The Owl Service

Supposedly produced for young people, this mini-series has moments of eroticism and sexuality that are too adult for adolescents. The eternally youthful looking Gillian Hills was 24 in 1968 when she starred in this. Gillian, Michael Holden and Francis Wallis form the odd love triangle in an old Welsh country house and are drawn by occult forces to reenact a Welsh myth. They're supposed to be around 15 or 16. There's a weird vibe to the show. There's a modern car and SLR camera in some scenes and the three dress in style contemporary to 1968, especially Gillian who wears the miniskirts of that time. She's petulant and pouty and not really lovingly photographed by the DP and the two guys who vie for her attention are even more pouty and petulant. Yet the rooms in the fetid, worn out house are lit by old-fashioned oil or kerosene lamps making it seem like a house of the 19th century. The audio is in rough condition and with odd dialogue and overwrought acting, the listening is rough going. The Owl Service is not horror, not a soap opera, not a mystery and not a romantic saga but it's a mix of all of them.

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.

This was originally a Sunday evening children's programme. Some people found the plot hard going. However this does not distract from beautifully filmed,mystic quality of the programme. As a video release this would ideal, enabling it to be digested in your own time. Could be Gillian Hills' finest hour?

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 not actually a movie but a TV series adapted from an award winning novel. Although Garner's work was marketed as children's fiction at his best he is multi-layered and this is one of his best. Alison is on holiday with her newly re-married mother, stepfather and stepbrother at a house in a remote Welsh valley. She begins a relationship with Gwyn, the son of the housekeeper, much to the disgust of her mother but soon parental disapproval is the least of their worries when Gwyn finds an owl-patterned dinner service - the Owl Service of the title - hidden away in the loft and releases an ancient magic into the valley. The past is re-enacted in the present, the tragedy of what has happened over and over in the valley is relived with a modern slant. A brief description like this can't do justice to the creeping tension of the story where even the tiniest, seemingly innocuous, event resonates with unfolding significance. I have the series on video,taped on its last TV outing in 1985 so now twenty years old, and it's not going to last for ever.

Since I wrote this post originally in 2005, and after some lobbying of Granada and Network DVD, the series has now been released. If you've never seen it before buy it, you won't be disappointed. If you have seen it before no doubt you will have already bought it as I have.