When will the BBC’s Julia Donaldson obsession end?

The BBC thinks it wouldn’t be Christmas without an adaptation of a Julia Donaldson book. This is another dispiriting example of the invention of a faux Christmas tradition. This year, it’s the turn of Tabby McTat, a story about a musical cat and a busker, which will be broadcast this afternoon.

This isn’t the first time a Donaldson book has been adapted for the BBC’s Christmas line up; it was The Smegs and the Smoos last year. And Superworm, Zog And The Flying Doctors and The Gruffalo have all received the animation treatment over the last decade, and are on BBC iPlayer in case you didn’t catch them the first time. Isn’t it time the BBC looked elsewhere for kiddy uplift?

There’s no doubt that Axel Scheffler, the book’s illustrator, has a distinctive and engaging style. And, when The Gruffalo first came out in 1999, I very much enjoyed it. But now, the ubiquity of Donaldson’s oeuvre – both in bookshops and on the box – makes her the one woman equivalent of about a hundred Raymond Briggs’ Snowmen. I’ve reviewed her latest, The Bower Bird, which is sweet (never give up on the quest for Love). Yet there is no end to Donaldson’s productivity; she really does churn ‘em out.  

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The reason, I think, for Donaldson’s dominance of the scene is that her work is in easy-to-read, rattle-it-off verse; it’s inoffensive; it’s got a nice digestible religion-free moral, whether about inclusivity (Room on the Broom), environmental awareness (Snail and the Whale), overcoming prejudice (The Smegs and the Smoos), collaboration (Zog) and conquering fears (Gruffalo’s Child). It’s feel good, inoffensive to multicultural sensitivities, and bland. You can see why it’s up the BBC’s street.

I’d be happy, myself, for The Gruffalo – which does very nicely indeed in terms of merchandise as well as books and films, even more than her other characters – to feature in school libraries and for the film adaptions to be screened just occasionally. But we’ve reached peak Donaldson; she’s become the telly equivalent of a box of Quality Street in every home – and with Jodie Whittaker as Tabby McTat in this year’s broadcast, she’ll be inescapable once again. 

Donaldson has become as inevitable as It’s a Wonderful Life as part of the Christmas TV schedule, without the genuine redemptive element in that film. She’s good but not, to be honest, that good. My heart has been warmed enough, thank you. Can we have a break…please?