The Owl Service (TV series)

In 1969, Granada Television produced an eight-part adaptation of Alan Garner’s fantasy novel The Owl Service, which aired in colour over the winter of 1969–1970. It was a notably ambitious production: the first fully scripted colour show from Granada, and one of the few TV dramas of the era to be shot almost entirely on location rather than in a studio. The series employed jump cuts and other editing techniques to create a sense of disorientation and to imply that two different time periods were overlapping.

Background

Garner himself adapted the book into seven scripts (later stretched to eight), and Peter Plummer served as both producer and director. After the novel won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for children’s literature, three companies competed for the television rights. Granada secured them in the summer of 1968 and approached Garner to write the scripts. Plummer, who also acted as producer, chose to film at the real locations described in the book wherever possible.

Production

However, Bryn Hall—a key location—was unavailable, so its interior and exterior scenes were shot at Poulton Hall near Liverpool. The rest of the filming took place around the village of Dinas Mawddwy in Merionethshire, Wales. The book’s valley and village are actually based on Llanymawddwy by Bryn Hall, but the larger Dinas Mawddwy offered better facilities and allowed filming without blocking roads.

Location shooting began on 11 April and ended on 20 June. Garner later recalled that filming fell behind schedule due to “difficulties” with some of the young lead actors. With only two days left in Wales, the Granada crew took over the shoot and completed it on time by omitting certain scenes (such as the taxi arriving to take Nancy out of the valley) and altering others (the children chopping down a telephone pole instead of the pole falling in a storm). A few studio scenes were shot, wrapping up on 3 July 1969.

Trailers for the series included material not used in the finished show. The stone known as Llech Ronw (the Stone of Gronw) was carved by local mason Edward Rowlands based on a brief from designer Peter Caldwell. The brief specified an upright slab of stone or slate, roughly five feet above ground and two feet below, with a four-inch rough hole cut through it a foot from the top and a roughly etched pattern of circles two feet from the top.