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Judi Dench does a GREAT Madame Arcati, one of the juiciest roles for of all for mature women in films or stage.

Noel Coward had written Blithe Spirit with Margaret Rutherford in mind. It takes real skill to play her as an eccentric mystic but not be too much like a farce.

One reason I could not rate this movie higher than I did was that on the DVD, the subtitles are THE ABSOLUTE WORST DONE that I've ever seen! I don't have hearing loss, but often choose to turn on subtitles or closed captioning on Brit films in case an accent is unclear to me. On this movie, HONESTLY, DID NO ONE CHECK THE WORK OF THE SUBTITLE WRITER???

A typo here and there happens in many films, or a misheard word, but though I didn't count them up I'm sure there were 20-30 or more badly wrong instances in these subtitles. Heaven help those who DO need to depend on subtitles because of inability to hear its dialogue.

On the DVD, watch the "Making of..." and the interviews in its Special Features. Those give a deeper perspective into why and how the writers chose to show two individual insects for the full progression, from hatching egg to adulthood. Lots more fascinating insects, amphibians and reptiles also, of course! Some reviewers had commented here that a broader, more documentary style would have suited their tastes better, but this show was aimed to engage a variety of viewers, preschoolers to mature adults. Kids engage with a personalized story-line better than with just a general documentary not focusing on particular creatures. Photography is wonderful! Dame Judi Dench provides her usual skilled performance as its narrator. Worth watching!

The guest role of the teenage son is supposed to be in his senior year of high school or possibly the late part of his 11th grade year (a junior). The actor who was cast looked to me to be 30+ years of age. Because I was curious, I looked this episode up in imdb. I looked at its broadcast date (1989) and the birth year of that young actor (1970). So my visual impression was wrong -- it was an actor who was in fact younger than age 20 but he looks a decade too old for this part. It should have been an actor who looked much younger than Brian Bloom at that time, or at the very least, his wardrobe should have been styled MUCH younger. He was chronologically close in age to this role, but in appearance, Bloom looked a decade or more wrong for it. A good actor, though!