The Bells of Astercote

Mair (Siobhan Brooks) and her brother Peter (Ifor Williams) are new to the village of Charlton Underwood, living in the controversial new housing estate on the edge of the old town.  Chasing their dog into the nearby wood one day they meet a local man named Goacher Tranter (John Branwell) and the remains of the even older town of Astercote that had been wiped-out during the black death.  Hidden in the ruins and guarded by the innocent Goacher is a chalice, the communion cup from the devastated vilage church, which the locals believe protects them from the return of the plague.  However, when the chalice goes missing things deteriorate quickly in the town as a sickness takes hold and the already tense relationship between the working class villagers and the middle class new arrivals threatens to boil over.

Director Marilyn Fox has a track record for television of this type being responsible for, amongst other things, 288 episodes of 'Jackanory", along with adaptations of Edith Nesbit's 'Five Children and It' and C.S. Lewis' 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe' and it's immediately apparent that she has a real eye for the uncanny in a story with Astercote's obvious similarity to M.R. James' 'A Warning to the Curious'.  Based on the 1970 children's novel by Penelope Lively it's an enjoyable enough story of fear of change and of the other, timeless themes but presented in a manner that feels really quite dated and, like the novel, there's almost no actual supernatural forces at work here beyond belief, superstition and suspicion but they all cast heady spells.

The cast are, mostly, competent if uninspiring with the two leads being too shrill for my ears and too drama school for my liking and there are far too many suspect Somerset accents on display but the various members of the Tranter family are convincingly rustic without degenerating into bumpkins and Janis Winters is an enjoyably no nonsense district nurse, "Mother, you can't have a touch of the black death!"  

'The Bells of Astercote' is certainly not on a par with the classics of supernatural television made for young people but it has it's moments and almost certainly deserves the opportunity to reach a wider audience.

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