Forget Murder, She Wrote – Angela Lansbury’s best work barely gets a mention

The actress starred in one of the most underrated – but greatest – children’s films of all time

Hammy detective. Voice of Beauty and the Beast’s Mrs Potts. Star of the “tell me more” popcorn gif (if you know, you know). Queen of the screen Dame Angela Lansbury has died, aged 96; and the first thing I thought of (and then sang, of course, with a tinge of melancholy)? “The Beautiful Briny [sea]”.

Lansbury starred as amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher from 1984 to 1996 in Murder, She Wrote, which proved a staple for any hungover university student of a certain age – alongside Peter Falk’s Columbo, of course (and just imagine if the two of them had paired up, like Batman and Robin; no petty thief or attempted murderess would have been safe, on either side of the pond). However, despite all of her much-deserved TV crime-solving accolades, that’s not what I’ll remember her for.

No, to me losing Lansbury is a sincere and heartfelt loss, because she is a nostalgic reminder of one of the fondest moments of my past, and possibly of yours too. For she starred in one of the most underrated (but greatest) children’s films of all time: Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Hear me out: Bedknobs and Broomsticks is up there with The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, Labyrinth and The Neverending Story. It deserves its place in the canon alongside The Goonies and The Sound of Music, even Annie; and yes – this is the hill I am prepared to die on.

It came out in 1971, yet has remained ageless – so much so that I now watch it with my own kids. Perhaps that’s why it has an extra layer of personal poignancy about it, for it was a hallmark of my own 1980s childhood; a film I watched over and over on VHS until the tape inside it began to stretch dangerously thin. It was number five in our family “video book”, which tells you of its priority: the book itself a manual catalogue lovingly compiled with our favourites; the titles written in carefully and whole pages scratched out when we’d recorded over something we no longer wanted.

Tape five was Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but there was no danger of it ever being wiped. Instead, I’d sit in front of the telly with my brother, captivated by scenes of war (and, as one tweet pointed out, you can tell Lansbury’s legacy has been overlooked by virtue of the fact that her character, Miss Eglantine Price, single-handedly fended off a Nazi invasion using witchcraft and it wasn’t even her greatest role.)

The standout scenes for me in that movie – the ones I remember most, the ones I now gasp at and clutch the arms of my children and tell them to “watch this bit, this is brilliant” – were the ones where the enchanted bed travels underwater. That’s why I immediately started crooning “The Beautiful Briny”, of course. But not only that: who could forget the animated football match held by the Lion King Leonidas of Naboomland? Featuring a rhinoceros, hyena, warthog, gorilla and crocodile (all of which prove understandable hazards when dealing with a blow-up ball).

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Then the scene with the suits of armour, all brought to life; a veritable army of invisible soldiers triumphing over the hill to fight off the Germans. I can’t possibly be the only one who would stare at the television screen, utterly transfixed, and repeat the same spell with the vainest of hopes that it might make it real? Altogether, now: “Treguna mekoides trecorum satis dee.”

And the songs! Oh, the songs: “Portabello Road”, “Substitutiary Locomotion”, “A Step in the Right Direction”. As I write this down, I’m singing them – how many songs from a film you watched more than 30 years ago can you say that about?

The greatest triumph of a film like Bedknobs, however, has got to be its ability to take a serious and very real subject and bring it home to kids in a way they understand. Mary Poppins did it. The Sound of Music did it too. There’s not much more sombre than the Battle of Britain; or being a child evacuee shipped to an unfamiliar town to be looked after by a reluctant governess who is also training to be a witch – with the aim of using her spells to fight off the Nazis. Yet Bedknobs takes these grave themes and spins something magical out of them.

Bedknobs was formative in my childhood, perhaps yours too – and so was Angela Lansbury. I did have plans tonight, but you know what? I’m sacking them off. I’ve got a movie classic to rewatch.