FOTF version leaves in that line just as it is. The BBC, however, changes it to: “But it is not Aslan’s wish that you [Lucy] and your sister should fight.” 

Apart from being less likely to draw criticism for being sexist, that altered line implies that Aslan has other things for the girls to do (which he does), while also leaving it open that women may possibly fight in battles in other stories in this series (which they do). It’s a good way of retaining the most important point of that conversation — that the girls are not meant to fight in this battle — while getting rid of the implication that this is solely because they are girls. That was well handled, I thought.

One more interesting point at the end of this scene: they cut out Father Christmas saying “Merry Christmas! Long live the true King!” as he leaves, which I thought was a shame, as it underscores the point that merriment is returning to Narnia at last, along with its rightful ruler. But this version does add an interesting exchange between Lucy and Susan that’s not in the book: after he leaves, Lucy says “He wasn’t a bit like the fat and jolly pictures of Father Christmas you see in our world,” and Susan replies that he’s “a Father Christmas you can actually believe in.” Perhaps that was added in view of the argument that Father Christmas, as a mythical character from our world, shouldn’t be in Narnia and his presence there is a jarring element in the story. The girls’ conversation there is definitely an echo of Lewis’s own efforts in the narrative to emphasise that Father Christmas in Narnia is “rather different” from the pictures in our world that “make him look only funny and jolly.”

The scene where the Witch turns the party of animals into stone wasn’t very well done, in that at this point the narrator wasn’t used, and so the Witch describes everything she’s seeing in front of her, which didn't work well in this instance. (But then, once again, neither does using Digory / the Professor as narrator for things he wasn’t there to see, which this whole adaptation does repeatedly.) Then when Edmund protests and the Witch gives him what the book describes as “a stunning blow on the face” while saying “As for you… let that teach you to ask favour for spies and traitors” — they included her words there, but no sound of her hitting Edmund, or of any reaction from him, so it’s left totally unclear what “let that teach you” refers to. This, again, is what I mean about really sloppy scripting!

Meanwhile, the rapid coming of spring to Narnia wasn’t well handled by the BBC either — the Beavers in particular seem oddly surprised about it, with remarks like “I’d say this is Aslan’s doing.” Ummm, is there any doubt whose doing it is, especially as they are the ones who earlier quoted the rhyme that ends “When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death / And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again”...?? (That rhyme, incidentally, wasn’t included at all in the FOTF version, which was something of a let-down. But nowhere near as bad as the continuous string of let-downs that was the BBC version in its entirety.)

Even the introduction of Aslan fell flat, with one of the Beavers simply remarking “That’ll be Aslan all right”... again, ummm, could we really be in any doubt who Aslan is, even when he’s surrounded by a crowd of his supporters?? This is meant to be the introduction (in the original book, the very first introduction) of THE most magnificent and awe-inspiring being you could ever stand in front of — and the way it’s scripted and carried out in this radio play, it came across as something like the audio equivalent of Aslan being revealed on stage as an old bearded guy in a furry suit. (Yes, I have seen that done, and it was awful.)

What made it all worse still was the actual voice of Aslan — which, as I said, Stephen Thorne did an excellent job of in the BBC radio version of The Magician’s Nephew, in contrast to David Suchet’s dreadful over-acting in the FOTF version of the same story. In the respective radio versions of LWW, quite to my astonishment, there was a complete reversal. David Suchet, as I’ve already said, handled most of Aslan’s lines in LWW beautifully and convincingly and often quite movingly, with only a few places where he seriously overdid it. Whereas Stephen Thorne in the BBC LWW somehow managed to sound far too high-pitched and hammed-up, or else unimpressive in general, much of the way through. In contrast to his performance in MN, I really struggled to picture the great Lion speaking while listening to this.

So yes, once again, of all the things any Narnia adaptation needs to do well, the portrayal of Aslan is far and away the most vital… and this time it was FOTF that nailed it and the BBC that blew it, even though in both cases it was the same actor and script-writer and production company for each. Curiouser and curiouser, as another classic British storybook character once remarked!!

