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The Railway Children (2000) (TV)

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13 comments in total

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
superior TV adaptation of an old favourite, 6 February 2005

Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom

This (perhaps superfluous) version of the Edith Nesbit novel was made for TV and, in an interesting piece of casting, had Jenny Agutter as the mother – she had been eldest daughter Bobbie thirty years earlier. Some changes to the fabric of the story were inevitable: more screen time is given to the events which cause the children's father to be arrested; the paper chase is no longer linked to the family of the old gentleman; and some of the characters are more sharply drawn than before.

As Bobbie, Jemima Rooper, is very good, but the other children Phyllis and Peter are just OK (played by Clare Thomas and Jack Blumenau). Agutter is perfect as their careworn mother, while Michael Kitchen makes an impact as their wronged father. Gregor Fisher plays Perks the railway-man with a good combination of jollity and righteous indignation; and Richard Attenborough is an inspired choice for the old gentleman (who is not as mysterious as he had been in the 1970s version; we guess he's a high-up in the civil service or the government in this one).

The great strength of the TV version is the attention to detail - we can feel the smoky fog from the 30s steam train as it rushes through the countryside.

An enjoyable TV film, but a complement to the classic one, not a replacement.

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10 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Simply wonderful, 12 April 2004

Author: FrozenDreamer from Sunny London

I watched this movie out of sheer chance. Sitting far away from my remote, and on a lazy Easter Monday afternoon... I couldn't be bother to get up and change the channel... so just stayed where I was and watched this great film.

There is no death... no destruction. It's just a happy film that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It's really good... so if you get the chance to watch it, do.

10 flaps outta 10 because it made me happy. And make sure you have a big box of chocolates with you when you watch it as well... coz it makes it even sweeter :) FrozenDreamer xxx

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Almost as good as the 1970 version..., 13 November 2000
Author: peanut-18 (hsteinmiller@yahoo.com) from Yorktown, Virginia

I very much enjoyed this latest version of The Railway Children, yet I felt it left out a very important part by not including the relationship between the injured hound, Jim, and the children's "Old Gentleman," and by adding a romantic sub-text between Bobbie and Jim not found in the book. I was also disappointed in the portrayal of the bargee, (and the elimination of his wife and baby son), and the elimination of the scene where Peter and Phyl wake the signalman up. Petty grievances, yes, but I'm so fond of the book that I want any movie to include all my favorite bits. The performances were wonderful; Jack Blumenau as Peter was especially effective at capturing the wistfulness of a boy in the company of too many women. Jenny Agutter as the mother was a nice touch, and Jemima Rooper as Bobbie and Clare Thomas as Phyl were spot on. It's such a delightful story, and it's not as sickly sweet as much of the so-called "family fare" being offered up these days. Even though the story is almost a hundred years old, its freshness and message are still relevant, and it allows a child to imagine being as resourceful as the protagonists. Well done indeed, and if I do prefer the earlier movie, it's not by much!

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5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
On track to sheer delight, 24 April 2000

Author: David Lonsdale (davlons@hotmail.com) from Stevenage, England

What a sheer delight this TV film was. I saw it last night (Sunday, 23 April 2000) as it premiered on TV, and really enjoyed it. Jenny Agutter, as Mother (originally oldest daughter in the 1970 version) took a bit of a back seat, but I thought the young actors who played her children did a splendid job. This was particularly so for the oldest daughter (Bobbie, played by Jemima Rooper) who was very convincing in her roll. The young lad (Peter, played by Jack Blumenau) was a real natural as well. Hard to fault, but I was not sure of Gregor Fisher's roll as the Station Keeper, Perks. He tends to be too typecast in the UK, as an underclass Scotsman, to carry the roll off very well. I highly recommend this film - it really is a breath of fresh air, when we suffer so much from films which show much bleak dystopia, or over-sugary romantic mush. Well done to all involved - including the first class (pun!) actors, like the "Old Gentleman". A real treat.

