Handles her dog at Crufts with real aplomb. At four Henry could barely form a sentence. Why have they chosen to arrest his development at playgroup age?
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I wish we knew the answer to that question, Marjorie! But the ways of the editors are strange, and their reasons inscrutable.
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I think they made a huge mistake devising a story in which a small child would have to play an important part and are too stubborn to admit it. Keri Davies said on Twitter that it is a real child of the correct age. Surely they would have had better results if they had chosen a child slightly older than the character. Then, the way they go about recording is probably that they say the line and get him to wepeat, sorry, repeat it, which is why it sounds so awfully stilted. Then again, the lines they write for him that are so terribly babyish. So a disaster all wound.
Which is why tonstant weader fwowed up.
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They are in a bit of a bind with Henwy, I suspect, having carefully chosen the wrong child of the âcorrect ageâ. Of course you are right, Janie, it would have been a lot more sensible to pick a child of an incorrect and greater age⌠I wonder whose sprog it is and suspect a spot more of the nepotism that is working so well for TA.
If they decide to make a virtue of necessity and portray his limited vocabulary and absence of curiosity as a result of the Terrible Abuse he experienced, I shall be quite cross. Partly because I will suspect them of nicking the idea from the various bleeding hearts who have said one shouldnât be mean about Henwyâs speech, heâs a damaged child (and further, maintain that one is a howwid bully to the little Ac-Tor for suggesting he sounds halfwitted). But partly also because it has on a couple of occasions been patently obvious that the actorâs limitations have fwustwated - sorry, itâs insidious - their plans for the script: his reported speech about âlocking all the knives in the world up, not Mummyâ (that lump in my throat is vomit, not emotion) and about feeling âas happy as a bag of dancing monkeysâ. So pwesumably they are on some level aware that they are having to write down for any scene where the leaking milksop is required to articulate on air.
I still get a warm glow when I recall a poster elsewhere referring to him as a Retarded Little Sod. He didnât half get a kicking for it, though.
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Isnât it so much better when we donât hear Henry?
Anyone pining for his artless pwattle? Nah, thought not.
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I dunno, Gus, I wouldnât mind hearing him saying,
âWhereâs Daddy? I had fun wiv Daddy. Youâre no fun, Mummy.â
Do you think he could manage that? Over and over?
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oooooh
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
yes, please!
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Janie has an evil side. Itâs one of the things I like about her.
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âHalfâ is rather generous, if you ask me,.
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Their persistence with him would suggest our suspicions about his selection being entirely nepotistic are more than likely correct. I get that for a one-off someone saying âIâve left Piers in the Range Rover torturing the dog, shall I pop down and get him ?â but heâs been ballsing this role up for years.
That, then, limits their ability to sling him off and produce Nu-Henwee fully equipped to discuss the intricacies of the Gibraltar debate with Peggoi. In normal circumstances heâs have disapperated years ago.
So who is he ? We need to know !!!
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In an attempt to discover this I looked at the BBC Whoâs Who, and found
âDriven Helen soon found that the life of a single working mum became considerably easier when she and Henry moved back in with her parents at Bridge Farm.â
Well, yes, it would, wouldnât it?
I canât find any vestige of a credit, though. I thought child actors were supposed to be given full credit so that they have some kind of CV to work with when they grow up. Heâs said more than the grams can provideâŚ
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I suspect a voice synthesiser is used, nothing else makes sense.
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[quote=âMarjorie, post:12, topic:82, full:trueâ]
I suspect a voice synthesiser is used, nothing else makes sense.
[/quote]Absolutely, or an adult cast member slipping into a 4 yr-old voice, but havenât we been assured by Producers and SWâs thatâs not the case ?
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Best I can find is:
âPatikas reveals another trade secret: they have never met the young actor who plays Helenâs son, Henry. Due to child labour laws, his lines are recorded separately.â
which at least implies itâs a human being, if not one as young as the character is meant to be.
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Oh I dunno. Surely their not having met him makes it more rather than less likely that he is a wobot.
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The chemistry between them is just that - the batteries are probably lithium cells.
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After all the hoo-ha about the child who played Daniel Hebden Lloyd (Dominic Davies) being traumatised by the wicked message-board calling the character âFat Danâ, I expect they donât want anyone to find anything out about this child playing the utterly wet and a weed infantilised Henry. Henry is written as about three, the child-actor is probably the age Henry would be by birth, after all. His little friends might not think much of it.
It looks as if Daniel was not recorded at home:
http://www.thefullwiki.org/Dominic_Davies_(actor)
says that he âfrequently records episodes at BBC Birmingham in The Mailboxâ.
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What beastly people we are. Blame Mrs Davies for not heeding Noel Cowardâs advice.
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[quote=âFanta, post:17, topic:82, full:trueâ]After all the hoo-ha about the child who played Daniel Hebden Lloyd (Dominic Davies) being traumatised by the wicked message-board calling the character âFat Danâ[/quote] ⌠and is âthe youngest son of The Archers web site producer and script writer Keri Daviesâ. I rest my case mâLud.
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Since Mr Keri was running the BBC message-board at the time, I suspect that he may have been more traumatised than the child, to be honest.
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