Interview with Robin Shaw & Joanna Harrison:We're Going On a Bear Hunt

18 November 2016

This Christmas, Channel 4 is showing an adaptation of the much-loved children’s classic, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. What can we expect?

RS: A fun family film where children take the centre stage. It features children who are unsupervised, out and about, meeting challenges. It’s all about that, but it’s also very moving. It takes us across all the seasons and all sorts of landscapes, and across a big emotional landscape. There are joyous moments when the children first go out and start wandering through the swishy-swashy grass, to the sad moments where Rosie, the little girl, is pining for her grandfather and the bear, and also to when the bear is on his own at the end. It’s a jam-packed half hour.

JH: It’s a kind of rollercoaster of emotions. There are funny bits, sad bits. When I was writing the treatment I was very aware that people would be watching this at Christmas, so the whole family would be there – grannies, grandpas, parents, children, teenagers, a baby, possibly even a dog, they’re all watching. And there’s something for everybody in there. It’s very much what I’d call family viewing.

You allude to the fact that you’ve had to flesh out the book – explain a bit about the process involved.

J: If you just read the book, it would take you three or four minutes to read. That’s not enough to stretch it to half an hour. I wanted to fill the story out, so we had a beginning, a middle and an end, and I stretched out the middle. There’s this wonderful bear in the book, and we only see him, really, on one page. Then there’s the chase back, and the big clue is in the illustration at the end of the book, where we see a very sad bear returning to the cave. When Helen Oxenbury illustrated that bear, she based it on a friend of hers who was suffering from depression. You could tell, just from that drawing, it wasn’t a really scary bear, it was a sad bear. So that was the genesis of the story. I’ve separated Rosie, the little girl, from her brothers and sisters, and she meets the bear on her own, and a relationship develops. But I also wanted, in the beginning, for there to be an emotional; vacuum in her life, so her grandpa is dead. Grandma is on her own, and is coming for Christmas, but her car breaks down, so the parents go and rescue her. I felt it was important to get rid of the parents – there’s no way the children would go off on these adventures with the parents hanging on. So the little girl is missing her grandpa, and that is the emotional vacuum that the bear fills.

The adaptation has the blessing of the book’s original author, Michael Rosen – but what’s his level of involvement been?

R: He’s been involved at every step of the way. He’s contributed to the adaptation in some ways, suggested some very good things, but he’s also playing several voices in the film. He plays the voice of the bear, not least! He’s also a wildlife presenter and a hedgehog. He really enjoys being in the thick of it.

What about Helen Oxenbury, the book’s illustrator?

Helen has been equally involved. She’ll come in and make some very, very useful and pertinent comments about the visual side of things and the general thrust of the storytelling. It’s quite interesting, because I think it echoes the way they must have worked on the book. Michael’s original imagining of the book was completely different from what actually ended up in print, and it was Helen who supplied the subtext to the words, and made the story much more complex. I think Joanna’s done the same with the film, actually.

You’ve both been involved in Channel 4’s other classic Christmas animations, The Snowman, and the Snowman and the Snowdog. What is it that draws you to these productions?

R: Jo and I are both illustrators. Jo’s had a few children’s books out, I’ve got one coming out next year, so we’ve both got a love of illustration. And you can’t beat a good, classic children’s story. And if you love a writer and illustrator’s work, you’ll want to do your best to find a way of translating it into animation.

J: You breathe life into these wonderful illustrations – like with The Snowman, making him come to life, making him think and breathe and just be. It’s the same thing with We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. And I think once the people have seen the film, they’ll never quite look at the book in the same way, because of the film. I think the same thing happened with The Snowman.

R: The thing that draws you to these productions is that you want to be able to translate how you feel about a book and turn it into something which can be enjoyed by everyone. It’s not just a question of taking the book and putting it on the screen, it’s about taking how you feel about it, how you love it, and using that.

You’ve got an excellent cast – you must be thrilled to have such big names.

J: Absolutely. They were brilliant! We’ve got Mark Williams, who was fun and funny, and he brought a real, added dimension to the dad. What we didn’t want from the film was just a generic mum and dad and children. We wanted them all to have strong personalities in their own right. And we had Pam Ferris as the grandmother, who was superb. She didn’t have many lines to say, but, my God, she said them well. And Olivia Colman was wonderful, she created a very gentle, loving mum.

R: But actually, one of the things that we feel most pleased about was how good the kids are.

And I understand one of them is quite well known to you, Robin?

R: Reasonably, yes, although less and less as she gets older! We searched high and low for child actors to play these children – you go through agents, and Jo and I spent a very long day auditioning boys and girls, and we found one boy out of it, but really no-one else was right. And we’d recorded a dummy track, using a friend’s daughter and another friend’s son, who played the youngest children. And we thought we’d keep them. But that left us still wanting another girl. And someone suggested I get one of my daughters to audition, and she did, and was absolutely superb. It wasn’t my idea, I promise. It’s nice we’ve found some very natural children’s voices that really bring out the spirit of unsupervised childhood. They don’t sound too organised or contrived, they have a lovely, natural sound to them, the kids.

Music has played a significant part in your previous Christmas animations. Is that the case here?

J: Absolutely. We have a composer called Stuart Hancock, and he has composed some of the most wonderful music. We had a recording with a 53-piece orchestra at Abbey Road. It’s superlative. And then, of course, we have our song at the end, which is written and performed by George Ezra, and is very much written into the film as well. You couldn’t wish for better, it’s wonderful.

Is there an element of worry, that you’re taking something so iconic and loved, and making changes to it?

R: If you do it well enough, it doesn’t have to be a worry.

J: We’ve actually been really faithful to the book in many ways, although we’ve expanded on the story. For example, we have reproduced as closely as we can, all the illustrations in the book. You will find them all in the film. Even if they’re only there for a split second, they’re there. And with the text as well, every line in the book is in the film.

Why do you think children’s books have such a special place in the national psyche?

R: Because they bond parent and child, and they have an emotional effect on both parties. And when the child grows up, they do the same thing with their children. It’s one of the loveliest things – I still miss it with my children. And even though my eldest daughter is 17, they do actually quite like it if I read them a story.

J: Also, I think they’re little lessons in life, gentle ways of introducing children to life. Bear Hunt is quite scary, but life is scary, and it’s a way for them to learn in a gentle way how to deal with it.

Did you read Bear Hunt to your children?

J: Yeah I did, definitely. Of course! Didn’t everyone?

We’re Going On A Bear Hunt airs on Channel 4 this Christmas.