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6 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Superb and faithful adaptation!, 6 August 2001

Author: cmashieldscapting (cmashieldscapting@hotmail.com) from United States

Amazingly, this is the fifth film of this novel (BBC TV 1950, 1957, 1967, theatrical film 1970, BBC TV 2000) and Jenny Agutter appeared in three of them (as Bobbie, 1967 and 1970, and as Mother, 2000). I thought nothing could be better than her performance as Bobbie, but she even truly surpassed herself playing Bobbie's mother! In this 2000 production, the BBC has reached the height and pinnacle of perfection, having probably produced the best filmed adaptation of any of E. Nesbit's works to date.

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5 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
This is even better than the first film!, 18 November 2005

Author: whistlestop from Ireland

I just loved this film - even though I thought the first 1970 film was wonderful, this is better. All the actors are super, and I thought Gregor Fisher was great as Perks, a lovely warmth to him. The really inspired touch was in getting Jenny Agutter to play the mother role this time, and she does it superbly. I always chuckle over the lines given to Bobbie and herself; she warns Bobbie not to go onto the railway line, and Bobbie asks innocently "Didn't you ever walk on the rail tracks when you were a girl?" Tongue in cheek, a nice touch... The trains are gorgeous, scenery beautiful, but we don't see enough of the lovely Michael Kitchen. I've bought this one to watch again and again.

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6 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Delightful reworking of a family favourite, 7 December 2003
Author: Graham Ditcham from England

For those of us who were spellbound all those years ago by Lionel Jeffries' vision and would therefore view the idea of a further version with disdain, you should be delighted to know that Catherine Morshead, of the popular TV series `Silent Witness' and `Dangerfield' fame, has created just as much a treat thirty years on for Carlton TV.

Simon Nye of `Men Behaving Badly' fame provides a script that restrains any of the cast from copying the antics of his notorious creations, although his faithful adaptation includes Edith Nesbit's incredibly condescending remark by the mother as she tells her three clearly cosseted children, "We've got to play at being poor for a bit". This sentence is offered as explanation for the enforced move for the middle class family from a grand London house to the country, to a friend's cottage after the father is sentenced to five years imprisonment on spying charges. The 1968 BBC serial believably depicted a little white house of the book, unlike the later productions with presumably bigger budgets which opted for proportionally larger rambling farmhouses that would seem impossible to manage without servants, and not at all in keeping with a family of straitened means. The decision by the mother not to tell her children the truth is in keeping for the period but would seem unlikely in today's culture of celebrity gawping. Fortunately for them they are kept protectively away from school and thus any chance of mixing with other youngsters, so never run the gauntlet of cruel taunts. Thus with inevitable curiosity they find themselves drawn to exploring the nearby railway and its activities.

John Daly (from a host of TV productions through the 1990's including the exquisitely filmed `Persuasion') literally paints a picture in motion of the train ferrying the family to the country by dusk that is in splendid harmony with Simon Lacey's musical score, and an image of W H Auden's poem `Night Mail' is fittingly conjured up: "Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder, Shovelling white steam over her shoulder, Snorting noisily as she passes, Silent miles of wind-bent grasses."

The 1903 period detail of this remake is commendable, allowing for the author's use of 1870's red petticoats and the absence of the starched formal Edwardian capes of the 1970 film. The Bluebell Railway on the borders of the Capability Brown designed Sheffield Park in Sussex, replaces the Bronte country and Keighly and Worth Valley Railway of the previous adaptations. The well preserved rolling stock gets full promotional treatment and the longest restored tunnel on a private line is in no need of a temporary extension, as was required for its predecessor for the hare and hounds race. Incidentally the Rev W Awdry wrote a tribute to the Bluebell Railway in 1963 to add to his `Thomas the Tank Engine' collection with a tale dedicated to the line's first engine, Stepney, a Stroudley Terrier built in 1875.

