“That interfering boy!”

“That interfering boy!”

Episode Four of ‘Round The Archives’ was our first and, to date, only Christmas Special.

Amongst the numerous festive trailers and adverts (sorry if you’re still humming the Woolworths one, by the way!) we covered ‘The Box of Delights’.

Now let me be honest, as a child I didn’t much care for the series.

To be fair, I mostly seemed to see it at my nan’s house on a black-and-white television. And always around halfway through, so that there was no sign of the wonderful Patrick Troughton as Cole Hawlings.

But finally seeing it from the start gave me a new appreciation of the story.

It does suffer from the lack of Pat in the middle episodes, rather like when Gandalf disappears halfway through ‘The Hobbit’.

But the glorious Robert Stephens makes up somewhat for the no show of Cole Hawlings. He is wonderful as Abner Brown, the silky villain of the piece.

Robert Stephens is also superb in ‘The Missing Witness’ episode of ‘The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes’ where he plays Max Carrados, the blind detective and titular missing witness.

‘The Box Of Delights’ also features the absolutely wonderful Patricia Quinn as Sylvia Daisy Pouncer. Oddly, when she is introduced, Kay Harker states that she is “a witch” as though this should be something the audience know. The answer to that being that ‘The Box Of Delights’ is a sequel and she first appears in ‘The Midnight Folk’. We did have the pleasure of meeting Patricia Quinn once, and she kissed our ‘I, Claudius’ DVD as it featured a picture of “grandmama” Siân Phillips.

Another great guest star is James Grout as the local Police Inspector who Kay speaks to several times about the devious plans of Abner Brown, but is never believed. He does deliver a great speech about the preparation of a Posset and being a “Bloodhoooooooooooound of The Law”.

And of course, I must mention Quentin and Queenie the wolves, plus the rather surprised looking dog who is thrown into shot at one point..

Although we find the ending a little disappointing, we highly recommend ‘The Box of Delights’.

So pencil in the first episode for the end of November; you won’t regret it.

(By Lisa Parker)