I’ve talked a great deal about British television series on this blog, but they were almost exclusively detective series. We have not featured any of the many series for children produced by Thames Television.1 That’s going to change today. Chocky’s children is a 1985 sequel to Chocky, which in turn was based on a short novel by John Wyndham. The plot of Chocky is that an alien lifeform visits the mind of a young boy named Matthew to gather information about Earth. In turn, it helps him with his schoolwork. In Chocky’s children, Matthew goes to stay with an aunt and makes friends with Albertine, a neighbour girl who happens to be a genius.
These British children series tend to be quite slow, and by the third of six episodes not very much has happened. Albertine and Matthew appear to have some sort of telepathic connection, but that’s been well established by now. To wile away the time until the next plot point, they decide to play a nice game of chess in the sofa.
They’re using a pretty decent chess set, they have set up the board correctly, and we get a nice view of the board, so the reconstruction is quite reliable:2
The position is even, by our standards, reasonably believable. But now something really weird happens:
Albertine: If you do that it’ll be checkmate in four moves.
Matthew: If I do what?
Albertine: Move your king’s bishop.
And this is true!3 If white goes Bb6 it is indeed checkmate in four: 1. … Qa6+ 2. Kb4 Qxb6+ 3. Kc3 Qa6 4. Kd4 Nc6#. Surely, this is not a coincidence! But this is when the next plot point appears. the move they were both thinking about suddenly appears on the board, apparently because the two are telekinetic, too. However, that move is Bxd8, and then the mate in four doesn’t work. Was it a coincidence after all? Why aren’t they considering the obvious 1. Re8+ Kh7 2. Qh8#? I think the director must have been influenced by an alien.4
Realism: 3/5 The king’s side is quite plausible, but the position of the white’s king on a4 is baffling.
Probable Winner: Very hard to say. After Qa8+ Kb4 Qxd8, black would probably be a bit better, but it’d still be a complicated position.
1. [To be clear: the series are produced by Thames Television, not the children.] ↩
2. [As is the diagram editor.] ↩
3. [Modulo the fact that the bishop white has left is his queen’s bishop, but okay.] ↩
4. [A stupid alien. Like the one from Mac and me.] ↩