Mr Benn: The Ultimate Collection 4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray – Review
By Matt Callard
I was born the year Mr Benn first aired, in 1971, so it is perhaps testament to the dreamlike indelibility of David ‘Elmer The Elephant’ McKee’s creation, as well as the BBC’s enthusiasm for repeats, that these extraordinarily slimline adventures remain so deeply embedded in my psyche 55 years later.
Only 13 episodes were originally produced, with a fourteenth, ‘The Gladiator’, arriving in 2005. Yet the BBC repeated the originals more than 40 times over the following 21 years, introducing successive generations of children to the same modest collection of stories. It helped that McKee had reportedly signed away repeat fees for a single payment. Few programmes can have offered the corporation such extraordinary value for money.
And few can trigger such a powerful emotional response. The opening credits of this beautifully restored collection alone sent a feverish rush of nostalgia through me. Within seconds, I was transported, not merely back to childhood, but into that peculiar half-remembered mental landscape where childhood television still resides.
Like much 1970s children’s television, Mr Benn is quite a trip. Watching it now, other cultural echoes emerge from its deceptively simple animation. There are flashes of Yellow Submarine in its psychedelic imagination, something of Laurel and Hardy in its gentle visual comedy, and unmistakable shades of surrealist René Magritte, whose anonymous, bowler-hatted gentlemen seem distant relatives of our hero (and surely Mr Benn’s quietly absurd universe did not somehow brush against the imagination of the Monty Python team).
“Small souvenir”
What makes the series particularly fascinating is its almost ritualistic structure. Every adventure follows essentially the same pattern. Mr Benn leaves his ordinary home at 52 Festive Road, encounters some small curiosity, and wanders towards a mysterious costume shop.
There, a moustachioed, fez-wearing shopkeeper appears, famously, “as if by magic”. A costume is selected, a changing-room door opens onto another world, and Mr Benn finds himself confronting a problem that invariably requires kindness, ingenuity or common sense rather than aggression.
Once harmony is restored, the shopkeeper materialises to summon him home. Back in his familiar suit and bowler hat, Mr Benn returns to Festive Road, where a small souvenir confirms that the adventure really happened.
That final detail is deliciously strange. Decades before A Nightmare on Elm Street blurred the boundaries between dreams and waking reality, Mr Benn was bringing physical evidence back from his impossible excursions, albeit with considerably less terrifying consequences.
This repetition provides children with reassuring familiarity, while producing an unexpectedly hypnotic effect on adult viewers. The same storytelling principle would later underpin enormous preschool successes such as Teletubbies and In the Night Garden, although neither quite matches McKee’s elegant surrealism.
“An ordinary doorway”
And throughout, Ray Brooks narrates with extraordinary softness. The world is gentle, its inhabitants fundamentally decent, its problems solvable. There is something almost radical now about entertainment so utterly uninterested in cruelty, cynicism or manufactured jeopardy.
Restored from original 16mm prints and presented on 4K UHD and Blu-ray for the first time, the series retains the distinctive handmade character of McKee’s animation. Fabulous Films has also treated the packaging with considerable affection. The four-disc collection includes a documentary, restoration comparisons, alternative soundtracks, a 14-panel illustrated concertina, a standee and a handsome hardback edition of McKee’s Mr Benn 123456789. There is something wonderfully appropriate about a box set that invites its owner to discover little treasures inside, just as Mr Benn himself does.
Ultimately, revisiting Mr Benn feels remarkably like watching Mr Benn. An ordinary doorway opens, another world appears, and suddenly the years have disappeared.
Perhaps that was always its greatest lesson: adventure lies around every corner, just beyond every ordinary street, provided the imagination remains willing to wander.
MR BENN: THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION is released on an ULTIMATE COLLECTION DUAL 4K UHD + BLU-RAY EDITION and a BLU-RAY EDITION by Fabulous Films
