BBC Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe: A Classic Tale Retold

The BBC Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe is a popular television mini-series based on the iconic fantasy novel written by C.S. Lewis. The series was aired on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the late 1980s. It consists of four episodes and is known for its faithful adaptation of the original story. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the first and most well-known book in Lewis' series called The Chronicles of Narnia.

Like The Box of Delights, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was co-produced with an American company, though the BBC controlled the production.

The series was produced by Paul Stone and adapted by Alan Seymour, the same producer-writer team behind The Box of Delights, which aired several years earlier in the run up to Christmas 1984. The actors playing Mr and Mrs Beaver, meanwhile Kerry Shale and Lesley Nicol in roly-poly costumes with flipper feet would topple over and had to be hoisted back up by the crew.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the first and most well-known book in Lewis' series called The Chronicles of Narnia. The story revolves around four siblings - Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie - who are sent to live in the countryside during World War II. While exploring their new home, they discover a magical wardrobe that serves as a portal to the enchanted land of Narnia.

How The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe made the BBC take children seriously

For children watching TV in the build-up to Christmas 1988 – those among the 10 million people who tuned into BBC One on Sunday teatimes – the BBC’s adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a special kind of magic. (Let us not forget, Christmas ’88 was magical all around: Back to the Future on TV for the first time, the best ever Only Fools and Horses special, and Cliff at number one with Mistletoe and Wine.)

For child actor Richard Dempsey, merely to be cast in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was like walking into a Narnia-esque world – journeying from his Stevenage comprehensive school to the North Acton Rehearsal Rooms.

“It was this incredible building where the BBC would rehearse everything,” remembers Dempsey today. “You’d go in and you’d see people from Doctor Who and Blue Peter, and on the next floor the Two Ronnies. The canteen would be filled with everybody you saw on television. Then you’d get in the lift and you’d be surrounded by all these icons.”

Indeed, it now feels like a golden era of BBC programme-making. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of four Narnia stories made by the BBC, was a landmark for children’s drama – a lavish £1 million-plus production that combined a life-size animatronic lion, animated beasts, man-sized beavers, blue-screen effects and mountains of snow (both real and fake).

“It was really important for us,” says Anna Home, the former head of BBC children’s programming. “The grown-up drama department had always looked down their noses at kids’ drama for not being real. But I don’t think they could do that to us any more after Narnia.”

The series was produced by Paul Stone and adapted by Alan Seymour, the same producer-writer team behind The Box of Delights, which aired several years earlier – in the run up to Christmas 1984.

The Box of Delights – a similarly innovative, costume and effects-heavy fantasy – seemed to pave the way to Narnia. But the BBC had been battling for years over the CS Lewis stories. “We’d been trying to get the rights to the Narnia stories for some time,” says Anna Home. “But it was impossible. We were in competition with Disney.”

CS Lewis, who died in 1963, hated the idea of a live-action Narnia. In a letter to Lance Sieveking, a writer and BBC producer, he wrote: “But I am absolutely opposed. to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wd. be another matter. A human, pantomime Aslan wd. be to me blasphemy.”

There were, however, other adaptations of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before the BBC version: a 10-part teleplay on ITV in 1967, and an odd – but Emmy-winning – CBS animation in 1979. (Netflix is now producing a Narnia franchise.)

Anna Home worked in various roles within BBC kids’ programming – including being the executive producer of Jackanory – but left the Beeb for a few years to work with an ITV consortium. She returned to the BBC in the mid-1980s to oversee children’s programming.

“I arrived back to a wonderful present – the rights to Narnia,” Home says. The Narnia series began a process of “rebuilding” children’s drama. “But it was going to cost a fortune,” says Home. “This was going to be a big special-effects budget. In those days we struggled to get proper drama budgets. But having been asked to go back to the BBC, I was in a strong position.”

Home marched to BBC One controller Michael Grade: “I said, ‘We’ve got the rights, it’s been a long and bitter struggle, we need the budget. Can you please do something about it?’ He went to what was called BBC Enterprises in those days [a commercial arm of the BBC] and more or less told them to put a large amount of money into it.”

Like The Box of Delights, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was co-produced with an American company, though the BBC controlled the production.

In the story, which is set during the Second World War, four siblings – Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie – are sent, as part of the general evacuation, to a country manor, where they discover a secret doorway through the back of an old mothy wardrobe to the magical world of Narnia. They find the land – cursed by the White Witch – in the frosty grip of an eternal winter. (Always winter but never Christmas.) The Pevensie children then join Aslan – a talking lion and all-round Christ-like king-among-kings – to battle the White Witch.

For producer Paul Stone and director Marilyn Fox, whittling down the hordes of child actors to just four was a battle in itself – a process of auditions, workshops, and mixing-and-matching the would-be brothers and sisters.

