everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Blistering performances.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is to say that I could not relate to this when I watched all two hours of it in one sitting, it felt weak and visually flawed. Watching this in three sessions should remind me that this was made as a short series for younger children, three episodes, with a lower production budget than for a big screen feature. In that context and not all viewed at once this could be very effective indeed. My FAQ of chapter headings gives my guess re episode breaks. Second viewing, yes yes yes. But some of the younger might need their hand held during the first ten minutes of their first viewing. * Bogeyman. I first heard this term between 1950 and 1952. Our street, being English, had an annual street bonfire on the land next to a drain at the end of our street. Some people collected scrap wood to make for a really big fire, then the day before the city council came and took it all away, safety reasons, to use the wood for a fire at a public park. Someone mentioned that the drain was dangerous because there were bogeymen there at night. Next day, another pile of wood had grown, eventually becoming as big as the first, it even looked the same. An okay bonfire night. I used to like bonfire night, but now I accept that it started because someone was annoyed with English politicians so much that they went and did something that made English politicians suggest that the public having an annual burning of a guy might be a good idea. I now consider bonfire night to be sick. England is not the healthiest country to try to live in. To some it is as if most everyone is a bogeyman at times. This feature is fictional, not factual, and shows an entertaining side to English bogeyman legends. * Ouch Ouch Ouch. Clare Thomas who plays Jessica 15ish. This is the Phyllis of The Railway Children 2000. Even more, this is the Aggie of Madeline 1998. To some Madeline fans this DVD might be a must. Clare has a big role in this. Ouch Ouch Ouch.

One of the Proustian memories fired by Shrek was that character's very obvious similarities to Raymond Brigg's 'Fungus the Bogeyman'. This book was notable for providing a fairy-tale style ogre, example of a subterranean race of bogeymen, who the reader could sympathies with. Spurning the human "drycleaners" from above, Fungus and his family conduct their disgusting - but to them perfectly proper - habits, traditions and lifestyles, out of the gaze of humankind.This programme takes the ideas laid out in the Briggs book - using it as a kind of reference material for the series - and shows the gradual discovery, by conservative Martin Clunes and family, of the bogeymen of the title.Fungus and his kind are made flesh through fairly irksome CGI, reminiscent of the technology used in the'Walking with . . . ' features produced by the beeb. The monsters are apparently animated over the top of live actors, a better idea might have been producing a basic musculature and skeleton over which to animate the creatures, in the WETA style.All in all the series is an entertaining take on the 'Stig of the Dump' style saga and will gratify some fans who murmured accusations of plagiarism at 'Shrek'. Fungus could have been done better, but this will suffice for the moment.