British 'Heidi' trilogy with Bill Nighy as grandfather filmed in Cantabria

A VILLAGE in northern Spain has been picked as the set for a trilogy of Heidi films – starring Bill Nighy as the grandfather.

Crew members and cast of the first episode, Heidi: Queen of the Mountains, have already set up in Pendes in the Atlantic region of Cantabria.

Some scenes will be shot in the nearby village of Mogrovejo (pictured below right), in the Liébana district, where the grandfather's hut is set up, whilst Pendes represents the fictional Swiss village of Dörfli.

Swiss author Johanna Spyri's 1880 children's novel has been one of the most-read and most-televised ever, although few are faithful to the book itself.

In fact, the Anglo-Indian production company says the same will apply with the 2017 version.

Heidi will be much older when the story starts, aged around 13 or 14, and her grandfather will be 'younger and more cool', say Sheetal Talwar and Simon Wright.

Only the first film will be shown next year, with the others shot between now and approximately 2021.

The idea of this and of Heidi being older at the start is so that the actress who plays her, Samantha Alison, goes from a little girl to a young woman so she can carry on being Heidi throughout the three stories.

This will be the first time ever that books two and three in the Heidi series have ever been transferred from page to screen.

And Cantabria has fought hard to be chosen as filming location: its emerald-green hills and rustic villages beat sites even in Switzerland, where the novels are set, and 20 other countries as well as Austria, Slovenia, Germany, and the UK.

Other Spanish locations, such as Asturias, Andalucía and the Pyrénees were seriously considered.

Bill Nighy will play a 'young and hip' pensioner in keeping with his characters in Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Love, Actually where he was dubbed as 'the bad granddad of rock 'n' roll'.

Olivia Grant plays the autocratic governess, Fräulein Rottenmeier, who makes Heidi's life hell in Frankfurt; Perry Eagleton is Peter the goatherd; Mimi Slinger is Heidi's wheelchair-bound German friend Clara, whilst other likeable characters Henry, Hugo and Seb are played by Mark Williams and Helen Baxendale.

The film is directed by the Indian film buff Bhavna Talwar, and will be the first screen version of the story for over 30 years – duly modernised for a 21st-century audience.

“We will follow the thread of the original story, but with some changes,” the producers confirm.

A German-language Swiss radio production (pictured below right) dubbed into English for British TV in the mid-late 1980s was probably the one that most reflected the original storyline of a five-year-old orphan dumped on her gruff, hermit grandfather by her uncaring aunt, and who grows up to love life sleeping in a haybarn, wearing only a petticoat and red shawl by day, eating and drinking little else besides home-made goat's cheese and milk, listening to her granddad 'the Alm Uncle' tell stories, and hanging out with Peter the goatherd on the mountainside.

It was shot near St Moritz and the set, known as 'Heidiland', is a major tourist attraction.

A Shirley Temple black-and-white production (first picture) centred more on the chapters where Heidi's uncaring aunt returns after three years and takes her to live with a wealthy family in Frankfurt as companion to 12-year-old wheelchair-bound Clara, under the watchful eye of the evil governess Fräulein Rottenmeier.

And the award for the least-faithful of all has to go to the Heidi series as Spanish children of the 1980s knew it: a Japanese cartoon, where the setting was not even Switzerland.

As a result, few adults in Spain between 25 and 45 even know about the second two novels in the Heidi series, written by Frau Spyri's English translator Charles Tritten – Heidi Grows Up, where she goes to boarding school and discovers she has a talent for playing the violin, but returns to live in the grandfather's hut and teach in the village school; and Heidi's Children, where she is married to Peter the goatherd and has a twin son and daughter, and discovers her old boarding-school friend is her long-lost sister.

By the time they have watched the Cantabria-based series with Bill Nighy, they will know far more about Heidi's life than they ever did in their childhood.