Radio Times: Review by:; Jane Anderson

Remember that scene in Mary Poppins where everyone’s favourite nanny scares her young charges half to death by taking them to a sweet and biscuit purveyor who makes them snap her fingers off and then eat them? No? Well that is because you are picturing the Julie Andrews smiley family film rather than PL Travers’s much darker and infinitely more amusing tale.

This originally went out on Radio 4 in 2004 and saw its star Juliet Stevenson turn the eponymous Mary into a mysterious, magical figure — part batty, part nurturing, part disciplinarian.

About this programme

Hazel Marshall's dramatisation of PL Travers' children's classic, with Juliet Stevenson, Andrew Sachs, David Timson, Jonathan Bee and Sophie Stuckey. From 2004.