Richard Dempsey was a regular schoolboy when he was selected to play oldest brother Peter – a responsible type of chap destined to become the sword-wielding High King of Narnia. Dempsey was cast alongside Sophie Cook, Jonathan R Scott and Sophie Wilcox.

The series was filmed over six months, journeying from BBC Television Centre to locations in Scotland, Wales and the West Country. The kids, mostly wearing wartime short trousers and skirts, had to wear long-johns to traipse through freezing-cold snow. The actors playing Mr and Mrs Beaver, meanwhile – Kerry Shale and Lesley Nicol in roly-poly costumes with flipper feet – would topple over and had to be hoisted back up by the crew.

Richard Dempsey recalls being in awe of Barbara Kellerman, who played the White Witch with petulant, foot-stamping relish. “Totally evil, no redeeming qualities at all,” said Kellerman about the role. “It was wonderful.”

It’s always amusing that little brother Edmund (Jonathan R Scott) – a snivelling rotter in the early episodes – joins forces with the White Witch, selling out his siblings and kicking off the potential downfall of Narnia, just to get his hands on the White Witch’s lifetime supply of Turkish Delight.

With an icy crown atop her head, she charges around Narnia in a horse-drawn sleigh, turning Narnia’s assortment of creatures into stone, in what amounts to a never-ending temper tantrum. “I remember being fascinated by her,” laughs Dempsey. “She really looked after us.”

The real star – particularly if you happened to be seven years old at the time – was Aslan, voiced by Ronald Pickup. The other fantastic beasts of Narnia – brought to life by animation, or by men wearing furry goat-leg trousers – have predictably dated in 30-plus years, but Aslan is still roar-some stuff.

“Aslan was just an extraordinary creation,” says Home. “Very impressive for its time. It cost a fortune to make and required a lot of people to operate it. That made filming quite slow.”

Created by costume- and puppet-designer Vin Burnham, Aslan’s eyes and features were remote-controlled, while two movement artists were crammed into the lion’s body (it could be the nostalgia talking, but give me that over a CGI lion any day of the Narnian week). “The first day that lion appeared, we couldn’t believe it,” says Richard Dempsey. “It was just magical. We had little earpieces with his voice, Ronald Pickup, speaking to us. It was completely real.”

With both The Box of Delights and Narnia under his belt, Paul Stone was the go-to producer for fantastical kids’ TV, though Home credits director Marilyn Fox, who died shortly after, for the creative vision. “Marilyn was a fantastic director but a nightmare to work with – incredibly highly strung and nervous,” says Home. “She had to be reassured all the way along. She undervalued herself all the time.”

“I’d imagine to be a female director at that time to have that kind of responsibility, it must have been stressful,” says Dempsey. “But with us she was brilliant.”

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe broadcast for six weeks between November 13 and December 18, 1988. More than 30 years on, it’s still immensely watchable – if amusingly hokey by modern standards. “It was incredibly ambitious for its time,” says Home. “Now it doesn’t look anything like as spectacular – but it was, then.”

Brian Carnell, manager at Narniaweb and host of the Talking Beasts podcast, laughs about struggling to see past the beaver costumes. He also credits the BBC’s sense of Narnian-ness. “Some of the early scenes – Lucy entering and discovering Narnia – have a really nice atmosphere,” Carnell says. “It speaks to the simplicity of Lewis’s vision.”

The serial feels most interesting when it roams into darker, almost child-unfriendly territory. In 1988, the wolf Maugrim – the head of the White Witch’s secret police – was scary business. Even now, the actor Martin Stone still manages to snarl out some menace from under his fur onesie. “It doesn’t matter that the costume is cheesy,” says Brian Carnell. “It’s not just about the budget, there are ways to make you believe in something. They managed to make the magic come through.”

In one sequence, which goes literally dark, Richard Dempsey’s young hero fights the wolf and skewers him with a sword – heavy stuff for Sunday teatime. “I thought it was scary myself at the time!” laughs Dempsey.

But not everyone was a fan. The BBC’s Points of View read out letters mocking 13-year-old Sophie Wilcox’s weight and slating Dempsey. “Someone wrote in and said, ‘Why can’t the BBC get a real child to play Peter instead of the overgrown pompous yuppie dwarf?’” recalls Dempsey. Newspaper critics were harsh too. A reviewer for The Independent called them “awful little prannies” and wanted to see one of the boys “to receive a swift punch up the bracket”.

Paul Stone shielded the kids from the criticism and wrote them a letter in support. “I would like you to know that we have every confidence in your ability and I know that you will take praise as well as criticism with equal equanimity,” he wrote.

