My family and other animals

Press, 5 March 1988, Page 18

My family and other animals

In 1935 the Durrell family left their native England ’and went to live on the sun-soaked Greek island of Corfu. A young, widowed and rather scatter-brained mother and her four very! different children: attractive teenage Margot; Leslie, never- happy unless he was shooting something; Larry, eventually to become the world famous writer Laurence Durrell, and 10-year-old Gerald, who began a love affair with the natural world that has burned passionately ever since — all upped sticks on a whim to escape the English winter.

“My Family and Other Animals” is a new 10-part 8.8. C. drama based on Gerald Durrell’s best-sell-ing account of his family’s

five-year sojourn on the island. It starts on Sunday at 7.05 p.m. on Two. Filmed on location in “the garden of the gods,” the series portrays the magic and colour of a breathtakingly beautiful Isle, the mystery and fascination of its animal and insect life and — last but definitely not least — the eccentric individualism of the members of the Durrell family. The “family” extends beyond Gerald's rather odd group of blood relations; also consisting of a procession of animals that reads like the passenger list on Noah’s Ark. Gerald cossets and cultivates toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and geckos, ladybirds, glow-worms, octopuses

and rose-beetles. Then there’s Quasimodo the pigeon, the two puppies Widdle and puke, and the Magenpies, not to mention an assortment of human “hangers-on” like Spiro the taxi driver, George and the Kralefskys. i i • i “My Family and Other Animals” stars Hannah Gordon (“Upstairs, Downstairs,” ‘‘Telford’s Change”) as Mrs Durrell and Brian Blessed (“I Claudius,” “The Black Adder”) as Spiro, the family’s Greek self-ap-pointed “minder.” ! Darren Redmayne, a newcomer to acting, plays little Gerry Durrell, with Guy Scantlebury as brother Leslie, Anthony Calf as brother Laurence and Sarah Jane Holm as his sister Margot.