In the scene where Edmund is rescued from the Witch, there was yet another outstanding example of what a silly idea it was to have adult Digory, the Professor, as narrator for an adventure he didn’t take part in. After Aslan’s allies have taken Edmund and called out among themselves in confusion as to where the Witch has gone, the Professor comes in with the description — lifted almost word-for-word from the book — of how an old stump and a boulder turn out to be the Witch and her dwarf, magically disguised. This is something that Edmund himself certainly didn’t see, as he was fainting as the rescue party carried him away, and in any case, it’s obvious from the narrative that the Witch and the dwarf made sure to wait till no-one else was there before transforming back to their usual appearance. So here we now have the Professor describing, in considerable detail, a scene that none of the four children he’s got this story from could have been aware of at all!! As I keep saying, one or two oddities like this in the scripting wouldn’t have made much difference if this adaptation was well done overall, but there were just so many of them, along with various other flaws, that the entire thing came across as really poorly made.

Then when the other children get the news that Edmund was rescued overnight, Mrs Beaver tells them, with obvious trepidation, “He’s with Aslan right now,” followed by Mr Beaver remarking “Ooooh! That’s not a meeting I envy the lad.” That isn’t in the book at all, and all it does is heavily imply that Aslan is a terrifying divine tyrant with whom Edmund is now in deep, deep trouble. Whereas it’s already been made very clear in the course of the story (including in this adaptation) that Edmund now knows how wrong he was in allying himself with the Witch, and by this stage he’s already pretty much fully repentant.

To be fair, the Beavers wouldn’t know about that, since they haven’t spoken to Edmund themselves, but we as the audience do know it, and so those comments just strike a jarring note and implicitly give a wrong impression of Aslan as unmerciful and unloving. This when, as we’re about to find out, Aslan is in fact willing to sacrifice his own life to save Edmund’s, regardless of whether or not Edmund deserves it. Which, you know, is a pretty major point of this whole story (and of the theology behind it)...

As in the book, we’re not actually told what passed between Aslan and Edmund in that conversation — thank goodness, as most of the added dialogue throughout this adaptation is so awkward that it almost certainly wouldn't have been done well — and then even the conversation between him and his siblings, when they’re back together, just didn’t sound convincing, with more bad scripting and bad voice-acting. And then when the Witch seeks an audience with Aslan and we hear one of Aslan’s leopards speaking, his voice sounds just like Maugrim and his wolves — awful, that is. (I don’t think I’ve mentioned so far, but the Witch’s dwarf too, every time we hear from him, sounds awfully high-pitched and whiney and pathetic, like some kind of bad cartoon character.)

Talking of sloppy scripting again, in the Witch’s conversation with Aslan — the part of it that we hear, about the Deep Magic — most of the wording was lifted from the book, but there was another example of bad cutting that makes the remaining words not work as they should. The Witch declares “He knows that unless I have blood as the Law says…” — with the “he” here referring to Aslan, which is clear in the book. But in this adaptation, the dialogue is cut and that line is placed directly after the Witch talks about Edmund's life being forfeit to her. So it comes across as though “He knows that unless I have blood…” is still in reference to Edmund, not Aslan. Quite confusing, especially if a listener isn't familiar with the original book.

And then, at the crucial moment when Aslan and the Witch come back from their private conversation, and she asks “But how do I know that this promise will be kept?”... this is the point where Aslan responds with nothing but a roar that grows louder and louder, until (in the book) the Witch simply picks up her skirts and runs for her life. In the FOTF version, this scene uses the sound of a real lion’s roar, very loud and deep and powerful and truly impressive. In the BBC version… Stephen Thorne, with his own voice, simply goes “Rrrrraaaaahhh!” Yes, seriously. That just has to be one of the most stunningly absurd let-downs in a radio play that was chock-full of absurd let-downs. I know Britain’s national broadcasting corporation in the 1980s was notorious for doing things on the cheap, but honestly — could they not even find a sound effects record with a stock recording of a lion roaring???

After which, instead of fleeing in speechless terror, the Witch retorts “Very well! Till the appointed time” before leaving. Which is a further silly let-down, but considering that Thorne’s attempt at roaring probably wouldn’t have frightened a young child, let alone a cosmic super-villainess, it’s possibly not so surprising.