When I was a little kid, I made my dad read The Chronicles of
Narnia to me probably 10 times. My dad has a fantastic
voice—an expressive baritone—and he indulged my
inexplicable fascination with magic lion breath and married beavers and
Turkish delight (which I later discovered to be totally
gross—WTF, Edmund?). My parlor trick was to memorize
certain passages (“They were sent away from London during the war
because of the air raids…”) and then I’d be like, “Check it,
grown-ups! Look how good I am at reading!” and then I’d pretend to
read, even though I didn’t know how to read yet. Gotcha!
Anyway, Prince Caspian, a bit bleak and heavy on the dwarf
politics, was always my second-least-favorite—just above the
apocalyptic/evil-chimp-concerning/TOTALLY BONKERS Last Battle,
wherein everyone dies and goes to heaven except for Susan,
because she believes in “nylons and lipstick and invitations” more than
she believes in Aslan. (Sorry your entire family is dead now, Suze.
Good thing you have that sexy lipstick to keep you company!)
The glossy Hollywood film version of Prince Caspian opens
this week—it didn’t screen in time for the print edition, but
look for Charles Mudede’s web-only review this Friday—and it got
me thinking about another frequent player in my childhood: the
charmingly low-tech 1988–1990 BBC adaptations of the Chronz. I
picked up Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader at
Scarecrow (“Ouch, this looks grim,” said the clerk) and settled down in
my bed.
The story takes place hundreds of years after the events of The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (at the end of which, Peter,
Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie—who had already, you know, gone
through puberty and been courted by swarthy Calormene princes and ruled a country for at least a decade—were abruptly
transformed back into tiny British children). Prince Caspian, the
rightful ruler, lives with his evil uncle King Miraz. At Miraz’s
orders, all that magical-talking-animals shit has been swept under the
rug—”Who believes in Aslan nowadays?” Then, one night, Caspian’s
tutor tells him to run for his life: “All has changed! The queen has
had a baby son!” (What? You didn’t see that coming? Just all of a
sudden a baby popped out from under her queenly skirt?)
The prince teams up with a good dwarf, an evil dwarf, some badgers,
and the newly returned Pevensie kids, and they set out to overthrow
Miraz’s unholy reign (kill the infidels, y’all!). This
adaptation stars Warwick Davis as a gallant fighting mouse, a big
puppet as Aslan (“Is that a real lion?” I remember asking), and several
people in the world’s most bush-league bear suits as bears. Aslan sits
around creepily breathing on everyone. “HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” says Aslan.
“HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.” God, kids have terrible taste. 
