Dir: Morgan Matthews. Starring: Jenny Agutter, Tom Courtenay, Sheridan Smith, Jessica Baglow, John Bradley. PG, 95 minutes.
The year is 1944, and The Railway Children’s Bobbie (Jenny Agutter) hasn’t changed a stitch in all the decades that have gone by since we last saw her. She’s older, yes, but still with a woollen beret pinned tightly to her head and such a fire in her eyes that you’ll become convinced she could topple a mountain single-handed. Back in 1905 – Agutter was just 18 when she starred in the 1970 film adaptation of E Nesbit’s celebrated novel – young Bobbie and her two siblings, Phyllis and Peter, had been shipped off to rural Yorkshire after their wealthy father was accused of espionage. They were kept busy, befriending exiled Russian novelists and warning trains of impending landslides with lots of flag-waving and whooping. In the film’s belated follow-up, The Railway Children Return, Bobbie is asked about all of her old antics. “Not antics,” goes her stern reply. “Action.”
