I need another four hearts to contain all my love for last night’s Esio Trot (BBC1) – an utterly, completely, inescapably beguiling adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer, directed by Dearbhla Walsh, narrated by James Corden and starring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench. You could argue that with a pedigree like that nothing could have gone wrong, but it doesn’t work like that. Although you can maximise your chances of being able to conjure it, charm is ineffable, alchemical. You can’t measure it out by the yard and cut it off when you’ve got enough. You can’t splash it on to a scene and then stopper it to make sure you’ve got enough for the next take. It just … appears, if you’re careful and if you’re lucky. And then it ripples through your film, or your play or your book, animating all and subtly transforming everything from a prosaic good – or even great – into a thing of wonder.
Hoffman played Mr Hoppy, a quiet man who nurses both the Babylonian garden on his balcony and a secret love for his radiantly lovely and lively neighbour Mrs Silver (Dench) with equal passion. They have known each other for five years. He has not yet mustered the courage to ask her up to his flat for a cup of tea. Then she gets a tortoise, Alfie, for company (“My Facebook status – ‘widowed’,” she explains to Mr Hoppy. “My Facebook status is … ‘Not on Facebook’,” he replies pensively), and becomes anxious about the creature’s slow growth. Mr Hoppy devises a scheme involving a made-up Bedouin chant, the purchase of 100 incrementally bigger tortoises and a Heath Robinsonesque contraption with which to lift Alfie up to his flat and replace him with a larger successor every few weeks.
Everything about the film is beautiful. Every line shines, every moment is polished, the slight plot unfolds smoothly and sweetly – everything is done to a turn. Corden is warm and uncynical without becoming dull or twee. Dench is on almost literally sparkling form – the story lives or dies by her ability to twinkle as mesmerisingly for us as the book’s Mrs Silver does for Hoppy – and Hoffman is … well, just perfect. I simply cannot tell you how perfect. Tiny little flickers of his slightly tortoisey face tell us of his boundless love, his goodness, his patience, his shyness … Oh, he is everything wonderful.
But verily, by the brilliance of its smaller players shall ye truly know a top-quality product and everyone here nails it, from the little boy who first twigs what Mr H is doing, to the two pet-shop owners from whom Hoppy sources the tortoises (Geoff McGivern, assuring Hoppy that “all the big money’s in guinea pigs these days”; Jimmy Akingbola offering to shave a hedgehog to mimic the necessary: “I’ve done it before. No one would ever know.”)
Just watch it. Once a week, I’d recommend, for the rest of your life.
After deep consultation with the family archivist as he basted another festive joint and stirred another 10-gallon jug of gravy for his ceaselessly gluttonous kin, I can say with confidence that the Mangan family have been loyal followers of the World’s Strongest Man (Channel 5) competition for at least 32 of that shrine to musclebound insanity’s 37 years of existence.
In the beginning were just a few words and then a lot of truck- or aeroplane-pulling until someone from Iceland won. Over the years, the competitors and the competition have become increasingly bloated. This year’s coverage ran to 11 hours. Fortunately, the Mangans’ love for the lardy men – the existence of whose high-functioning musculature beneath a heavy coating of fat must be largely taken on trust – and the event has grown commensurately. We watched the whole thing, including the final. The log carry, the car carry, the Atlas stones, the improbably-sized barbell-lifting … gosh, it was exhausting. But as with The X Factor, the Breaking Bad box set and sex, you keep at it because you know the end and a fine sense of achievement will come eventually.
My personal WSM philosophy is always to bet on the man with “Thor” in his name, so you can imagine my delight when Hafthór “Thor” Björnsson from Iceland got through. Alas, despite his country’s domination via the matchless Jón Páll Sigmarsson in my youth (and Magnús Ver Magnússon through my teenage years, thanks to some hard training in the months when he wasn’t chairing Mastermind), my man had to settle for second place, behind Žydrūnas Savickas from Lithuania. But after 11 hours and 17 bottles of Baileys, it was a result we could all live with. Come back and hammer him next year, Thor. We’ll be there.
