The Owl Service

The Owl Service is an eight-part television series based on the fantasy novel of the same name by Alan Garner. Produced in 1969 and televised over the winter of 1969–1970, the series was remarkably bold in terms of production. It was the first fully scripted colour production by Granada Television and was filmed almost entirely on location at a time when almost all TV drama was studio-bound. It used editing techniques such as jump cuts to create a sense of disorientation and also to suggest that two time periods overlapped. For the series, the book was adapted in seven scripts (later stretched to eight) by Garner and was produced and directed by Peter Plummer. Background Following the success of the novel, which had won the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Award for children's literature, there was much interest in turning the story into a TV series with three companies vying for the rights. In the end, during the summer of 1968, Granada won out, approaching Alan Garner to script the series himself. The director chosen was Peter Plummer, who also acted as producer. Since the novel was based on real locations, Plummer opted to use the same places where possible but one key location Bryn Hall could not be used so these interior and exterior scenes were filmed at Poulton Hall near Liverpool, the rest of the filming took place around the village on Dinas Mawddwy, Wales. The valley and village described in the book is actually Llanymawddwy by Bryn Hall but it proved more practical to film in the larger village of Dinas Mawddwy which had better facilities that allowed filming without blocking the roads. Filming began on location on 11 April and was completed on 20 June (Alan Garner recalls that location filming fell behind schedule due to 'difficulties' with some of the young lead actors and with only two days left in Wales the Granada crew effectively took control of the filming and were able to complete the shoot on time by omitting some scenes; (the taxi arriving to take Nancy out of the valley) and changing others (the children chopping down the telephone pole rather than the pole falling down in the storm). A few studio scenes were shot for the production, with these wrapping up on 3 July 1969.