when did you first watch the BBC version and what was your reaction?

I forgot to add before that I also think the music for the BBC series was lovely and so well composed - really has a Narnian feel to it. :)
 
It was a while ago. I decided to find some parts to it on youtube, just to see what it was like. It was ok at first but I was not impressed with Aslan and the way he spoke, more like breathing than speaking. Also, Mr. Tumnus's goat legs were interesting.
 
The music for the BBC versions are very good. I still remember them because they felt so Narnian and mysterious even though I haven't watched the BBC versions of Narnia in years.

Aslan is kind of unfortunately like a school play puppet, and the Beavers are taller than the children. That does destroy a bit of the magic. I wish that the BBC loyalty to the books could magically be combined with the Disney special effects. That would be a really awesome depiction of Narnia.
 
The Beavers are perhaps the most ridiculous bit of the series. :p Awkward for the people to walk in and then later on in series two they use dwarves for the badger and Reepicheep anyway! Why are the beavers so huge compared to the badger? I guess they learnt from the by using the dwarves for animals for the second series.

The most funny and ridiculous part was in The Silver Chair when the witch turns into that hilarious fake snake. XD
 
The BBC stuck to the books which was good, the film LWW is the same but with CGI and a slightly different text but all and all much the same. The BBC had a limited budget to make them as it came under childerns drama and not adults drama that's why the actors had to double up in the series Barbara Kellermann played the white witch in LWW and the hag in PC and also the Green Lady in SC, Big Mick played the dwarf in LWW and Trumpkinin PC and VOTDT, Warick Davis played Reepicheep in PC and VOTDT and was also Glimfeather the owl in SC, he also was Nikabrik in the film PC 12 years after his role as Reepicheep in 1990. If the BBC had more money to spend on it they would have made all 7 books into a series. :)
 
I watched the BBC version probably 3-4 years ago now. I remember laughing and I'm sure I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. Since it was after I had seen the newer versions though I probably did my bad habit of comparing the two movies, or at least at the beginning- I'm pretty sure I gave up after awhile and just sighed and laughed.:p
 
When Disney LWW came out did they sell BBC DVDs in a supermarket and my Mama bought me PC/VDT and I loved it and still love it. I prefer BBC over Disney, to be honest. Disney LWW is great, but VDT failed and PC hurts my taste. ^^ And the boys who played Caspian in BBC were GREAT and fitting.
 
I`m old enough to have seen this on TV when it was first transmitted and also remember an earler `live-action` version and the Mendez animated film.
To those of you who have made some negative comments about the BBC version remember that this was largely before the advent of CGI effects and was made on a typical TV budget.

Back when this was made the audience knew that a certain amount of suspension of disbelief was required of them to ignore some of the shortcomings of the effects and scripts would involve more exposition in the dialogue to tell the story.
Unlike now where CGI seems to be frequently used to conceal poor screenwriting.
We now seem to be in a situation where CGI effects are seen as `more real` than live-action film footage!

For its time, the BBC`s Narnia stories were pushing the technology available about as far as it could go on a TV buget and you can see in them that there was a certain amount of `learning as you go` with some of the effects.
With the depiction of centaurs for example, the actual technique is in fact the same as that used by Walden years later but while there they could do entire armies it took all the computing power the BBC had to do ONE centaur at that time.
Clearly putting actors into animal costumes was a less than satisfactory solution to depicting the talking animals but what other options did they have at the time!

So accept the BBC version for what it is and don`t judge it by the effects standards of a 2012 movie!
 
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Yes the BBC stuck to the books more so than the films, I have the 4 disc collectors editon and still watch them Tom Baker was brill as Puddleglum. Ireland too is full of castles, Carrickfergus, Enniskiillen and Belfast to name but a few and if you are ever in Ireland go and see Dunluice Castle as it was Lewis' vision of Cair Parayel. :)
 
I first saw the BBC version of LWW eleven years ago, when I was in 5th grade. We had just finished reading the book as a class and got to view it as a reward. That was the only experience I had with the Chronicles until about six years ago, I want to say. At our church, they were selling the adult version of the Compendium of all seven in the series. So that was a great read. I've been meaning to re-read it being older now, to catch the things my mind didn't hold onto...

A friend had also found the newer film version, on dvd, when it came out and I received that as part of a gift exchange we did. The newer film was brilliant, as were PC and VDT. Although the original still has a soft place in my heart. The series is just magnificent!
 
A search shows me that I haven't posted on this thread. Either that or the search thing is faulty. .. likely...

Anyway, I'm one of those people who grew up watching the BBC one so I can't even remember the first time I watched it. It was the only movie version I saw because we never watched the animated one and even though I was attached to it for that reason I still admitted that it had great flaws. As I got older I pretty much took to watching it to make fun of it.

That being said, it has some great moments and Silver Chair would have been really brilliant if it'd had a better special effects budget.
 
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