Chocky’s Children (1985)
Reviewed by FrillyShirtCyberman
The gist of it:
A year has passed and Matthew is getting better at drawing. No more science for the little guy, since now he’s getting bigged up by art teachers. He’s won a few prizes and his parents are off to Hong Kong for business and vacation, so they’ll drop their son with a kooky artistic aunt living on the country. They do so and while exploring the surroundings, Matthews is happy to see that the windmill he keeps drawing does exist (it’s called the Nutley Windmill, it’s on Surrey and Prentis Hancock still works at it).
Man, acting is such hard work.
Meanwhile, Ed Straker has gone a bit crazy after all the ordeal with moonbase, so now he kicks it with big lobbying industry dudes, having tea and crumpets with kid-snatchin’ scientists and sending his goons to act like gardeners in kooky artistic aunts houses.
Get me moonbase! And my agent too!
Not that she notices. You could get away with underage drinking and not get caught by this silly aunt. You could use her house as a center to recruit assassins and she would think you are just playing gotcha. You could start having telepathic conversations with a freckled girl you just met and she would look at the phone and think “my, i didn’t knew dial disc phones had a silent setting!”. She’s so oblivious to her gardener’s intentions, that she forgets the basic rule of any sci fi story: suspect any efficient staff worker. At the drop of the hat, they’ll just change allegiance, either by having some silver coins or free DVDs from sendit.com .
She fell for the old “reach for the sky, silly bint, whilst I backstab you!” bit.
Matthew meets Albertine by the windmill, and faster than you can think telepathy, they can talk without opening their mouths. They get on quite well. Albertine is over protected by her dad (the great Prentis Hancock!), but she manages to sneak about. Matthew, Albertine and the silly aunt do clay art together and Matthew is surprised to see that Albertine makes the same homeworld thingie that he had on a paiting on clay.
“That’s very good” said the aunt. “You are much better than my other apprentices, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore”
Chocky reappears and tells that she/it learned her mistakes and now helps without talking. She’s helping Albertine do some great maths and science stuff, and more marvelous, she’s making Prentis Hancock act! Matthew talks to Albertine about Chocky and she’s crossed, since it would mean that she hasn’t done any work at all. Relax, girl, that’s what we call a PhD. Cue Ed Bishop visiting around and discovering the secret of Albertine’s success:
You let the poor girl surf all day and night, right?
Matthew goes Colin on Albertine’s clay thingie and plans to go away, but after seeing The Boss of SHADO nearby, Albertine and Matthew elope…ehrm, no, they just hide out in the woods.
The series addresses the issue of underage drinking.
Albertine is caught and Chocky helps Matthew go Prison Break on us. They are almost caught again, but they use their mental power to invocate A Thousand Bad Pop songs and evil Ed Straker and company are smitten to the ground. Prentiss Hancock (looking and acting like Richard Chamberlain), Matthew’s dad and his goofy glass friend arrive in the nick of time with the fuzz and everything’s cool.
You do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts.
It is revealed that Matthew and Albertine are not the only kids influenced by Chocky, and all paintings by Matthew are places where the children of Chocky live.
Rant:
I feared that this sequel would be dross, as I certainly had little memories of it. The windmill stuff I’m sure I remembered, but I thought we had some flashbacks about the ordeal of Matthew (clearly i was misremembering episode 6 of this series).
As much stick as Prentis Hancock gets, he’s good on this series as Arnold Meyer, the curmudgeon dad of Albertine. Ed Bishop does a great turn as a creepy bastidd with a no holds barred attitude.
Monsieur coolness… so classy that he takes time to fix his tie before menacing those pesky kids!
Again, Andrew Ellams carries the show, now with the help of Anabel Worrell, who plays Albertine with top marks too. The country setting is very nice too. Aunt Cissie (Angela Galbraith) does a one-note cool aunt bit, but it’s not forced. It’s a bit of mixing the dad and mum’s role in one (disbelieving, then believing).
Chocky is used very sparingly, perhaps appearing less than in series 1. Which is good. There’s some weird hocus pocus stuff in the last episodes, but it’s not that bad.
Whoa! Spinach does make you stronger!
I loved how everything did connect at the ending. The “calling all kids” bit wasn’t as bad as I expected, in fact, it was kind of shout out homage at Wyndham’s own work, The Midwich Cuckoos (you know it as The Village of the damned). I absolutely loved this second series and gotta big up all the actors for doing great work. The music is sparse, but very good. The theme song is still haunting me!
Frillyrating:
