
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 27, 1993                   TAG: 9311270268
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: N.F. MENDOZA LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`THE BORROWERS' SET UP HOUSE ON TNT

No one lives alone in author Mary Norton's world. It's populated by "The Borrowers," little people who set up house beneath floorboards and fill their world with bits and pieces of ours.

They decorate in English country tiny: A matchbook becomes a chest of drawers, a biscuit tin a bed.

A TNT original movie premiering tonight (at 8) based on two Norton books, "The Borrowers" and "The Borrowers Afield," features Ian Holm and his wife Penelope Wilton and Rebeca Callard as the Borrowers: Pod, Homily and Arreitty. (Part 2 airs Sunday at 8 p.m.)

They see human "beans" as two-dimensional giants whose homes they live in. And, they don't trust any of them, until they find themselves lost and must rely on an 8-year-old to help them.

Director John Henderson says the stories were childhood favorites of his. He believes the sense of family they instill makes them valuable in today's world. "What it really does is bring out family values, as the family rallies rally around together to get through things, despite the pressures of modern life. I think the people who like it so much do so because they pull together on things.

"Everyone can be charmed into the story," Henderson insists, from London where he is finishing Parts 3 and 4 of "Borrowers" stories "The Borrowers Afloat" and "The Borrowers Aloft"). "It's for ages 2 to 92," he adds.

"The Borrowers," aired in London and won the equivalent of two British Emmy Awards in April for best youth and family programming, and a second for best photography.

"The Borrowers" was originally made in 1973 with Eddie Albert ("Green Acres"), but Henderson says the TNT production is shot "strictly from a Borrowers' point of view." The previous film, was done from both humans' and Borrowers' perspectives.

"The production cry on this film was the constant emphasis that `we are a Borrowers' film crew," Henderson adds. "The 1973 version was brave at the time, but now we have more toys to play with. We had something like 600 blue-screen processes," explains Henderson.

by CNB