Pop Vultures

You can normally rely on the BBC to put on something special over Christmas. This year their offerings included a Dr. Who special featuring Kylie Minogue, a Top Gear special interview with Evel Knievel, and a brand new episode of the really quite lovely Robbie The Reindeer. And all of this on top of The Queen’s Speech and endless repeats of Dad’s Army. Lucky us. But, for me, the most eagerly anticipated of the BBC’s festive offerings was their new adaptation of Ballet Shoes, the magnificent novel by Noel Streatfeild, about three sisters who go to stage school.

I suppose I should have expected disappointment, because television and film adaptations of your favourite novels rarely live up to the versions in your imagination. In fact, I’m struggling to think of any screen adaptation that’s as good as the original novel, except perhaps Pride and Prejudice, and that is mostly to do with my love of Colin Firth. But the BBC’s Ballet Shoes disappointed me because I’ve read the novel so many times that I just ended up being cross with them for all the details they changed.

Of course, if I’d never read the book, I’d have been able to appreciate all the things that were good about the adaptation. The BBC’s period dramas are unparalleled for their beautiful cinematography and staging, their period music and fashions and the detail in every scene. And Ballet Shoes was no exception to this - it was visually stunning, and sucked you right into 1930s London from the first moments. The casting was, for the most part, spot on. Emma Watson (best known, of course, as Hermione in the Harry Potter movies) can certainly act, even if she is way too old to be playing a character who, at the beginning of the story at least, is supposed to be about 12; Richard Griffiths was an inspired choice to play Great Uncle Matthew; and I thought that Marc Warren did an excellent job in the understated part of Mr Simpson.

But, all of this good stuff was eclipsed by my distress at watching the BBC tell a story I love, and doing it all wrong. The thing Noel Streatfeild consistently got so right in her novels for children (which are almost all about child prodigies of one kind or another) was the way she always included all the minutiae of the life of a child in show business. Readers are fascinated by the details of how one goes about registering for an acting licence, of all the different outfits needed for stage school, or what theatre terminology means. It makes it all seem real, and brings the fantasy to life.

But the BBC neglected all of these delicious details in favour of creating romantic sub-plots for the adult characters. The stage careers of the three Fossil sisters were pushed into the background repeatedly in favour of the romantic angst of their old-maid guardian, the loneliness of a widower who lost his wife and child to cholera, and a washed-up dancer who longs for the excitement of her youth. I expect that this was the BBC’s attempt to create an adaptation that appealed to adults as well as children, but it honestly didn’t work. Especially because most adults watching must have known the novel better than their children did anyway; it’s been in print since 1936.

I feel that Ballet Shoes was an opportunity missed for the BBC. If only they had taken the time to think about why the novel is so loved - the details about performance, the window into the theatrical world through the eyes of a child, the vicarious thrill of imagining yourself onto the stage - instead of trying to reshape it into something else, it could have been wonderful. Instead, the adaptation is lovely to look at, but irredeemably off-key. If however, you missed it when it aired on Boxing Day and I haven’t totally put you off, you’ll be pleased to know it’s available on DVDfrom January 7th.