Bond would be rolling in his grave if he could see what has been done to his character
If, like me, you grew up an admirer of Michael Bond’s plucky and furry creation Paddington, you will be shaking a head in disbelief at what has happened to the poor bear over the past few years. After two utterly terrific films that redefined what we could expect from children’s entertainment — and, in Paddington 2, gave the world a Hugh Grant performance that all but stole the show from the ubiquitous ursine — there was an imbecilic third picture, Paddington in Peru, that appeared to have been made by committee (probably was) and surgically removed all the joyful components that made the first two so enjoyable.
Yet between 2017, when Paddington 2 was released, and 2024, when Paddington in Peru slunk into cinemas, the world had changed, and so had the character of Paddington. He had gone from being a bright, likeable Ben Whishaw-voiced beast to the one-creature embodiment of all that is loathsome and twee within the British natural character. After his appearance with none other than the Queen to mark her platinum jubilee celebrations, he was then co-opted into the mourning around her death a few months later. Misguided people across the country chose to commemorate the death of Britain’s greatest monarch since Victoria not with flowers or poetry, but cuddly teddy bears, dumped ignominiously at places where they thought they should mourn. A few can still occasionally be glimpsed, now rotten with damp and neglect, and probably wishing that they had been repatriated to Peru a long, long time ago.
My daughter’s response was simple and immediate. “Daddy, I hate it! Could you please turn it off?”
Mass repatriation to Latin American countries might, however, be too generous a fate for all of those involved in what is increasingly looking like the autumn’s most resistible show, in the form of Paddington: The Musical. Often, one observes a play or musical coming together with a sense of quiet satisfaction, as the combination of cast, script, director and subject matter slowly but inexorably coalesce into something irresistible. (This could be said, with bells on, of Giant a few months ago, a show that really delved into the psyche of another great children’s writer.) But in the case of the all-singing, all-dancing Paddington, every press release, every announcement and now the release of the first song is enough to make anyone feel a profound sense of dread at the furry horrors coming our way.
There are many potential faults with the Paddington musical, but they can mainly be summed up as two factors: the concept, and Tom Fletcher. Rather than roam widely across the many books that Bond wrote, Jessica Swale’s script is adapted from the first film’s screenplay, which means that its only significant misstep — Nicole Kidman’s excessively grim and threatening villain Millicent Fawcett — will be retained for the musical. But this is not the worst problem. Instead, alarm bells rang as soon as it was announced that Fletcher, the ex-McFly singer and songwriter, would be writing the music and lyrics for the show. There are people who have done remarkable work in this area over the past few years — Neil Hannon with Wonka, Tim Minchin with Matilda — but, based on the first song released from the soundtrack, “The Explorer and the Bear”, it is fair to suggest Fletcher will not be joining their number any time soon.
It is hard to express in conventional sentences how poor the song is. It contains lyrics of remarkable bathos, over the kind of uplifting-music-by-numbers that palls halfway through the first listen. Sung by Fletcher in a sort of simper-smiley voice, rather than whoever ends up incarnating Paddington — irritatingly coyly, the production team are refusing to say who or what this will be until previews begin in November — the rhymes alternate between the uninspired (“name” and “same”, “hoarse” and “of course”) and the positively tear-inducing, albeit for entirely the wrong reasons. Stars will shine, lost people are found, home is the most important place, there are no greater teams out there, etc etc. Every single line is a wretched cliché that should have been scrubbed out a long time ago, but no, this is what Paddington: The Musical is going to be like.
It is customary for producers of new musicals to release the song as a single that they think is most likely to draw in the audience. When I played “The Explorer and the Bear” to my 9 year-old daughter Rose, a fully paid-up fan of all things Paddington, her response was simple and immediate. “Daddy, I hate it! Could you please turn it off?” I expect that this will be the reaction from several quarters in just over a month as 2025’s most-hyped and least welcome show hits theatres. For those of us unfortunate enough to have to see it for professional reasons, marmalade sandwiches alone will not cut it. And all the while, the tweeness of Paddington grows inexorably. Bond would be rolling in his grave if he could see what has been done to his character, and it is all I can do not to wish to join him in it.
