Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Timothy Spall, Samantha Morton, Georgie Smith, Archie Cox, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, Bebe Cave, Georgie Brinkworth, Annette Crosbie, June Whitfield, Emma Curtis, Inis De Clercq, Libby Easton, Bob Goody, Maya Gerber, Jack Harris, Billy Howle, Jessica Hynes, Teddie-Rose Malleson-Allen, Finn Bennett, Matthew Steer.

English literature may have moved on from the view of the world that was afforded writers between the two wars that shrouded Europe and the greater world in dusky veil of black, the pastoral has certainly suffered greatly since the ever encroaching urbanisation and the near submissive approach to building on more and more land.

The Pastoral is the very heart of Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie, a book of immense charm and depth of narrative that it has arguable been one that has deserved to be filmed with the same character arrived from Laurie Lee’s sensitive writing appeal and yet has never really captured the heights that this book plainly offers. It was a height that never seemed to be able to be reached until the B.B.C. finally got the extraordinary of television talent to be able to give beauty to the beautiful.

It is one of the rare treats of television that someone of Ms. Morton’s sublime talent is cast in a story that doesn’t see her as a physically abused or tortured but as a strong and giving woman and whose only crime was to love and believe that life would somehow redeem her later years. It was a role of measured beauty, of taking the matriarchal confines of the post First World War and giving her family as much as they could make do with and allowing them the freedom to make their own mistakes and all without dwelling on screen for the behaviour of her husband and his neglect. It was a powerful statement that she spouted no ill towards him and revelled in her chosen life. There are few actors that can turn what could be termed naive passivity into a heroic virtue, for Ms. Morton this was all part of the charm and years of sophisticated acting endeavour which made her such a delight to watch as she played Laurie Lee’s mother Annie.

With Timothy Spall capturing the voice of the author, Georgie Smith giving an entrancing performance as the young Laurie and the spell driven Ruby Ashbourne Serkis delivering an almost near perfect representation of the young idyllic playful innocence of the Gloucestershire countryside in the eponymous Rosie, the television adaption of Cider With Rosie stands out above anything that others have tried to do with the much loved book.

A time of innocence marred by the spectre of war, of abandonment and early death, of remembered first kisses and feeling the heat of love, Cider With Rosie is undoubtedly one of the finest books that deals with the English Pastoral of the early Twentieth Century, it was one that was very obviously lovingly captured by all concerned in the making of this wonderful piece of television.

Ian D. Hall