Telling the story of Anne Frank with Anne as a minor character is a brave creative decision. A Small Light finds a fresh way in to this tale of courage, resilience and tragedy and, in doing so, may well pass the story on to yet another generation. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Miep Gies and her husband, Jan, helped hide the Frank family and others in the Secret Annexe. Miep also found and kept Anne’s diary after the annexe was ransacked and its occupants were sent to the death camps; she played a key role in its publication.
Bel Powley, who made her name in the film The Diary of a Teenage Girl, plays Miep as the epitome of the feisty young teenager fighting for what is right. As always, with dramatisations of true stories, some dramatic licence has been applied; it has the familiar disclaimer that the series is “inspired by actual events”. Here, Miep begins working for the German businessman Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) when she was 18; in reality, she was 24 when she became his secretary.