The Old Gentleman role is perfectly filled by Richard Attenborough in his quintessential Santa Clause mode borrowed from the remake of `Miracle on 34th Street'. Jenny Agutter makes a wonderful transition from her memorable performance as Bobbie three decades earlier, into a different Mother to her predecessor, Dinah Sheridan, but with a grace and charm of her own. Jemina Rooper manages to combine a modern Roberta with a past innocence and brings maturity to the role with her 18 years, as she asks the painfully pertinent question of her mother as to how long you can remember someone you really love without seeing them. Jack Blumenau (starring in Peter Pan at the Savoy Theatre) and Clare Thomas prove very ably suited for the younger siblings of Peter and Phyllis, with touching but not mawkish performances. On first sight Gregor Fisher (currently to be seen in Richard Curtiss' directorial debut `Love Actually') struck me as an unusual choice for Perks and in stark contrast to the excitable Bernard Cribbins of the 1970 film. I am more used to seeing him in a string vest uttering incomprehensible Glaswegian, at least to my uninitiated Sassenach ears, in his guise as Rab C Nesbit, which probably coloured my initial impression. However, I warmed to his creation and he interacts well with the severe stationmaster (Clive Russell) and the rest of the cast. Sophie Thompson is naturally the shrinking violet that she does so well as Perks' wife, akin to her Miss Bates in `Emma' and the antithesis of her prurient bridesmaid in `Four Weddings and a Funeral'.

Agutter argues that Nesbit's desire for a utopian society is reflected in her writing as alluded to in the `The Phoenix and The Carpet', which the BBC turned into a welcome children's teatime serial in 1997, and that, like all her Edwardian novels, captures an innocence that is to be destroyed with the outbreak of the First World War. A further theme of Nesbit's novels concerns time and memory as Agutter cites on the Carlton website, taking from the 'Enchanted Castle', the following: "The plan of the world seems plain, like an easy sum that one writes in big figures on a child's slate. One wonders how one can ever have wondered about anything. Space is not; every place that one has seen or dreamed of is here. Time is not; into this instant is crowded all that one has ever done or dreamed of doing. It is a moment and it is eternity." The plan of the world is indeed very plain when we are young with the clean slate before us, it is only as we grow that we complicate the simplistic. We become so embroiled in life's mesh that by the time we realise what has happened we have been caught too tightly in the grasp of the here and now to extricate ourselves.

This very fitting tribute to a timeless classic that has never been out of print, should ensure its continued popularity for generations to come with both book and film available from Amazon's website.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Great family entertainment, 2 July 2006

Author: bavo-1 from Australia

I loved this, what a great way to spend a cold Sunday afternoon in Sydney. I remember watching and really enjoying both the 1970 movie and series of The Railway Children as a girl. It was a nice surprise to see Jenny Agutter who was Roberta then, play the Mother this time with just the right amount of fragility and fortitude. The children, especially the girl who played Roberta, were delightful and they made a very believable family. Richard Attenborough was wonderful as always as the old gentleman, who wouldn't want a kindly friend like him? The scenery was really beautiful, lush and green and the 1905 touches like the steam trains and fashion are very much appreciated. A lovely way to revisit this timeless story.

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2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
A family is happy until their dad is accused for something he did not do., 27 October 2005

Author: husnain ali from Peterborough, England

I really enjoyed watching The Railway children and it was nice to see Jenny Agutter as the mother as she had the part of Jemima Rooper as Bobbie back in 1970 and done a great job in both of The Railway children. Three kids live happily with their parents and are rich, until nearly everything changes. Their father is accused for something he did not do and the rest of the family have to move house. When they move house they find out that they live near a railway station and they save a train from an accident. A man helps the eldest child to find their dad and at the end they dad comes back from prison without the other two finding out.

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2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
a beautiful film, 20 November 2001

Author: Sylvia Marciniak (sylviastel@aol.com) from United States

I really loved this film. It is beautifully done with a stellar cast of actors and actresses. The countryside setting is beautiful and heavenly. A touching story of a rich family who becomes poor and loses their father to prison. Their relationship with Sir Richard Attenborough's character is charming, delightful, and wishful. The children seek escape from their problems at the railroad tracks. By a simple wave, they begin a wonderful relationship. Sir Richard is more like a Santa Claus character and he does his humanly best to help them. It doesn't matter by the end, that they still live poorly than before as long as they're still together. I would strongly recommend this film version and the Edith Nesbit book to teachers and their English classes. I think they would benefit it form it.

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