Mackenzie Crook Is Remaking ‘Worzel Gummidge’!
This is another one of those stories where people over 35 are going to react, and people under 35 will have no idea what the fuss is about… Mackenzie Crook is working on a reboot of classic tv series ‘Worzel Gummidge’.
For the younger readers amongst you, ‘Worzel Gummidge’ was a children’s tv series starring ‘Doctor Who’ actor (and father of Gotham’s Sean Pertwee), Jon Pertwee as a scarecrow that could come to life. He used to live in a field near the village of Scatterbrook and befriended a local family. He would help them out with problems, sometimes with the aid of his interchangeable selection of heads for specific tasks! the series also had a “femme fatale” character played by Una Stubbs, who was a life-size fairground doll.
The original show ran on ITV from 1979 to 1981, and was briefly revived by Channel 4 in 1987 for ‘Worzel Gummidge Down Under’ which filmed in New Zealand. This new version has been pitched by Crook to the BBC who, apparently, seem very receptive to the idea. Crook will play the titular role, but the show is said to be in the very early development stages at the moment, so don’t expect it to appear any time soon.
Mackenzie Crook shot to fame playing Gareth Keenan in ‘The Office’, but has since gone on to star in the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies, played Orell in ‘Game Of Thrones’, the druid Veran in ‘Britannia’ and wrote, directed & starred in BBC series ‘Detectorists’ with Toby Jones.
Whilst I’m sure there will be a lot of people bemoaning their childhood being trampled and various other negative thoughts about a ‘Worzel Gummidge’ remake, if someone is going to do it, Crook is a pretty solid person to take on the task. As we said, it is only in early development at the moment, so we’ll have to see if it comes to anything, but we’ll bring you more news as we get it.
