The Owl Service

What this episode covers

“Just suppose, a long time back, someone, somehow, did something in this valley. And suppose he found some way to control, some power or force…and he used it...to make a woman out of flowers”. Michaelangelo once said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free’. Alan Garner had just such an experience while writing his award winning novel, “the Owl Service”. Garner, a student of Celtic myth and archeology, said “ it seemed at times that i was discovering, not writing, a story. it was all there, waiting, and i was like an archeologist picking away the sand to reveal the bones.” But it was only when filming began on the serialized Granada production in late 1969 that these bones suddenly began to walk upright. Both cast and crew were witness to strange coincidences, unsettling random encounters and the sense that what had at first been mere myth was suddenly palpably alive. The experience would become legendary in British show business circles, and its effects would resonate far beyond its creation, with the three lead actors eventually abandoning show business entirely, one losing his life in an act of random violence, and Alan Garner himself, by his own estimation, lapsing into madness. This is a story of cinema and synchronicity, of ancient tales and creations that stare back. This is the story of the Owl Service. And its Past Dark.

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