Some time after finishing the article about Rudyard
Kipling’s Stalky & Co. and the four Molesworth books, I learned that a BBC TVseries based on Stalky & Co. was made in 1982 and that there are two more Molesworth books – albeit written and illustrated many years later by other people.
I had no idea that these additional works existed.
I found some reviews, and there were enough positive ones to make me decide that the extra material seemed at least worth a look. I bought the Stalky TV series on DVD; I had to buy the Molesworth books too as they were not in my library’s catalogue.
I wondered if I had done the right thing, as dramatisations of books I like are usually very disappointing and tribute books are rarely as good as the originals.
The Stalky & Co. BBC TV series
I have always believed that books stimulate
the imagination whereas films short-circuit it. However, I decided to watch the Stalky DVD
in the hope that it would add another dimension to the stories.
I don’t know what people who have never read
the book would make of the TV series; my balanced opinion is that while it was not a
complete waste of money and it was not so bad that I was outraged by the
dramatisation, it is lucky that I had not expected too much.
Some of the stories are shown out of
sequence, and only six of the original nine have been included. I wish that they had dramstised The Impressionists instead of The Moral Persuaders, which was very painful to watch.
Although the clothes the boys and masters
wear look authentic, as often happens some of the characters did not look at all
as I had envisaged them, the schoolmasters Prout and King in particular.
Beetle, the character based on Kipling himself,
was acceptable. Kipling had a full moustache by the age of 15, and I was amused
to see Beetle with one too.
At least the series was made before political
correctness and diversity for its own sake ruined many of the BBC’s
productions: the characters were all white! The series was made as
entertainment, not to promote political ideas and social engineering.
Much of the appeal of the book is in the
narrative, and this is lacking in the films. The episodes are too short to do
justice to the original stories.
There were also some changes that I thought
were unnecessary. Just as some people must make their presence felt, some
people must make their mark when adapting a book for the screen. They change
the text just to show that they have made a contribution. I think that an
author’s work is sacred, and while it may need to be condensed it should not be
altered.
Anachronisms, unnecessary and inappropriate
changes and lack of authenticity can all be very jarring. For example, the
college is shown as a big country mansion – I loved the Victorian furnishings -
whereas the school in the stories was based on Kipling’s United Services
College, which was a converted terrace of 12 lodging houses. This in-line layout
was what made the hiding of the dead cat and its unpleasant effects in An
Unsavoury Interlude possible.
Kipling’s “twelve bleak houses by the shore”:
Rudyard Kipling at the college:
Photograph, facsimile, Rudyard Kipling
(1865-1936) at the United Services College, Westward Ho, Devon. The showcase
caption reads - "Rudyard Kipling seen with glasses, cap and moustache
(centre) with other students at the United Services College, Westwood Ho,
1878/82".
The two new Molesworth books
Author and journalist Geoffrey Willans, who wrote the text in the original Molesworth books, died
in 1958 at the age of 47; artist and satirical cartoonist Ronald Searle, who provided the illustrations, died in
2011 at the age of 91.
The tribute books they
inspired were written by Simon Brett and illustrated by William Rushton:
Molesworth Rites Again (1983)
How To Stay Topp (1987)
The Molesworth books are among their originators' best
known works, particularly in Willans’s case. They are a very hard act to follow,
but author and radio producer Simon Brett and cartoonist and comedian William
Rushton have produced something clever and amusing that is worth reading in
the style of, but not nearly as funny as, the original books.
Middle-aged Molesworth, now a husband and a father, gives his thoughts about subjects such as work, families and how to survive the adult world with the minimum of effort. He tells us what his some of his old schoolmates are doing: Basil Fotherington-Thomas for example (hello clouds, hello sky) is now a solicitor.
Even so, the books provide a small amount of entertainment.
Good effort boys, 5 marks out of 10.
Middle-aged Molesworth, now a husband and a father, gives his thoughts about subjects such as work, families and how to survive the adult world with the minimum of effort. He tells us what his some of his old schoolmates are doing: Basil Fotherington-Thomas for example (hello clouds, hello sky) is now a solicitor.
The main attraction of the originals is that
they are all about school and schoolboys and they look at the world of adults
from the perspective of young boys who have yet to enter it; writing about the
world of adults from the viewpoint of adults does not work nearly so well.
Something is lost in translation.
Simon Brett and William Rushton also worked
together on a radio series based on the original characters, with Brett writing
the script and Rushton playing the part of the adult Nigel Molesworth. I haven't listened to the programmes and probably wouldn't enjoy them if I did. Without
illustrations, the text loses much of its meaning.
The Complete Stalky & Co.
The Compleet Molesworth contains all four of the original books; The Complete Stalky & Co. contains the nine stories from Stalky & Co. and five extra ones.
There isn't much to add to what the original article says about the Stalky stories, but The United Idolators, where the boys get a craze for Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, deserves a mention for being, in my opinion, the funniest of the extra stories.
