It Was Different Somehow – Something Had Changed

The Owl Service by Alan Garner (Collins, 1967).

This look at the differences between Granada’s 1969 adaptation of The Owl Service and Alan Garner’s original novel and how many of them were down to the practicalities of filming rather than any straightforward creative decisions was originally written as part of the press promotion for the splendidly restored Bluray release of The Owl Service, to which I had contributed a set of commentaries that one Amazon reviewer found ‘irritating’. Unfortunately the Bluray wasn’t available for long, but you can hear an extract from one of the commentaries here; if you’re looking for the full-length commentaries then unfortunately I can’t help you but if you ask the subscribers to my Patreon here they might well be able to point you in the right direction. I really enjoyed doing those commentaries and I’m actually quite pleased to have irritated that bloke because that more or less confirms to me that I’d gone about it the right way after all; rather than a collection of dry facts and pretentious blathering about the folk horror mise-en-scène that only very clever people and their ukuleles can understand and even if you can they’ve not given you written permission so you’re not allowed to join in, I took a deliberate decision to couch the more interesting of the dry facts in wild escalating narratives about collecting paperback editions of The Owl Service, how I came to see the television version of The Owl Service in the first place and something about falling off a wall in front of some girls at school, as well as observations on wider goings-on in British cinema, the TV Times listings and the odd collision of prog, folk and straight-up pop that was invading the hit parade at the time, not to mention some thoughts on Cult TV fanzines and the early days of Channel 4, with the intention that it might help to draw some wider attention to this fantastic and deeply odd serial and others like it. There’s no point in ringfencing all of this archive material to rigorously vetted and accredited cognoscenti who appear to believe that liking it somehow makes them ‘better’; if something is good, then tell people about it. They might actually like it. Well to be fair that might be a tall order with Brendon Chase but you never know. Incidentally, while I was working on the commentaries I was also putting together my anthology Keep Left, Swipe Right and ended up further exploring some of the themes raised in those irritating chats about The Owl Service in that; you can get it in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Incidentally Treacle Walker didn’t go on to win the 2022 Booker Prize – that honour went to The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka – but isn’t it fantastic that it was even nominated? Well, probably not if you’re one of those individuals that think The Owl Service should be a ‘secret’.

When The Owl Service was first published by Collins in 1967, it didn’t look very different from the other books piled up in the major bookstores. More usually to be found designing generic covers for Agatha Christie reprints, artist Kenneth Farnhill was most likely to have been working from a brief or a plot outline when he created the cover. Extending across from the spine – the back cover simply featured a collection of reviews for Alan Garner’s previous novel Elidor – wavy watery green and blue lines weave in and out of each other in an approximation of owl feathers, or branches, or roots, or possibly even all three. It may be an eyecatching design, but at the time it would have been no more eyecatching to the average book-browser than those of the latest Angela Carter or Adam Diment novel.

Inside that cover, however, it was literally a very different story, and The Owl Service quickly went on to win the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, and in turn became the focus of a bidding war for a television adaptation. There have been many further new covers for The Owl Service since then – notably Charles Keeping’s striking post-Pop Art interpretation for a 1971 Peacock Books reissue – but it’s a fair bet that most readers will associate the novel with the image of the paperback issued to tie in with Granada’s television version in 1969. Featuring a non-posed still of the lead cast outside Alison’s family’s house, it vividly captures the vibrancy, mystery and general haunting air of the celebrated serial with an almost casual effectiveness.

The Owl Service by Alan Garner (Peacock edition, 1969).

Just how accurately did that cover reflect the actual contents of the book, though? Anyone unfortunate enough to have ended up reading, say, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, The Shining or even The Box Of Delights after seeing their most famous big or small screen interpretations may well have found themselves surprised – and not necessarily in a good way – at how wildly they had differed from the original source novel, with much-loved characters, storylines and interludes removed and replaced along the way. The Owl Service the book and The Owl Service the television series are often discussed in isolation, as if they were entirely separate entities from each other – so is this because they themselves are entirely separate from each other?

Fittingly – and much like the conundrums posed by The Owl Service itself – this is not an entirely straightforward question to answer. The Owl Service was adapted by Alan Garner in conjunction with the serial’s producer Peter Plummer; as their association went all the way back to 1960, when Plummer interviewed a then-unknown Garner for a Granada arts show, the storyline, atmosphere, settings and characters perhaps unsurprisingly survived the transition to the small screen largely unchanged. That all said, they did still feel the need to make some small but significant alterations to better suit the more visual – and, not insignificantly, more financially constrained – medium.

The main and most immediately noticeable difference is in the age of the central trio of characters. In the original novel, Gwyn, Alison and Roger are all supposed to be around fourteen years old, whereas for television they were repositioned to be hovering around seventeen, and played by actors who in turn were hovering around twenty. Although the opportunity that this created to bring in a bankable name like Gillian Hills must surely have been a contributing factor, it’s more than likely that this decision was largely a practical one. The cast and crew of many similarly inclined children’s drama series of a similar vintage, from The Tomorrow People to Freewheelers, have no shortage of weary recollections of problems and delays caused on set by young and inexperienced cast members. Despite this change, even The Owl Service was reputedly not without its complications in this regard.

A less ambiguously practical consideration was moving the action from Bryn Hall – the old Welsh house that had directly inspired the novel – to Poulton Place on the Wirral when the owners refused to grant Granada permission to film there. Roger’s character was very slightly tweaked to make him more unsympathetic and introduce a much-needed element of abrasion into the character dynamics, while an extra air of uneasiness was added by Alison’s mother being continually referred to but never actually seen or heard on screen. Although her lack of direct involvement in the original novel was a happy accident embraced by Garner, whether this was a deliberate decision or influenced in part by casting or budgetary issues is a question nobody seems to have a definitive answer for. The final climactic scene – or at least what is visible of it between the visual effects and alarmingly rapid editing – was relocated from the kitchen to Huw Halfbacon’s hut, while the scene that follows it, suggesting that a new generation are set to repeat the same experience, was an entirely new addition more in keeping with a typical conclusion for a television serial. The Owl Service as an eight part television series is surprisingly in keeping with the novel it was derived from, but whether by accident or design – or the need to just get something made on schedule – it’s different enough to be worthy of attention in its own right.

Alan Garner’s 2021 novel Treacle Walker has been the surprising if deserved recipient of a Booker Prize nomination, and at the time of writing looks likely to win. It features a cover based on another folklore legend – the Chalk Horse of Uffington – and in many respects does not look or feel that far removed from that original cover for The Owl Service. Tastes, trends and fashions have changed and come and gone, but Alan Garner has stayed true to his distinctive artistic vision and the deceptively simple cover of Treacle Walker reflects this. Rather than moving with the times, he has – just like he did back in 1967 – continued to do what he does best, and left it to the rest of the world to catch up.

The Owl Service by Alan Garner (Peacock edition, 1971).

Buy A Book!

You can find an expanded version of It Was Different Somehow – Something Had Changed along with a good deal more on The Owl Service and other similar children’s drama serials in Keep Left, Swipe Right, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. In a very, very plain mug with no traceable patterns, please.