Even by the standards of our railways, 52 years is a hefty delay.
That’s how long we’ve waited for a sequel to The Railway Children, one of the true classics of British cinema.
Though you have to wonder, was a sequel even required? Not remotely! Still, this true-hearted attempt is a charmer.
While the original, based on E Nesbit’s 1905 novel, was set in the Edwardian era, here the story is shunted forward to 1944, where three spiky ‘slum kids’ from Manchester – Lily (Beau Gadsdon), Pattie (Eden Hamilton) and Ted (Zac Cudby) – are, in a heart-tugging opening scene, evacuated to the countryside.
Here, they are reluctantly taken in by a schoolmistress (Sheridan Smith) and her grandmother… and it’s only Jenny chuffing Agutter! Hooray!
Yes, five decades on, Agutter returns to the part of Bobbie. And if this time she’s sadly not ripping off her red underskirts and flapping them at train drivers, fans of the original are sure to shed a tear (I did) as she gazes over the tracks murmuring ‘it’s like yesterday’.
Still, this legacyquel is not all about the past. It’s actually very much – perhaps too much – about today.
The siblings discover a young runaway black American soldier called Abe (Kenneth Aikens), in hiding after a brutal beating by racist military police officers.
It’s here the movie begins to veer off track.
The story becomes increasingly concerned with Abe’s journey back to the States and racism in the US Army, in a manner that suggests the film’s backers were overly concerned about selling this product in America.
Couldn’t they have found a way to address contemporary issues within a smaller, quintessentially English scenario?
Still, unburdened by cultural nostalgia, today’s junior global citizens will likely find this update compelling, even if the grown-ups grumble.
And there’s no arguing that the multi-generational casting is anything other than knock-out. The ‘comfort’ button is pushed by Tom Courtenay, who reassures us that ‘good will win in the end’. Bless you, Tom.
Out today.
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