Mackenzie Crook discusses Worzel Gummidge reboot tackling environmental issues
The BBC's Worzel Gummidge reboot is more than just a reinvention of many people's childhood.
The star-studded redo of author Barbara Euphan Todd's character featuring Michael Palin, Zoe Wanamaker and Mackenzie Crook as the scarecrow is back for two specials, airing on Thursday (December 26) and Friday (December 27).
Digital Spy and other media recently spoke to Crook – who also wrote and directed the films – about remaking Worzel Gummidge with an important message for young viewers.
"Very soon after I decided I was interested in doing this adaption, I thought, 'Well, it's absolutely the ideal vehicle for getting across some sort of environmental message'," he explained. "And hopefully that's very subtly done. Not in a preachy way. I don't want it to be annoying."
Crook continued: "But yeah, we're out there in the countryside so we might as well weave that message in. And kids are so on board with that message at the moment and it's the adults that are catching up. It just seemed natural.
"When I was in the woodlands recently, in Essex, and I was clearing up, I found a Marathon wrapper and Marathons turned to Snickers in 1990, so that had been sitting there for 30 years at least, and you could still read everything on it. So yeah, that was horrifying to find that.
"That seems to be the easiest, most visible thing that we can start doing, is the plastic. Just not using single-use plastic, and I can see within a year or two, that'll be banned and we won't be able to believe it's recent past. I think we are beginning to change and it's because kids are so on board with it and they've realised that it's their problem and the adults aren't going to do anything about it."
Young co-star India Brown added: "I do hope that people watch this and change the world because it's the kids, like us two [co-star Thierry Wickens, playing her brother], that are trying to show the audience this message, that we need to all get involved and change the world."
Crook also chatted more broadly about the experience of having to update the Worzel Gummidge character for a 2019 telly audience.
"The first [book] was written in 1936 and published in 1936, so there were BBC radio scripts first and then she [Barbara Euphan Todd] published them as books," he explained. "It's an enduring story of fish-out-of-water kids who find a secret magical friend who leads them on adventures.
"They're of their time, these books, written in the '30s, but the world and the characters were still there – so we took them and brought it up to date and made our own stories with that world.
"He's a guardian of the natural world, a bit like The Green Man figure himself... He watches over the landscape."
Worzel Gummidge: The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook airs on Thursday (December 26) at 6:20pm, followed by The Green Man on Friday (December 27) at 7pm.
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