The Young Visiters

I came to this sideways from the original novella, which was an absolute hoot. The film was a wonderful adaptation, pulling dialog directly from little Daisy's masterwork and adding to it in the same flavor. At once absurd and moving, it's the slightly wobbly story of an ordinary man who aspires to a higher station and the pretty girl desperate to hobnob among the nobility herself. They embark together, yet separately, and manage to achieve most of their ambitions, but not quite all they'd hoped. The characters are vivid and portrayed by top talent in Jim Broadbent, Lyndsey Marshal, Hugh Laurie, and Bill Nighy. They're all a bit dim-witted and bombastic, but you really feel for their ineptness. It's Broadbent's show—altho he has to fight off Nighy at times as the drunken, roguish earl. Simultaneously insightful (princes are ordinary people too) and oblivious (Ethel spends an awful lot of time alone with men she barely knows), The Young Visiters is both children's literature for adults and adult literature for children.

This is a lovely film. No smut, innuendo or anything nefarious whatsoever. Apparently originally written by a girl of nine, all her spelling errors have been left in place. The Prince of Whales indeed! Lovely shots of the British countryside, Bluebell Railway (I assume it was) and all. The story is very simplistic, but thoroughly enchanting. Nice to have the Crystal Palace mentioned and depicted - I only wish they could have rebuilt it for the film, but that might have nudged the budget up a bit! Recommended to anyone who enjoys the values of childhood and thinks childhood is all too brief.

This is the second time Daisy Ashford's famous book has been filmed for UK television. Sadly, this is the less successful version. The whole appeal of the original book was seeing and hearing about the world through the words of a nine year old Victorian girl. Her unique spelling, opinions and ideas - mostly romantic notions about how adults in love behave - make for hilarious reading.

This BBC TV production changes much of the original material to suit it's own purposes, which completely obliterates the artless innocence of the book. Worse still, they have actually made up new lines, supposedly in the style of the original book, and yet actually left out many of Daisy's original and memorable lines of dialogue along the way! They have also added new characters and even devised new mis-spellings that Daisy Ashford never included...what a mistake! It's impossible to embellish a piece of work as original as "The Young Visiters" just for the purposes of padding it out into a full length movie...it's a unique piece of work that sprung from the mind of a nine year old girl, and written circa 1890 - what script writer today could possible emulate that with sufficient accuracy?! So, the overall result is a mildly amusing but perplexing comedy of manners with the characters delivering odd speeches and unfathomable mannerisms, and seemingly unable to spell when they write letters to each other. As a TV programme, it just doesn't make the charm of the book come to life.

The previous version was made way back in 1984 and seems to have disappeared completely now, it does not seem to be listed under the same title on IMDb...? But it was in fact better than this effort, plus it starred Tracey Ullman, who was hilariously well cast as the pompous Ethel. And the cast got to concentrate much more on the original immortal dialogue, unlike those roped into this mess. None of the humour stands out in the new version, even though it has a stirling cast and a big budget. If you watch this and enjoy it, that's great, but in my opinion the spirit of Daisy Ashford's book has been all but wrung out of it.

Naming the original author of this work has been omitted, which is a shame because it makes the viewers understanding of the story all the more relevant.

"The Young Visitors: Or, Mr. Salteena's Plan" was written by nine-year-old Daisy Ashford in 1890 (yes, 1890!) and is an innocent yet inadvertently amusing spoof of Victorian society.

The following is a copy of the book review written by Terry Rose, grandson of Daisy Ashord, as appears on www.amazon.co.uk:

"My Grandmother, Daisy Ashford never set out to become an author, writing stories was entertainment for her and her sisters. Her writing "career" started at the age of 4 when she dictated The Life of Father McSwiney to her father and ended at the age of 14 with The Hangman's Daughter. Her best novel, The Young Visiters was written in 1890 when she was 9.

That it was published at all is almost as remarkable a story as the book itself. Daisy and her sisters came upon a bundle of notebooks neatly tied and stored whilst clearing their mother's house following her death. They found The Young Visiters so amusing Daisy sent it to a sick friend to cheer her up. She in turn passed it to Frank Swinnerton, a novelist and reader for Chatto and Windus who believed it could be successfully published. What followed would these days be thought of as clever marketing but in fact was quite unintentional back in 1919 when the book was first published. JM Barrie agreed to write the preface and an amazed public, unable to accept that a 9 year old could have possibly written it assumed that Dsiy did not exist and that Barrie was the author. This resulted in huge amounts of publicity on both sides of the Atlantic and The Young Visiters immediately became a bestseller. Daisy, always shy and modest had to take to giving readings in London to dispell the myth that Barrie was the author. The Young Visiters has remained in print (Daisy's other stories have been published over the years but none has been as popular) and become widely loved. Other reviewers here have written better than I could about the charm of the little book. The BBC have just made it into a wonderful film, with Patrick Barlow's screenplay capturing the magic of Daisy's writing. We visited the set whilst they were filming at St Paul's Cathedral, the cast were captivated by the book. I think everyone will be."

One of my favourite TV dramas for all ages. How often do you get so many actors of this calibre in one drama? Not often. The writing and acting is glorious. One of those images that sticks in my mind is Simon Russell Beale who plays The Prince of Whales (not Wales) as he sits there with his small Christmas party crown perched on his head. But this drama also says a lot about society, whilst also being gloriously funny. I hope the BBC decide to repeat it this Christmas as I don't think it is available on DVD or to stream. Of course, I'm OK because I recorded it when it was on the telly and have kept it on DVD. Glad I did. Shame that IMDB can't spell Visitor though.