Girls will swoon over a ballet classic but Strictly speaking, are we getting too much Brucie?
Ballet Shoes Boxing Day, BBC1, 8:30pm Strictly Come Dancing Final Today, BBC1, 5:50pm and 9:25pm Strictly Come Dancing Special Christmas Day, BBC1, 8:30pm Strictly Come Dancing Story Friday, BBC1, 6pm The Old Curiosity Shop Boxing Day, ITV, 9pm IT'S NOT EVEN CHRISTMAS YET and I've had my present already: a gorgeous nostalgic treat in the form of Ballet Shoes. Now, here's where the gender of our readership comes in: half of you are saying "hmmph, what's that?" and the other half are mentally swooning: Ballet Shoes! With Pauline and Petrova and Posy Fossil!
Gents, Ballet Shoes is a much-loved children's classic by Noel Streatfield. But the remarkable thing about this adaptation is that it goes beyond nostalgia to create a nuanced, intelligent period drama which is not just for children, but a satisfyingly sweet as a Chocolate Orange in a Christmas stocking.
Three unrelated babies are haphazardly adopted by an eccentric 1930s explorer, who dumps them onto his niece (Emilia Fox) and Nana (Victoria Wood), before disappearing on a trek. Years later, they are utterly, if genteelly, broke. They take in lodgers, including Hustle's Marc Warren, and the now-teenage girls are sent to stage school, where they try to land work that will bring in much-needed cash.
In a society where young people are growing up assuming that fame is desirable purely for its own sake , this is a welcome antidote, showing the downside of performing. Feelgood as the film is, it doesn't shy off from showing the children behaving badly and having believable tensions, fears and insecurities. A new subplot giving the adults a little romance is touching, while the period detail isn't overdone.
Emma Watson, in her first role outside of the Harry Potter series, is surprisingly good. All those prim elocutionary speeches as Hermione are gone, in favour of a natural, likeable portrayal of Pauline, the eldest, who veers between anxiety about her burgeoning acting career, slight smugness and the genuine wish, as they all have, to hold the strange family together.
Yasmin Paige, from The Sarah-Jane Adventures, is also excellent as middle sister Petrova, the odd one out – while Pauline becomes a star and Posy a promising ballerina, poor Petrova is rubbish and would much rather become an aviator like Amy Johnson. Yet she bravely forces herself to plod through humiliating auditions and walk-on parts.
Ballet Shoes has been beautifully adapted by Heidi Thomas, who was also responsible for the excellent scripts of the lovely Cranford and film version of another childhood favourite, I Capture The Castle. Classic adaptation king Andrew Davies should watch his back.
There is more dancing – more than almost anyone could want – this week with a Strictly Come Dancing overdose. Tonight's final sees nervy but plucky Matt-off-EastEnders strain to remember his steps, while luminous and perky Alesha-out-of-Mis-Teeq floats her way to victory (if there's any justice, though going by last week's X Factor result, there probably isn't).
On Christmas Day there's the show's Christmas Special, which sets this year's top four couples against past winners Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash, who will probably revive that samba with Karen Hardy for the umpteenth time.
Relive their past glories in the Strictly Come Dancing Story on Friday, a celebration which follows the show's pre-history in the heavily sequinned form of Come Dancing, which ran for almost 50 years. We see how SCD's success here has spread abroad, with Shilpa Shetty explaining the Indian version. Only we, though, have Bruce Forsyth in all his bad joke glory, yet somehow the show wouldn't be anything like as much fun without him.
In fact, there's something about Brucie that's faintly Dickensian – is it too late to cast him as the Aged Parent in Great Expectations? Derek Jacobi, however, is the lead in ITV's new version of The Old Curiosity Shop and frankly, with an actor like him you can't go wrong. This version also features Toby Jones, a smashing character actor finally getting a meaty role, as the sinister moneylender who preys on Jacobi's gambling shop owner and his granddaughter. Be warned, this is not a feelgood treat, but a dark and sad indictment of greed – actually quite appropriate for Boxing Day.
The full article contains 729 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
