The Snow Spider
(1988)

TV Mini-Series

Country: UK

Genre: Children's, Fantasy

Synopsis

On his ninth birthday, young Gwyn (Osian Roberts), who lives on a remote hill farm in Wales, receives five strange gifts from his grandmother (Si?n Phillips): a piece of seaweed, a yellow scarf, a tin whistle, a metal brooch and a small broken horse. Gwyn offers the brooch to the wind and receives back a tiny silvery spider - Arianwen, the snow spider - confirming that, as his grandmother had already guessed, he has inherited magical powers from his Celtic ancestor Gwydyon, a powerful magician whose exploits are described in the fourth book ("Math Son of Mathonwy") of the Mabinogion. With the help of the snow spider, Gwyn embarks on adventures involving other worlds of snow and silver, as he attempts to solve the five-year-old mystery of his sister Beth's disappearance in a snow storm.

Notes

• Based on the 1986 children's fantasy novel of the same name by British author Jenny Nimmo (b. 1944), which was the first novel in 'The Magician Trilogy' (sometimes called 'the Snow Spider Trilogy', after the first book in the series), succeeded by "Emlyn's Moon" in 1987, and "The Chestnut Soldier" in 1989. Both these latter volumes were also made into miniseries, transmitted in 1990 and 1991 respectively, in which Osian Roberts and Si?n Phillips reprised their roles from "The Snow Spider".
• Comprising four episodes transmitted November-December 1988, the series has only ever had a release on VHS format. The VHS video presents the production as a single continuous film.