Viewers held around the 10 million mark and the show was nominated for four Baftas. “It really did re-establish big costume children’s drama as something the BBC was proud of and prepared to invest in,” says Home. “It gave us a lot of prestige.” The following year, the BBC committed £20 million to children’s programming.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was also a hit worldwide. “I went back to my comprehensive school in Stevenage,” says Dempsey. “I wasn’t aware of how popular it was until we started getting letters. When they started showing it around the world, we got letters from America.” Sophie Wilcox, who played Lucy, was sent copies of the Bible by fans. Even now, Dempsey receives fan letters. “I got a letter from someone in Iran last week saying how much they love it,” he says.

Three more BBC Narnia series followed, all directed by Alex Kirby: Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which aired consecutively in the weeks ahead of Christmas 1989, and The Silver Chair in 1990.

It’s fair to say The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the most fondly remembered. But Brian Carnell says that among Narnia diehards, The Silver Chair, which starred Tom Baker, is a fan favourite. “One explanation could be simple,” he says. “There aren’t many talking animals in The Silver Chair!”

“I think one disappointment was that they didn’t get to do the final books,” says Dempsey. Indeed, the three Narnia books that Lewis wrote last were left untouched: The Horse and his Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle. “They were definitely planning to do it,” says Dempsey. “But they were so expensive to make.”

It feels like the kind of production sorely missing from BBC kids’ programming now. “Kids programming does tend to get sat on a bit,” says Home. “Apart from times when the BBC needs it politically.”

For some quarters of Narnia fandom, the BBC versions are divisive – a bit old and fusty, perhaps. Some fans lean more towards the 2005 film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, produced by Disney. “I saw it,” says Home, “but I don't remember a thing about it!”. For others, the 1980s adaptation remains a magical slice of childhood.

“There’s a wide range of reactions among people who adore the Narnia books,” says Carnell about the BBC serial. “I think one factor is nostalgia. Many fans were young when they first saw them.

“The BBC version brings them back to a simpler time, when people in animal costumes still felt real. People in animal costumes and a little bit of fog. that’s all it took to make you feel transported.”

However, remember what I said about being hampered by the source material. Fools adapting this book can't just cut Christmas, even if they wanted to. After all, the kids have to get their magic weapons from someplace.

In Narnia, the siblings encounter numerous mythical creatures, including talking animals and a powerful witch named Jadis, who has cast a spell to keep the land in a perpetual winter. The children join forces with a noble lion called Aslan and embark on a quest to defeat the witch and restore peace to Narnia. The BBC adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is highly regarded for its attention to detail and its ability to capture the essence of Lewis' fantastical world. The performances by the young actors who portray the Pevensie children are particularly praised, as they bring the characters to life with sincerity and believability. The series also benefits from its use of practical effects and costumes, which add to the authentic feel of the story. The special effects may appear dated compared to modern standards, but they were groundbreaking at the time and still hold a charm for many viewers. The BBC Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe successfully introduced a new generation of fans to Lewis' timeless tale of adventure and bravery. Its popularity led to the production of subsequent adaptations of the other books in The Chronicles of Narnia series, including Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Overall, the BBC Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe remains a beloved adaptation of C.S. Lewis' beloved novel. Its dedication to the source material, strong performances, and magical atmosphere continue to captivate audiences, making it a timeless classic in the realm of fantasy television..

Reviews for "The Immersive World of BBC Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe"

1. Sarah - 2/5 stars

I found "Bbc lion wtch and wardrobe" to be a disappointing adaptation of the beloved book. The acting was lackluster and failed to capture the depth and complexity of the characters. The special effects were also underwhelming and failed to transport me into the magical world of Narnia. Overall, I felt that this version of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" fell short of capturing the essence and charm of the original story.

2. David - 1/5 stars

I was highly disappointed with "Bbc lion wtch and wardrobe". The production quality was poor, with shoddy set designs and mediocre costumes. The pacing of the story was also uneven, making it difficult to fully engage with the plot. Additionally, the performances felt forced and lacked authenticity. Overall, I would not recommend this adaptation to anyone who loved the book or is looking for a captivating viewing experience.

3. Amanda - 2/5 stars

As a fan of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", I was excited to watch "Bbc lion wtch and wardrobe". However, I was left feeling underwhelmed. The casting choices were questionable and did not match the image of the characters that I had in my mind. The adaptation also failed to capture the magical atmosphere and sense of wonder that the book beautifully portrays. While it had its moments, overall, this version fell short of my expectations.

4. Ryan - 2/5 stars

"Bbc lion wtch and wardrobe" lacked the emotional depth and complexity that make the original story so captivating. The performances felt wooden and unconvincing, making it difficult for me to connect with the characters on screen. Furthermore, the pacing of the story felt rushed, with important plot points being glossed over or simply omitted. Overall, I was disappointed with this adaptation and would recommend reading the book instead for a more fulfilling experience.

The Nostalgic Delight of BBC Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe