First image revealed for new Magic Light special ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’
Skwigly
From Oscar nominated producer Magic Light Pictures, The Smeds and The Smoos is a half hour special, adapted for screen and based on the best-selling picture book by creators Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. In this animated intergalactic adventure, the red Smeds and the blue Smoos must learn to overcome their differences and work together to find young Janet and Bill – who eloped to escape their families’ long standing rivalries.
Airing this Christmas, Magic Light have revealed a first look at their tenth TV adaptation of a Donaldson/Scheffler title for BBC One:
The Smeds and the Smoos – L-R: Bill Bailey as Grandfather Smed, Asha Rabheru as Janet, Daniel Ezra as Bill and Adjoa Andoh as Grandmother Smoo (Magic Light Pictures, image provided by Faber & Bishopp)
The cast stars Adjoa Andoh as Grandmother Smoo, Bill Bailey as Grandfather Smed, Rob Brydon as Uncle Smoo, Daniel Ezra as Bill, Sally Hawkins as Narrator, Ashna Rabheru as Janet, and Meera Syal as Aunt Smed. The film will premiere on BBC One this Christmas and will stream on iPlayer.
There’s just the sort of ignorant prejudice that people can harbor about each other until they come together and actually love and that survival and kinship are the things that bind all of us. Grandma Smoo, utterly capable, she can drive a rocket, she can clump about the place, she can blow her trumpet, delight in her kids and her grandkids and she can hate with a passion as well. Grandma Smoo’s not a woman of mild tastes, everything’s fairly strong with her. So when she’s your implacable enemy, she’s implacably your enemy. But you could change her mind at any moment and then she will love you to death.
-Adjoa Andoh, Grandmother Smoo
I think the main themes of the film are that we should just accept differences in others.I think the thing I get from it is that the older generation tend to be more resistant to change. And actually, sometimes it takes the younger generation to sort of breach that divide. Grandpa Smed, he’s the kind of patriarch of the Smed family, and he’s very much the kind of protector of the family, and he’s in charge. And he’s quite sort of traditional, and a bit stuck in his ways. And he’s sort of a little bit of a stick in the mud, really, but he’s kind. He’s not an ogre. He’s a kindly old grandpa who cares about his family, I think that’s the best way to describe him.
-Bill Bailer, Grandpa Smed
On a faraway planet Janet (Ashna Rabheru) is a Smed who lives by the loobular lake, and Bill (Daniel Ezra) is a young Smoo who lives on the humplety hill. The Smeds and the Smoos have long standing divisions. They cannot agree on the best way to live and each family thinks their way is the right way. So, when Janet and Bill come across one another in the Wurpular Wood and make friends, their families are mortified. “Never, never play with a Smed!” exclaims Grandmother Smoo (Meera Syal) while Janet’s Grandfather Smed (Bill Bailey) says the Smoos are “a beastly bunch!”.
When Janet and Bill realise that their families will never give up opposing their friendship, they fly away in the Smeds’ red rocket (“Grandfather Smed had forgotten to lock it”). When the two families blame one another that the two young ones have flown away, they soon realise that to get their loved ones back, they’re going to have to travel together…
The Smeds and The Smoos is being directed by Daniel Snaddon (The Snail and the Whale, Zog) and Samantha Cutler, from a script by Julia Smuts Louw. Producers are Barney Goodland and Martin Pope. The composer is René Aubry, who has written the music for the collection of Magic Light films from Donaldson & Scheffler books. Animation services are being provided by Blue Zoo Animation Studio.
The Smeds and The Smoos comes to BBC One and BBC iPlayer for Christmas 2022.