BERNARD AND THE GENIE
Gence In A Bottle
HAVING JUST CELEBR ATED ITS 30TH ANNIVERSARY, RICHARD CURTIS’S WARM-HEARTED FANTASY BERNARD AND THE GENIE IS FINALLY AVAILABLE TO STREAM. HE AND DIRECTOR PAUL WEILAND LOOK BACK AT A FESTIVE FAVOURITE
WORDS: STEVE O’BRIEN
THIRTY YEARS AGO, BBC ONE screened a TV movie that, to this day, is recalled with a glowing smile by those that caught it on the night of 23
December 1991. The fact that Bernard And The Genie hasn’t been repeated even once since that day makes it even more remarkable that we’re still talking about it, three decades on.
CHRISTMAS NUTS
The irony of Bernard And The Genie’s weird obscurity, though, is how omnipresent writer Richard Curtis’s other Chrimbo-themed movie is. Since its release in 2003, Love Actually has become one of the mainstays of the Christmas TV schedules, a big warm hug of a film, festooned with tinsel and good cheer.
Of course, had Bernard And The Genie not been a little TV movie but a major league studio film, its moments might well be as iconic as Hugh Grant gyrating around a barren 10 Downing Street or Andrew Lincoln’s creepy cue cards on Keira Knightley’s doorstep. As it is, few bar those of a certain vintage know the comic power of Rowan Atkinson’s cries of “Enter ye, enter ye!” or Denis Lill’s torrent of tall tales.
Richard Curtis had always been a Christmas nut. His favourite film was and is White Christmas and he’d already frolicked in the festive sandbox with Blackadder’s Christmas Carol in 1988. A fan not only of that 1954 Bing Crosby evergreen, but of Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Ghost, Curtis was, he tells SFX, “in the mood for a bit of cinematic magic”.