The Midnight Gang by David Walliams has been televised by the BBC, and will be on our screens this Christmas. The Midnight Gang tells the tale of a young boy called Tom who finds himself being admitted to the children's ward in St Hugh's Hospital after a cricketing accident. On the children’s ward he discovers the Midnight Gang, a secret group of children who go on midnight adventures in the hospital making dreams come true. There is a scary porter and a matron who hates children, it's a thrilling tale from the off!
We were invite to Bradford for the Children’s Christmas Premiere Tour to see The Midnight Gang before anyone else! We were also told that the episode we watched is slightly too long at the moment, so we'll have to watch again over Christmas to see if we can work out which scenes didn't make the cut!
We were going to be watching inside an inflatable pop-up cinema. This in itself was very exciting and it looked amazing from the outside. We also walked the red carpet where it snowed on us!
Once inside, the floor was covered with beanbags in front of a giant screen. These were genuinely so comfortable, but I did feel a little old when I tried to get back up again and my knees weren't sure! The screening was brilliant fun and both children really enjoyed it.
David Walliams appears in The Midnight Gang as the headmaster. He is joined by Alan Davies as the scary porter, Haydn Gwynne as the kid-hating matron and Amit Shah as the slightly nervous Dr Luppers, while Tom is played by Oliver Zetterstrom. It was a wonderful treat in the run-up to Christmas and we can't wait to watch it again. Afterwards we had a run around the water fountains in City Square until the inevitable happened and my son got totally soaked. A quick trip to the shops on the way to the train station for some new jogging bottoms sorted him out!
Also on TV this Christmas is the tale of Zog, the slightly clumsy dragon in Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's book. Sir Lenny Henry leads an all-star cast in Magic Light Pictures’ new animation for BBC One, Zog. It also features the voices of Tracey Ullman and Kit Harington in the story of a keen but accident-prone dragon who gets himself into mischief whilst learning how to fly, roar, breathe fire and fight knights in his first four years at Dragon School. Hugh Skinner provides the voice of Zog and Patsy Ferran is Princess Pearl. This was one of my favourite books to read to the children and I can still quote it word for word. We'll all be watching on BBC1 on Christmas Day at 4.50pm!
Disclosure: We were kindly given press tickets to the premiere in Bradford for the purpose of this post. ll opinion is my own.
