The Owl Service

Having enjoyed Children of the Stones recently I bought this expecting great things of another (supposed) classic of spooky children's (or young adult's) TV drama. I have to report that I was sorely disappointed.

Somehow, despite having a very limited number of locations and cast – or, in fact, anything very much happening for long periods – the story is still extremely difficult to follow. The direction is uneven; plot lines tail off and are never explained or resolved and the acting is often inept sometimes verging on the pantomimic. The decision not to even show one of the main characters (Margaret – I wonder if Mat Lucas and David Walliams were taking notes?) just adds to the general confusion.

This is a real shame because the storyline has great potential and there are odd flashes of brilliance. You just feel the whole thing could have been much more effectively and concisely told in half the time and that the necessity of padding it out over eight episodes left even those involved unsure as to what the hell was going on.

I can only put it down to the inexperience of Peter Plummer and Alan Garner in writing and directing TV drama. Both of them were also probably too close to the material to be able to see what a tangled mess they were creating.

On the plus side, the title sequence is great; Gillian Hills is wonderfully sexy and her relationship with Michael Holden is touching and occasionally quite erotic. Francis Wallis as Roger, on the other hand, is such a moaning prig it's impossible to feel any sympathy for him at all.

View as a weird late '60s TV curio – just don't expect a satisfying dramatic experience.

I think I'm one of maybe two Americans who have seen this (the other being Steve Puchalski of "Shock Cinema" magazine on whose recommendation I recently bought this DVD, sight unseen, from Amazon UK). This short-lived but fondly remembered British TV series is a very offbeat, supernatural mystery set in the Welsh countryside revolving around a set of dinner plates (that's right--dinner plates) that a step-brother and sister and their housekeeper's son find in the attic of a country cottage. It's a low-budget and (especially by today's standards) low-key affair, but it is nevertheless effective and interesting, at times even unsettling.

You could compare it to the offbeat, unsettling American TV series "Twin Peaks",I guess, but it really has indelible elements of 60's era BBC programming and high-quality children's literature (it was based on a children's book). I personally enjoy all of these things, and being one quarter Welsh, I find Welsh mythology very interesting (although I have to say the Welsh countryside is actually one of the most boring places I've ever visited).

Due to it's roots in children's literature and television, this is obviously not chock-full of sex or violence. But what the mild violence it contains is eerily unsettling, and there is kind of a teen love triangle that is rather perverse in that two of it's members are step-brother and step-sister. Moreover, the step-sister is played by Gillian Hills, a gorgeous 60's-era, Swinging London dolly-bird who is most famous for a pair of three-way sex scenes in two classic movies of that era (with David Hemmings and Jane Birkin in "Blow Up" and with Malcolm McDowell and some other actress in "A Clockwork Orange"). She almost can't help, but bring SOME sex appeal to the proceedings. Still, by modern-day standards this is very tame and rather slow. But I liked it simply because it was offbeat and interesting, and not really like ANYTHING I'd ever seen before.

This is simply one of the finest children's TV series ever made! Yes, I really do mean that. It harks back to a age of nostalgia and lost times. So many wonderful memories of me as a very young child watching this. The vintage age of children's TV was the late 60s too around 1980.oh,and to the reviewers who only gave this one star and complaining about the actors ages and production, it was 1969!and you obviously don't have a clue what you are watching. Some people just like to belittle for the sake of it.

It's sad and disappointing that some reviews fail utterly to appreciate that this serial was an absolute classic of its time. It was bold in its conception, using real locations instead of studio-based sets which was unusual for its time. Its many years now since I first saw it but I remember it vividly as a very disturbing piece of story-telling thanks to the wonderful writing of the great Alan Garner and the brilliant direction of Peter Plummer.

Strange that reviewers' opinion about this series is split, in that there is very little of merit in here at all, beyond Edwin Richfield's trademark twitchiness. It is extremely slow, stretched to breaking point across four hours. The three juvenile leads are extraordinarily inept and equally thumpable (well, maybe Roger is marginally worse than the others). Eerie moments are not followed up, so their effects dissipate. Mysteries are raised and never resolved. Bafflingly, the character Margaret, who is fairly crucial, is never shown; even the DVD notes fail to explain why. Some scenes have to go to enormous lengths to work around her absence; even a cardboard cut-out in silhouette would have been preferable. It is not stylish; the camera is generally static and the editing plodding. And the resolution, when it comes, resolves very little, choosing instead to wrap it all up in sci-fi gobbledegook.

And yet somehow it has become a cult classic. Go figure.