C. S. Lewis Society Co-Sponsors BBC’s The Narnia Code

The Narnia Code, a new documentary based on Dr. Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia, is something we’d heard about late last year. It’s been a few months and is now complete and ready to air. We haven’t seen it yet, but you can watch a preview video for it here.

It is airing on BBC1 this upcoming Thursday, 16 April from 10:35-11:35pm.

C.S. Lewis wrote The Narnia Chronicles over fifty years ago, and they have never been more popular than they are today. However, when they were first published, many critics thought them little more than childish scribblings, full of random characters and unexplained events. Even Lewis’ good friend J.R.R. Tolkien thought them confused and misconceived. Other scholars were sure that all this pointed to something more, something hidden beneath the stories, but although many tried, none could find this secret key of Narnia… until now.

David J. Theroux writes:

The C. S. Lewis Society of California is co-sponsor of the forthcoming BBC2 documentary, The Narnia Code, based on the book, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, by Michael Ward. To be aired at Easter 2009, The Narnia Code is produced and directed by Norman Stone, producer of the International Emmy Award and BAFTA Award-winning BBC film, C. S. Lewis Through the Shadowlands, starring Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom, as well as the film starring Anton Rodgers, C.S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia, that premiered on the Hallmark Channel in 2005. At the C.S. Lewis Society’s May 17th sold-out, screening and luncheon last year of the film Prince Caspian, Dr. Ward was the featured speaker.

The Narnia Code will present the hidden themes that C.S. Lewis placed in The Chronicles of Narnia, based on the Christian spiritual symbolism of the seven heavens in medieval mythology. The book Planet Narnia first revealed this heretofore hidden layer in Lewis’s work, an enormous depth and sophistication by Lewis in creating the Narniad which has attracted an entire new appreciation for his accomplishment in creating these enormously popular classic stories that resonate for people worldwide.

The Narnia Code airs Thursday 16 April from 10:35pm -11:35pm on BBC1.