![]() But they enjoy exploring the country with its fresh air and unobstructed starry nights. Her kindness makes the newcomers feel at home and they quickly bond with Ann’s son, Thomas ( Austin Haynes). Bobbie Waterbury (Agutter) persuades her daughter Ann ( Sheridan Smith), the school headmistress, to take them. No one wants the three siblings who won’t be separated. When they arrive in Yorkshire, local families are told to pick the whichever children they are willing to take home. Lily ( Beau Gadsdon), a brave and resilient teenager, promises her mother she will take care of her dress-hating sister Pattie ( Eden Hamilton) and their teddy-bear toting young brother Ted ( Zac Cudby). One mother sobs and snatches her child back from the train because she just cannot bear for them to be separated. The children are confused and scared, and parents are trying to comfort them. The Nazis are bombing English cities and parents are sending their children to the Yorkshire countryside to keep them safe. The story opens at a Manchester train station. His arc is so clumsily constructed and resolved, at the same time both under- and over-written, that even the very appealing Kenneth Aikens cannot make it work. The storyline is very different, and a new character has been added, a Black American GI named Abe. But this is a meandering, branch line journey which lacks the emotional force and direction of the original it increasingly runs out of steam.The setting has been moved from Victorian times to 1944, near the end of World War II. ![]() The performances which director Morgan Matthews elicits from the kids are lovely, especially Beau Gadsdon as the tough but vulnerable eldest kid, Lily, missing her father and protecting her little sibs, with sticks and stones if necessary. There’s a lot to like here, not least the scenery which is as green and pleasant as ever, especially in contrast to the filth and horror of the urban blitz. I enjoyed watching it and so did my seven-year-old son: he preferred it to the original because there were fewer pent-up feelings and more soldiers with guns. The large ensemble of kindly and familiar faces, and the slightly tenuous story give this the rhythm of Sunday night TV. The ensemble of familiar faces and the slightly tenuous story give it the rhythm of Sunday night TV It’s as if the filmmakers set out with the best of intentions to make something less white, posh and talky – but also had to keep closely in touch with the original, quoting its tear-triggering music and misty visions of daddy – and were not quite able to create a fresh vehicle on its own tracks. ![]() The tougher, poorer Salford kids brush more closely to difficult issues than Nesbit’s gilded trio did: racism, bullying, family separation, poverty – but those issues, especially a very USA-based take on racism in a British classic – don’t always feel integral to the story. ![]() ![]() The plucky kids encounter bullies and kindness, and soon discover an injured Black teenage GI (Abe Atkins) who’s on the run from a local US military base: is he a coward or the victim of racists? They’re taken in by Agutter’s Bobbie – who brings her original character back as a suffragette grandmother, a nice nod to Nesbit who was a radical socialist – and her daughter, the local headmistress (Sheridan Smith). Half a century later, the new trio are from bomb-weary Salford, evacuated to the same Yorkshire village to escape Hitler’s air attacks. The original ‘railway children’ were an immaculately dressed Edwardian trio, exiled to a Yorkshire village with their mother after they lose their house and money when their father is unjustly banged up for a crime he didn’t commit. This is not a remake of Edith Nesbit’s classic novel, on which Lionel Jeffries’ 1970s movie was based. The Railway Children Return doesn’t pack the power of the original, but it’s charming and sensitive stuff, with a few Easter eggs for old-school fans, and added thrills and issues for the next gen. A mournful whistle, a man-shaped shadow emerging from clouds of steam, and the impossibly sweet elocution of Jenny Agutter calling out: ‘Daddy, my Daddy!’ It’s the tearjerker scene that made millions of families misty eyed 50 years ago – and made Agutter into a household name and face. ![]()
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