Moondial

This Six part childrens was just brilliant. Minty is a rather sulky teenager sent to live with her aunt following her fathers death. She finds a beautiful garden in at the local manor house and there is a sundial in the centre of the garden. Minty has strange mental powers and when she touches the dial she becomes dizzy! when she recovers she finds she has been transported through time to the turn of the century. Here she finds the manor house filled with maids and servants and lords and ladies. But there is a girl who is trapped in the house as she has a disfiguring birthmark which is seen as a devils mark! Minty with the help of the servant tom must rescue the girl before she becomes part of a sacrifice.

...and rewatched it for the first time in over thirty years this summer as part of a general binge of kids telly.

This was then, and still is now, really good. There's a real sense of mystery and eeriness, and the young cast act really well. The music/score is excellent, and while perhaps some of the effects have dated, the story hasn't, because it doesn't rely upon them.

British kids telly used to be brilliant, didn't it?!

I accidentally came across this BBC children's TV show after finding a list of the ten scariest children's TV programmes of the 70's and 80's. I was a long way from being a child when it first appeared on the channel back in 1988 so I missed it at the time and honestly wasn't even aware of its existence, but intrigued by its premise, I determined to track it down, which I duly did, enabling me to watch its surprisingly well-preserved six episodes.

Based on a popular children's novel by the author Helen Cresswell, it centres on a mid-teen girl Minty (apparently short for Aramint!) whose mother is involved in a car accident and ends up in a life-or-death comatose state. Minty was already staying at the time at the cottage of her elderly godmother and as an only child, takes the news very hard.

To occupy her time, she visits the nearby Belton Estate, with its old manor house and fantastic rolling grounds complete with age-worn statues. She gets into conversation with the aged caretaker who goes by the strange name of World, who instinctively senses her connection to what he believes are the ghostly manifestations of young children who were once connected to the estate, either through family or enforced child labour. When he tells her this and that she must be the one to set the children free, she's initially sceptical but when she falls asleep next to one of the statues of a moondial, she's astounded to waken up in the same place a centrury before. She immediately encounters a young Cockney servant boy, Tom, who can see, speak to and even touch her. Although in poor health, he's the only member of the extensive household who can interact with Minty, thus identifying him as one of the trapped spirits Minty has to help. He reveals to her that he has a younger sister, Dorrie, also in service, and also in failing health with whom he's desperate to join up again.

Soon afterwards the pair manifest together in the Georgian Era another hundred years before, where they witness a young girl being persecuted by a group of fellow-children as well as her beastly guardian, Mrs Vole, who calls her the Devil's Child, apparently solely because of the large birthmark on her face.

With every step back in time, Tom's health worsens. Minty visits her comatose mother in hospital, tape-recording and playing to her her adventures, hoping she'll get through to her and bring her back to the land of the living. As Halloween approaches, Minty senses time is running out to save both the children and her mother and plus just who is the mysterious and sinister Mrs Raven who settles into the B & B and apparently is intent on hindering Minty's efforts. It surely can't be a coincidence that she greatly resembles young Sarah's tormentor, the nasty Mrs Vole?

Atmospherically filmed, with a suitably spooky soundtrack, I was thoroughly captivated by this supernatural tale, which for me had echoes of a favourite British movie of the 70's, Lionel Jeffries' "The Amazing Mr Blunden" as well as of classic Victorian-era stories by the likes of Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

Young Siri Neal with her Kate Bush "Lionheart" locks and Tony Sands as young Tom are very natural in their roles and get good support from Jacqueline Pearce as the villainous Mrs Vole / Raven and Arthur Hewlett as old World. Directed with style and finesse by children's TV specialist Colin Cant, he concocts particularly striking sequences for both the title credits and within the actual programme, the time-travel elements, or are they just dream-sequences...?

Now to look out and view the other entries in the original list, I can only hope they meet the high standard set by this series.