BBC To Broadcast New ‘Narnia’ Reading on Christmas Day
The BBC is set to release a brand new reading of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on Christmas Day as part of its The Read television series.
The abridged, hour long, reading of the book is from Welsh actor Steffan Rhodri, perhaps best to known to international audiences for his role as Reg Catermole in the seventh Harry Potter movie.
Now into its fourth series, The Read features well known actors performing readings of classic literature, presented within a thematically appropriate staging. Previous episodes have included books such Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, 1984, and A Christmas Carol
The Read follows a similar format to the BBC’s classic children’s television series Jackanory, a show which previously featured a reading of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe across five parts in 1967, as well as Prince Caspian in 1968, both read by British actress Marian Diamond.
The Read: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, is scheduled to air on BBC Four on Christmas Day, and will be available to UK viewers via BBC iPlayer shortly thereafter.
A fine idea indeed!
I would like to listen to this. I’m curious how they’ll abridge it to fit within an hour. Hopefully I can later find it outside of the U.K. as sometimes the BBC makes their podcasts more widely available.
The BBC is making it so they’ll take out every narrative that points to Christianity as the main subliminal message that the story of Narnia tells no doubt, just like the upcoming [MODERATOR REMOVED] series.
^ I hope this indivual returns after this airs to admit how silly their comment was… it’s impossible to take out “every narrative” that deals with the allegory when it comes to LWW. It seems like people are just looking for reasons to get themselves upset.
I watched the episode they did for ‘1984’ and thought it was quite interesting. It had maybe 3 to 4 different sets/locations and a few different audio-visual elements too.
I am not quite sure whether they managed to do the full book justice in just an hour, however I thought the production design was excellent and the format provided a new and unique way to connect with the text.
Excited to see what they’ve got in store for Narnia.
I love read Cs Lewis books, my favourite book of Cs Lewis is the lion the witch and wardrobe and all movies are brilliant, look forward to new one the magican nephew, also In 80s myself and my sister use to watch BBC one version of the lion the witch and wardrobe, it was brilliant, and cousins limerick me sister on mid term break we have old video recorder and both mothers go to extra vision video shop rent the lion the witch and wardrobe and on video cassette watch video recorder on tv, so hope anyone fan of Cs Lewis books and movies, l wrote children book but didn’t get published called the magic gate, from therese mccabe enniskerry, Ireland, happy Christmas
I absolutely love the Chronicles of Narnia. I remember watching the old school cartoon version and the live 80s action series in school. I wonder if those in America can catch this viewing on the BBCs YouTube channel? C.S. Lewis and Tolkien inspired me to write my own fantasy series.
BBC iplayer is region locked to the UK, right? Shame as I’d love to check this out.
Finn, the iPlayer site was locked but Radio 4 found on BBC dot com slash audio will play live for me in the United States. It doesn’t give it’s schedule for Christmas yet, but I would check there if you are fortunate enough to have Christmas off from work.
It might be different from BBC 4 though, I don’t know, sorry.
^ yes, BBC4 is a television channel., whereas BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel.
Although this show is just a reading, it is still a television show, and features visual augmentation such as different thematically styled sets fom which the reader narrates the story.