10 saturday review Saturday December 18 2021 | the times“I am a great believer in the power of
fairytales and children shouldn’t be molly-
coddled,” Gatiss says. “The one thing I
can’t bear these days is trying to teach
children about moral equivalence when
we live in a very bad world. In fact, I don’t
think there’s ever been a better time to say
to children, ‘There are monsters out there
and you better watch out for them.’ This
kind of story can really do that. It’s a lovely
festive treat, but as with Dickens and A
Christmas Carol, you have to believe in the
strength of the opposition.”
Ah, Dickens. He’s felt in this too, not
least in Mrs Wickens’s speech inflections,
referring to “haccidents” and “hinfluenza”,
and calling things “wery rude” like a rei-
magined Mrs Gamp. The redemptiveness
of A Christmas Carol also runs through the
story (Gatiss’s version of this is playing
at the Alexandra Palace Theatre in north
London). And what do you know? Blun-
den is played by Simon Callow, who
appeared as Dickens in Gatiss’s first Doc-
tor Who story. Beginnings and ends. It’s
very Four Quartets.
Callow for his part seems to see the
Blunden tale in much more conventional-
ly religious terms. It’s a “strongly and una-
voidably Christian story,” says Callow,
who is on the same Zoom call. “The idea of
change, the power of change and the possi-
bility of taking another track is very deep
in us, I think.”
Yet Callow views the Blunden story
through the prism not just of the New Tes-
tament but of more contemporary con-
cerns — making amends for historic
injustices. This is something viewers may
well consider given that the modern family
who engineer the redemption — MrsAllen (Vinette Robinson) and her children,
Jamie (Jason Rennie) and Lucy (Tsion
Habte) — are played by non-white actors.
Lucy and Jamie find Britain in 1821 living
off the fat of empire and slavery, I suggest.
Was this on Gatiss’s mind and did it play a
part in his casting, or his thinking about
the story and its redemptive strands?
“The danger in thinking so consciously
about such things is everyone starts pan-
icking about feeling like they are ticking
boxes,” he says carefully. Gatiss’s version
has the Allen family living in contempo-
rary north London (the 1972 film sets their
lives in 1918) to reflect “modern Britain”,
he says — but he is adamant that all the
casting decisions were only about getting
“the best people”.
“But interesting things came out of it.
For instance, the part of Meakin [Mrs
Wickens’s servant] is brilliantly played by
Amanda Lawrence, but because the cast-
ing was entirely open we did actually want
to see several actors who were not white.
And quite a lot of them didn’t want to be
seen for servants and that was an interest-
ing moment. It’s a lovely part and a very
funny and interesting part and they didn’t
want to go there and that reflects a shift in
the world of the drama.
“It’s a nuanced debate, but... maybe it’s
not the forum... it’s also a children’s film
for Christmas,” he says. “The melancholy
of it is so powerful to me... especially at
Christmas. Christmas and ghosts go to-
gether. And the thing for me is how sad it
is. But also how joyous it is. But you have to
go into the shadows to find the light and
that’s what really speaks to me.”
The Amazing Mr Blunden is on Sky
Max on Christmas Eve, 7pm, and Nowtelevision
The Amazing
Mr Blunden
lives again
Mark Gatiss has resurrected his childhood
favourite for Christmas, he tells Ben Dowell
As much as I
love the film,
it’s a 50-year-
old movie
and this story
deserves to
be presented
to a brand
new audience
D
ark winter nights at
home eating beans on
toast while waiting
for something magical
to happen. That’s how
the actor, writer and
director Mark Gatiss
remembers his childhood growing up in
1970s Co Durham. He also recalls his
seven-year-old self sitting in his primary
school classroom watching the The Amaz-
ing Mr Blunden on the afternoon they
broke up for the Christmas holidays.
“I can see the school hall and it was that
Bob Cratchit hour, about three o’clock,
and it was just gloaming. It ticked every
box I had even then,” Gatiss says. “It’s got
ghosts, time travel, sentiment, melan-
choly, silliness, everything I love. It’s like a
great big box of delights.”
The 1972 film of The Amazing Mr Blun-
den (and trust Gatiss to reference it via
another magical children’s story, John
Masefield’s The Box of Delights) was based
on a book called The Ghosts by Antonia
Barber. It follows two children who,
prompted by the ministrations of the mys-
terious Mr B, travel back to 1821 to rescue
two children called Sara and Georgie, who
effectively have to stop their own murder
at the hands of the wicked Mr and Mrs
Wickens; Blunden feels guilty about not
having prevented the crime in his corpore-
al life and he wants to change history.
Gatiss has remade it for Sky, writing,
directing and appearing in it. It’s such a
Gatiss story I wonder whether watching
the film as a child made him the man he is
— the League of Gentlemen comedy
troupe member who went on to become
the go-to adaptor of BBC ghost
stories and a key member of Steven
Moffatt’s Doctor Who writing
team. Or did the experience of
watching the film just tick every
box (of delights) that were already
inside him? “The child is the father
of the man, you mean?” he says. “It’s
a good question.”
I am not sure even he
knows the answer; life,
he is aware, isn’t
straightforward. And
complicating and
deepening his feel-
ings about the story
are more recent
momentous up-
heavals in Gatiss’s
life. This year, a
few weeks before
filming this sum-mer, Gatiss’s dad, Maurice, died, leaving
him parentless at the age of 54. The new
film is dedicated to the man he loved.
“We didn’t see [Mr Blunden] together,
but my dad is such a huge part of my
moviegoing life as well as everything else.
The first half dozen films I saw have left
such a profound effect on me. It’s when
you come across things and say, ‘Oh, there
it is again.’ It’s like a little bell.”
Sorting through his parents’ things after
Maurice’s death led to another tinkling
intimation of life’s mysteries. In their attic,
Gatiss came across a suitcase full of his
parents’ wedding telegrams from 1957,
looking as freshly minted as on the day
they were sent. It was, he says, as if time
had been preserved, and we have a conver-
sation about time, memory and another
key influence on Barber’s novel, TS Eliot’s
Four Quartets.
Given how much he loves the original
Blunden film, was he not tempted to leave
it alone like those time capsule telegrams?
“Oh, it felt heretical at first,” he says, but he
agreed because he was “slightly afraid that
someone else would do it”.
“As much as I love the film, it’s a 50-year-
old movie and this story deserves to be
presented to a brand new audience who
would never go near a 50-year-old film. I
remember trying to show my nephew a
black-and-white film and he couldn’t
believe anything would be presented in
black-and-white. He said, ‘Why would
they bother?’ ” The new version enabled
him to reimagine the would-be-child-
killer villains, with Gatiss playing Mr
Wickens as a crazed pyromaniac
(and looking very League of
Gentlemen) while the role
of Mrs Wickens, played
by Diana Dors in the
1972 original, was given
to Tamsin Grieg who
is perhaps more
terrifying.in league Tamsin Greig
and Mark Gatiss as the
Wickenses in the new
version. Below: Simon
Callow as Mr BlundenJUSTIN DOWNING/SKY UK