Comments on: Dancing Queens: Ballet Shoes on the BBC

By: Anna

Anna — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:49:57 +0000

I completely disliked the movie. There were barely any details, and when you wanted to see more of something they just cut to the next scene. It had no real plot, except for the fact they were poor and trying to get money and they were worried about this woman’s illness, it was just scenes that each lasted about half a minute each.I give it one out of five stars.

By: Bextera

Bextera — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:15:11 +0000

Stellanova, thanks for posting that link, the piece is absolutely spot on.

I am still grinding my teeth over the horrendous portrayal of Sylvia and that awful storyline.

By: Stellanova

Stellanova — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:06:02 +0000

Both Plattie and Bex have basically said everything I wanted to say! The changes seemed totally pointless, and distracting. You're both right about the charm of all those practical details - the licences, the backstage protocol and, most of all, the practical attitude to money, which was presented as a vague "oh woe, we are poor" sort of thing on screen. BTW, Shirley Dent wrote an excellent piece in the Guardian about the adaptation, which I pretty much agreed with too.

By: Bextera

Bextera — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:01:44 +0000

My Mum and I watched it together, having both read the book at least a dozen times each, and were horrified. Exactly as you said the minutiae of the child’s life is what keeps the reader enthralled and exactly what the BBC neglected.

I was actually very shocked with the portrayal of the children: they kept throwing tantrums and had behaviour that was very unlike a child of the 1930’s, overall they appeared far too modern. I was also very unimpressed with Petrova – where was the skinny sallow girl that I loved because she has Eastern European skin like me. And I also hated the way Winifred was protrayed, who was essentially a very sweet girl but not very pretty at all.

But the worst thing was the adults. Garnia/Sylvia, not helped by Emilia Fox’s insipid acting, was destroyed with that horrendous storyline. Nana, who was well played by Victoria Wood, was just too modern. And as for Thea, she was meant to be a brilliant dancer with a very strict and tough attitude to training and it was so disappointing watching her. Then Mr Simpson who was meant to be Petrova’s saviour, sharing a love of cars and aeroplanes and hating dancing being turned into a soppy love-sick widower who took dancing lessons himself.

The whole thing stank of trying to create a big drama that attracts people of all ages, but I don’t think Noel Streatfeild would have wanted that. I thought it was also put on far too late in the evening when the reader audience, aged 7 – 13, might be heading off to bed, exhausted by Christmas. Ultimately it was just so unnecessary to change it so much when it’s a story that is still a children’s bestseller after 70 years.