Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Mackenzie Crook, Steve Pemberton, Rosie Cavaliero, India Brown, Thierry Wickens, Vicki Pepperdine, Ben Langley, Mariam Haque, Tom Meeten, Francesca Mills, Tim Plester, Phil Hulford, Andrew James Spooner, Kiran Shah, Charlie Mayhew. 

To step into the shoes of the late, great, Jon Pertwee is surely a daunting task to which few would entertain, let alone actually attempt; and yet in the guise of one of the actor’s most famous parts, that of Worzel Gummidge, Mackenzie Crook not only captures the essence of the children’s television favourite, he brings the much loved scarecrow into the modern age, one that is steeped in a reflection of the need to bring nature much closer to the generations who have grown up within the boundary of concrete and tarmac, and the concern over climate change and human-made pollution has wrecked upon the planet.

It has been almost forty years since Worzel Gummidge was last seen in a new story on British screens, and time has not been kind on the environment in the mean-time, it is therefore timely that once again television audiences are welcomed back to the countryside and the pitfalls and traditions of country life by The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook Farm. With Mackenzie Crook on hand to give the hay-filled, crow despairing figure a new lease of existence, the story is one that is just not one for kids, but one that implores we look at the world as one that is connected intrinsically to our own welfare, and not for the reaping of profit and consumption.

The message wonderfully written into the tale of seasons being stuck and not moving on, may be a simple one, but it is one that need required watching, and whereas during Jon Pertwee’s time the show was one that played with children’s perspectives of how imagination could save the day, now audiences are shown that without the help of one another, there is little we can do, that we cannot rely on just one person to clear the plastic from the trees, to save the turtles in the oceans from starving, it is a responsibility we must all bear.

A tremendous return for a much-loved character and one that is extenuated by the inclusion of Steve Pemberton as the farmer Mr. Braithwaite and India Brown as Susan and Thierry Wickens as her younger brother John, The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook Farm is once more an immediate hit, a return of a childhood series that works in the modern age.

Ian D. Hall