The wolves are running again. It’s been almost four decades since BBC One’s television series based on John Masefield’s 1935 novel The Box of Delights captured the imaginations of a generation of children and now Big Finish, the audio drama producers best known for their Doctor Who ranges, are hoping to recapture that magic with a new adaptation.
The Box of Delights follows schoolboy Kay Harker – played here by 15-year-old Mack Keith-Roach – as he is entrusted with a magical box by the enigmatic Cole Hawlings (Sir Derek Jacobi) and realises he now has the ability to time travel and shape-shift. Soon though, Kay is thrown into a race against time to protect the box from an evil magician, with Mark Gatiss cast as the villainous Abner Brown.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press, Gatiss revealed that he hadn’t been aware of Masefield’s story prior to the 1984 screen adaptation, but found himself immediately charmed by the TV series. “I don’t know why I’d never heard of it before. It’s got a venerable history, particularly on radio [the story was dramatised on BBC Radio several times throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and once more in the 1990s] as a children’s classic.
“It’s a very English sort of folk tale – and there’s something fundamentally Christmasy that runs all the way through it. It’s a really weird mixture of paganism and the old times and magic and snow. And also there’s a nice streak of nastiness, which all great children’s literature should have.”
Voicing villainess Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, Abner’s wife, in the Big Finish adaptation is Doctor Who’s Louise Jameson, who missed the TV series on original transmission but caught up in preparation for joining the cast of this new version. “It was so innovative for its time,” she says. “I mean, it’s mad as a box of frogs – it jumps about all over the place. But there is a kind of weird logic in there as well. So you’re completely taken in and taken on the journey with them. I love it. I’m so thrilled to be in it.”
This new Box of Delights is something of a passion project for its director Barnaby Edwards, who worked with writer Christopher William Hill to adapt Masefield’s novel for audio and believes that the medium is a perfect outlet for the author’s wild and imaginative storytelling, which takes in various fantastical landscapes and creatures.
“It is quite expensive to do that on television, and sometimes quite limiting, whereas you can do it fantastically in a book. So the advantage, I think, of having an audio adaptation of it is that we can absolutely create these cinematic soundscapes and really take the listener – whether they be a child or whether they be an adult – into this weird and magical world of John Masefield.”
“I know it’s a cliche, but the imagination can just give you the most wonderful visuals,” agrees Jameson.
Translating the story to audio did mean making some changes to the original narrative, though. “In the TV version, it is just Kay Harker who goes into the past, whereas in this version we’ve got Peter as well, because having one person go into the past is a bit boring on audio! So we have two people that can talk to each other and explain what’s happening. So we do expand the novel, but hopefully, we’ve tried to keep it in-keeping with Masefield’s original vision.”
Further tweaks, Edwards says, were necessitated simply to update the 86-year-old book for a contemporary audience who wouldn’t accept female characters being portrayed as simply “victims.” “We have rewritten all of the female parts to to make them spunkier villains and pluckier heroes and things like that. So that’s a big change, I think.”
There’ll be plenty that feels familiar to fans of the TV version, though, including a score which features a new arrangement of the Carol Symphony by Victor Hely-Hutchinson – a piece of music which has featured in multiple previous adaptations going back to the first radio version of The Box of Delights. Edwards had no desire either to “arbitrarily go against everything” that the TV version did in terms of casting, suggesting that certain performances in the audio drama might recall the “impeccable” cast of the TV series simply because he’s “cast the right people for the right roles.”
“It’s a great part,” Gatiss enthuses of his character Abner Brown (played by Robert Stephens in the TV series). “I mean, the idea of a corrupt magician posing as a clergyman… it’s just gorgeous. We’ve just done a scene, literally, it’s my favourite scene of anything I’ve ever done, because it had everything I love – it was weird and mystical and also very villainous!”
Masefield’s book was in fact a sequel to his earlier 1927 novel The Midnight Folk, which also featured Kay Harker, Abner Brown and Sylvia Daisy Pouncer (originally Kay’s governess) – could this be next line in for an audio adaptation if The Box of Delights enthrals audiences all over again? “That is very much my hope,” confirms Edwards. “I have tweaked the script so that it is compatible with that [story] existing. So there are various little nods about Sylvia Daisy Pouncer being Kay’s governess and things like that, so the possibility’s open. I would absolutely love to reassemble the cast.”
“I’m always up for prequels and sequels!” adds Gatiss. “I’ve never read it [The Midnight Folk] so I’d be intrigued to know how it fits in. I mean, if this goes well, it’d be lovely to do it. Why not? Then we get a little set.”
The Box of Delights is coming soon from Big Finish – visit our Fantasy hub for more news and features, or find something to watch tonight with our TV Guide.
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