Again, I probably made an error watching more than one of these in one sitting and this was the one that suffered but all I can do is write what I can about it. This struck me almost immediately as a little too much like Annie, everything that didn’t resemble it only making me wish I was watching Alicia Morton or even Aileen Quinn rather than Shirley Temple. Really nothing special unless you’re crazy for Shirley. It’s 75-minutes of everything going relatively smoothly, with songs liberally sprinkled to pass the time; this doesn’t do a lot for me.

Again, this was a Christmas Eve viewing hence I’ll take the opportunity to say here, and this applies for everything over the next few days, expect even more inconsistency, weirdness, and nonsense than usual

Okay, an apology may be necessary. ‘Cos I’ve whined about this version of the musical just about every time I mention it, but though I cringed as soon as the credits started here, by the time it got half way through “Hard Knock Life” I was practically swooning over it. And no matter how much I’ve grown to like the substitution, “only” definitely still works better than “always” in “Tomorrow” for me.

But all the while I was waiting for the end, which I knew was where it went awry. The family were talking about it as it was on and my mum was saying how she was sure she’d seen it before without a lot of the “gumf”, as I’d call it – and looking at the IMDb I see there’s a 90 minute cut that was made for US TV. I’d kinda love to see that cut. I still think the helicopter action etc is a bit much and it reminds me a lot of the overly dramatic second act of The Sound of Music which I also find unnecessary. “Annie” just ain’t that big a show, and the Disney remake understood that.

But, for the record, Aileen Quinn is not so garish as I’d thought all these years. I was surprised by how many of the costumes and designs etc. match up between the two versions, and of course the Depression look here is better than anything a 90s TV production could muster. I love the girl who plays Molly, I love Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters, Carol Burnett and Albert Finney, of course. This is one case where I will say, it just about gets over the overlong problem with the sheer wondrousness of its basis.