First aired on BBC On Xmas Eve 2022
Spoilers
Not familiar with the Charles Mackey book this is based on, so I had no idea what to expect. What there is is incredible, even mystical, as if Kahlil Gibran wrote children’s picture books.
Plot wise it is a straight forward Aesopian fable, with a lost boy aided by the three animals. Except it becomes much more than that. There is no explanation of how the un-named boy gets lost in the snow. He wants to find ‘a’ home, not home, or his home, just ‘a home’. He seems to be without parents or a back story, except he asks the animals to forgive him for things, and they seem to know what he means without us ever knowing what they are. Asked what he wants to be when he grows up he replies simply, ‘kind’.
As they find a well-lit village that looks like it could be a home-area, the boy clearly sees nothing familiar to him, and decides home is where he is happy and loved, so he chooses to stay with the animals in their little wintery utopia. The boy never seems cold though clearly not dressed for the elements and even falls in a stream but not at risk of hypothermia. He never shows signs of hunger or worry that anyone might miss him over the two days and nights he is out on the wilderness.
The simple wisdoms they quartet share seem rather simplistic on one level but deeply allegorical on another. Is the boy dead? In Heaven? Is he on some kind of spiritual pilgrimage? The real meanings and joys of this lie in what is not said or shared. It is a deeply moving little story indeed. Totally unexpected this.
Arthur Chappell
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