Biggles Is On TV Today

There's a film which is ironically a blast from the past airing on Talking Pictures TV this afternoon.

Biggles: Adventures in Time came out in 1986. It is a time travelling movie which sees the character of James Bigglesworth - a pilot from World War I - travel back and forth between his era and the mid-80s.

As well as that, his 'time twin' (I am going by memory here, so I could be wrong about how he's classified) is able to transport between his period of the 80s back to the 1910s.

The character of Biggles was created long before the film came out. He first appeared in children's books written by W.E. Johns in the 1930s. Johns himself was a pilot during the First World War.

As a movie, Biggles holds a special place in my childhood for a couple reasons.

When the film was released, my mother bought me one of those books that comes with a cassette. You would play the tape and read along. I surmise I could already read back then, but having the audio and book together enhanced the reading experience. 

My father also plays a part in my Biggles memory because he took me to see the film at the cinema. I always laugh at that trip because we were the only two patrons inside the theatre that day. Just us two with the giant screen to ourselves.

I definitely read (and listened!) to the book before seeing the film because I recall the closing scene when Biggles' time twin finds himself transported to a jungle to find Biggles and his companions being held captive by a tribe.

On the cassette, the actor portraying Biggles for the book says 'Save us from this cooking pot, old chap' or something along those lines to his 1980s ally. However, in the movie, Biggles didn't utter those words. After the movie concluded, I walked to the bus wondering why the closing line of the book wasn't said in the film. I suppose that was the first of what would turn out many occasions when I shook my head at things from pages not finding their way to the silver screen.

I suspect, with Biggles ending with a cooking pot cliffhanger, there were plans for a sequel. Unfortunately, that didn't happen because the film was regarded as a 'commercial and critical failure'. 

Biggles: Adventures in Time airs at 2:25pm BST today on Talking Pictures TV.