![The Borrowers [Season 1] (1992)](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/borrowers-1992-poster.jpg)
Crew
Director – John Henderson, Screenplay – Richard Carpenter, Based on the Novels The Borrowers (1952) and The Borrowers Afield (1955) by Mary Norton, Producer – Grainne Marmion, Photography – Clive Tickner, Music – Howard Goodall, Visual Effects Supervisor – David Cassidy, Production Design – Sophie Becker. Production Company – Working Title Television/Turner Pictures/BBC Children’s International/The Children’s Film and Television Company/The deFaria Company.
Cast
Rebecca Callard (Arrietty Clock), Ian Holm (Pod Clock), Penelope Wilton (Homily Clock), Daniel Newman (Dreadful Spiller), Paul Cross (George), Siân Phillips (Mrs Driver), David Ryall (Crampfurl), Tony Haygarth (Mildeye)
Plot
The Clock family – father Pod, mother Homily and teenage daughter Arrietty – are Borrowers, small people only a few inches high who live inside the walls of human houses unnoticed. They have made their home beneath a grandfather clock and Pod sneaks out at night to ‘borrow’ – take things from the human beans that will not be noticed and adapt these to their use. Pod decides it is time to take Arrietty out and teach her the art of borrowing. On their venture out into the big house, Arrietty meets and befriends a human boy George. Though all Borrowers fear human beans, George is quite friendly and helpful, bringing them items from the doll’s house as furniture. However, this serves to expose them to the severe housekeeper Mrs Driver who insists on bringing in an exterminator. With George’s help, the Clocks are forced to flee their home and survive in the big wilderness outside. There Arrietty makes a new friend in another Borrower boy Spiller.
Mary Norton (1903-92) was a British children’s writer. She is best known for the book The Borrowers (1952), which proved a great success. She wrote three sequels The Borrowers Afield (1952), The Borrowers Afloat (1959) and The Borrowers Aloft (1961) and then after a two decade silence a fifth book with The Borrowers Avenged (1982). Her one other work of note was The Magic Bedknob (1944), which became the basis of the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
The Borrowers books have been popular on film. The first film adaptation was The Borrowers (1973), a little seen tv movie that relocated the story to America. The second was this tv series from the BBC in two seasons (1992-3) under the umbrella label The Borrowers. The first mini-series here adapts the first two books The Borrowers and The Borrowers Afield, while the second season adapts the other two books. This was followed by a live-action film The Borrowers (1997); the Studio Ghibli anime version Arrietty/The Secret World of Arrietty (2010), and The Borrowers (2011), a BBC tv movie version starring Christopher Eccleston.
I have always had a thing for Miniature Adventures. Maybe it was due to watching reruns of tv’s Land of the Giants (1968-70) at a young age. I was fascinated with the possibility in that show of seeing the everyday world through entirely different eyes where climbing onto a chair could be a major mountaineering expedition or crossing a garden the equivalent of a jungle expedition. I loved other films on the subject from Dr Cyclops (1940) through to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) and devoured books like The Micronauts (1977) and Cold War in a Country Garden (1971) and sequels.
There is an enormous charm to The Borrowers in the way it depicts its miniature world, a delight to seeing the Clock home with reconditioned sides of cocoa boxes for walls and everything from appropriated scissors used as tools or medals and pocket watches as wall decorations. What is an especial part of the charm is seeing the mimicry of a perfect British middle-class life circa the 1950s replicated at miniature size. The scene-stealer here gets to be Penelope Wilton going on about hot and cold running water and her anxieties about Arrietty befriending George that suddenly turn to homemaking rhapsodies the moment be brings them doll’s house furniture. The scenes once they head out of doors have a lovely English country garden pastorality. Although this also sits alongside moments of sheer terror – cliffhangers like George discovering their hideout and especially the scene where Siân Phillips’ Mrs Driver tears the top off the house.
The performances are all impeccably on form right across the board with Ian Holm and Penelope Wilton holding the show with perfect understatement. I was surprised that Rebecca Callard, who proves an appealingly bright and innocent spark, has not gone on to wider recognition, although she has continued to be around. The dialogue has enormous charms – Penelope Wilton’s reaction to encountering Spiller “He probably has a flea on him. Maybe even two” is perfect.
The visual effects are on excellent form for the era and hold up well when seen today. The scenes placing the actors against giant-sized sets, scenery or interacting with other humans are all exceptional. There is the odd shot out in the wilderness where the garden and river looks like a digital insert but the majority of these are not too bad at all.
On the basis of his work on The Borrowers, director John Henderson went on to make a host of other effects-based tv shows like Jack and the Beanstalk (1998), Alice Through the Looking Glass (1998) and The Magical Land of the Leprechauns (1999), as well as films such as Loch Ness (1996), Me-Shee: The Water Giant (2005) and Tales of the Riverbank (2008).
Full miniseries available beginning with Episode 1 here