Skellig

Posted by Blakeborough on Apr 13, 2009 in Books, Features, Film, TV | View Comments

There’s been advertising a go go about Sky 1′s adaptation of David Almond’s children’s novel Skellig in which a young boy, Michael, finds a strange creature in the garden shed of their new house. Skellig appears at first to be a crotchety old man (played in this adap by Tim Roth- best known by me as Mr Orange and Pumpkin) but then as time goes on and the shed is burnt down by Michael’s father, Skellig is forced to move into an abandoned structure in the woods revealing for the first time that he has wings much like an angel. At the same time Michael’s newborn baby sister is very sick and close to death in a hospital. During the night after a major operation to save her Michael’s mum dreams of a strange filthy man with wings cradling her daughter. In the morning the little baby girl survives against all expectations and Skellig is gone.

I havent read the book before so I can only comment on the adaptation. Lavish comes to mind a lot. Although I don’t think a massive amount of money was spent on this television film certainly an awful lot of care and love was poured into it. However, I was left a little bit disappointed. Though Skellig was definitely beautiful, moving and well cast I felt like this was just a two hour long character study. There was definitely room for a much greater level of depth to the story, as clearly Skellig is an angel and I would have liked to know how he ended up in a garden shed but I assume that Almond’s book goes into this detail and that in two hours Sky 1 probably couldnt have covered it all. One of the bits that I loved the most about Skellig was that he isn’t a classic archetypal angel. Skellig is dirty, owl-like and down right rude most of the time, not to mention disillusioned with the human race and unwilling to use his obvious power.

Did others see it, or were you put off by the barage of “WATCH THIS , WATCH THIS, ITS GOT AN ANGEL IN IT” advertising Sky 1 put on at every opportunity. Oh and that was another thing. Having never read the book before there was totally scope for me to be surprised by the revellation that Skellig is an angel, but Sky 1 spoilt that by putting loads of shots of Skellig flying about in. If anyone who works for Sky 1 is reading, then you should have stuck with the first round of advertising you did. Shots of spiders,  a lone feather, Skellig’s double eyelids blinking, various woodland creatures and the image of the flock of birds was perfect. It was a tease for people who havent read Skellig (as it gave a Lord of the Rings earthy feel) and would have contained enough imagery from the novel for Skellig fans.

Lovely adaptation for Easter Sunday though. Looked wonderful, sad story with a happy ending,