It’s reassuring that, in a world dominated by wars, social media-induced anxiety and extreme politics, people still have time to debate the really big stuff – films and TV programmes, writes Simon Burch.
Or, in particular, children’s programmes or films from back in the day which are being rebooted for a new generation, cueing howls of anguish from people who remember them first time round.
It’s a familiar routine, and this week it all started again with two biggies – Harry Potter (who needs no introduction) and Mr Benn, the 1970s cartoon of an ordinary man who had extraordinary adventures when he puts on fancy dress.
Yes, Mr Benn is getting a live action refresh, replacing the amiable cartoon gent of my childhood with an actor who will bring him to life with new stories and new costumes.
Admittedly, I was all set to write this blog all about Mr Benn in an effort to understand why rebooting a show that is to my mind perfect is nothing but a wanton act of cultural desecration.
But then I saw that the trailer for the new Harry Potter TV series has just dropped, to use the modern parlance, and I realised that this week, for once, Gen X-ers like myself and millennials have something in common.
It’s that something we love from our childhood is set to be changed forever – and we’ll decide that whatever replaces it feels totally unnecessary and will probably be rubbish.
And then we’ll probably take ourselves away and have a little cry.
It’s a pretty well accepted theory that when people express an opinion, the reason they give for having that opinion is not the actual reason they feel that way at all.
Very often, the root cause comes from a place they dare not confess to, or it’s from a place they don’t even realise exists, for a reason that they are not aware of.
We’ll see a lot of that this week, as tortured fans tie themselves in knots to find justifiable and intelligent-sounding ways of saying why the reboot won’t be very good, or the modern interpretation isn’t true to the spirit of the original, or how it will probably be a commercial flop for reasons x and y.
But the truth of their unhappiness is probably much closer to home – and it’s where my unhappiness at the reboot of Mr Benn lies too.
It’s that I don’t like people messing about with stuff that I grew up with and that is special to me.
Mr Benn wasn’t just a cartoon: it was one of a number of TV shows whose mere theme tune takes me back nearly 50 years.
Just hearing the phrase “as if by magic the shopkeeper appeared” taps into memories of watching the show sat in front of our family’s boxy TV with its big buttons you pressed to change channels.
Just like Bagpuss, the Mr Men, Ivor the Engine and Camberwick Green, this stuff needs protecting because it’s precious to a whole generation, and needs to stay that way.
Yes, this all does sound ridiculous. I appreciate that just because Mr Benn was something enjoyed by people of my age, it doesn’t belong to us, just like Oasis’s music doesn’t belong to people who bought their records in the 1990s.
I know this, but this doesn’t stop me getting irritated at 20-year-olds who profess a deep-held love for Wonderwall, or who walk around in Guns ‘n’ Roses Appetite for Destruction T-shirts in some overt show of reverence for an album that’s old enough to be their parent.
They probably can’t even name all of the tracks on it, I’ll grumble to my wife, knowing full well I’m being curmudgeonly, but feeling incapable of expressing my distress and grief.
Because that’s what this is. It’s grief. And today’s Harry-Potter-loving millennials are getting a taste from it, and they’re feeling all the emotions you get with grief – sadness, longing, nostalgia and anger.
They’re surrendering the notion that their version of Harry Potter is the definitive, special one. They’ve lost the knowledge that the films belong to them and were, in some way, made just for them, using actors who were the same age as they were.
It’s another sign that the snuggly childhood times watching Harry Potter are behind them, and facing the cool reality that something that mattered so much to them has been taken away from them and given to someone else who will now own it and call it their own.
Plus, it’s way too soon.
I feel all of this about Mr Benn. I’m sure if I rewatched it I’d be disappointed, but I would be cross if someone younger said it wasn’t very good and that it needs a reboot.
It doesn’t. It’s fine as it is, and the TV people need to go away and write new stories instead of pillaging stuff from years gone by.
I know that’s not how it works, and I know that Millennials who love Harry Potter know how that’s not how it works either, but that doesn’t make it less painful and distressing to think that the people in charge of these things don’t care.
But then they’ll console themselves safe in the knowledge that the new generation fans the reboot are aimed at aren’t getting the real deal. New Ron won’t be Ron. Hagrid may look the part, but he’s a pale imitation.
Only the people who were there first time round can really know what it’s like, because it’s never the show itself that’s important, it’s how old you were and what the world was like that at the time that makes it special.
That’s the bit that nobody can ever take away, no matter what they do with their pointless, silly and (probably rubbish) reboot.
