The Borrowers (miniseries)


The Borrowers is a BBC TV miniseries first broadcast in 1992 on BBC2 and then later on American television station TNT. The miniseries is adapted from the 1952 Carnegie Medal-winning first novel and the second novel of author Mary Norton's The Borrowers series: The Borrowers and The Borrowers Afield. The film stars Ian Holm, Penelope Wilton and Rebecca Callard and was directed by John Henderson. The miniseries was named on the BFI's list of "100 Greatest British Television Programmes".
Throughout the miniseries, every episode ended on a cliffhanger. The miniseries was followed by The Return of the Borrowers. That TV miniseries aired in 1993 also on BBC2 and TNT.
Both series follow the Clocks, a family of tiny people who are forced to flee from their home under the floorboards in an old manor into the English countryside.

Plot

The Clock Family are "borrowers," tiny people who live in the houses of regular sized "human beans". They survive by borrowing all they need from big people and try to keep their existence secret. The main characters are a teenage borrower girl named Arriety and her parents, Pod and Homily. During a borrowing expedition with her father and contrary to borrower nature, Arriety befriends a human boy named George who lives in the home and develops a friendship with him.
The tiny family, who live under the kitchen floorboards of an old manor, are eventually discovered by the other humans who occupy the home and are forced to flee into the English countryside. After finding an old boot to live in, the family befriends a fellow Borrower - a young man who goes by the name "Dreadful Spiller". Spiller helps them find a more permanent home by reuniting them with relations who had formerly run away from the same manor after one of them was seen and eventually relocated in the caretaker's cabin on the manor's grounds.

Cast

BAFTA Awards
Royal Television Society