Judith Kerr’s Mog is not an especially Christmassy creation: she’s a pesky cat, the colour of a 70s puddle, the centre of a loving family where the mum looks like she spends a lot of time sighing.
Nonetheless, Mog did have a Christmas adventure, published 1976, so why shouldn’t Channel 4 animate it for their seasonal offering? There can’t be anyone in the country who didn’t either read it to their kids or have it read to them. As soon as you start watching, you settle into the nostalgia like a warm bath. The narrator’s tone has a lot of life in it, along with gentle, absolute authority. It doesn’t send you to sleep, but lets you know it is safe to do so. In short, Adjoa Andoh, 60, is perfect. “I’ve been doing audiobooks since they were still recorded on cassette,” she tells me. “People have been going to sleep to my voice for decades.” She loves taking roles the whole country will watch, as her TV work – EastEnders in the 90s, Casualty and Doctor Who in the 00s – can vouch. “There’s something about the ordinariness of Mog everybody can relate to: as something either they had, or they yearned for, or they’re trying to recreate. That foggy street, the buses, the prep, those family dynamics. There will be people up and down the country bracing themselves for the arrival of their aunties, wondering what they’ve got for Christmas lunch, or whether they can afford Christmas lunch.”
