The Paddington Bear Experience

FEATURE: Why has the world gone crazy for Paddington Bear again?

Though you can buy all of Michael Bond’s books in the gift shop, let’s be clear here: the Paddington Bear Experience has very little to do with the first 50 or so years of the marmalade-loving ursine’s existence. Rather, the lavish new central London immersive experience makes no bones about fact it’s a live extension of the world of the two (soon to be three) StudioCanal movies.

Theoretically I suppose that’s a shame. Debuting in print in 1958, Paddington has a rich history and London’s first proper attraction dedicated to him doesn’t explore it at all. But who are we kidding here? The Paul King films are modern masterpieces, and Paddington would be left as a beloved but past-his-prime nostalgia character if it weren’t for them. He’d have his little statue at the station. But nothing like this.

You don’t absolutely need to have seen the films, but there are countless callbacks to them in this gentle adventure, which essentially an immersive theatre show. As we begin by waiting at a small recreation of Paddington Station to board our train to Windsor Gardens, we’re serenaded by a pre-recorded version of the band from the films playing ‘London is the Place for Me’; when we make it to Windsor Gardens for this year’s Marmalade Day Festival, designer Rebecca Brower has faithfully recreated the entire downstairs of the Brown’s boho Notting Hill pad. And then of course there’s Paddington himself - constantly teased as just out of full sight, his prerecorded voice would seem to be that of Ben Whishaw (it’s not actually confirmed anywhere as far as I can tell).

Directed by Tom Maller and written by Katie Lyons, the Experience doesn’t try and nail the subversive whimsy of King’s films: the closest is the gleefully improbable nature of the opening train journey from Paddington to Notting Hill via London Bridge and a fair bit of the English countryside.

But it does a great job of channelling the franchise’s reassuring niceness. The show essentially revolves around our interactions with actors who set us low level problem-solving tasks. But for an hour or so it does feel like we’ve stepped into the other, better London of the films. All the kids present in my group (including my own) were smitten – this world certainly felt real enough to them. At the end you can buy marmalade sandwiches and the preserve tastes like sweet orange jam, far more palatable to kids than the traditional version. This vaguely feels like a metaphor for what the Paddington Bear Experience is to Bond’s ‘50s books, but there’s no denying that this is what people actually want.

Tickets are not particularly cheap for a London attraction, though they stack up decently next to a West End theatre and it’s worth noting that groups are also kept to a very manageable size. It’s delightful, basically, and put together with love and care. Of course it doesn’t top the films, but the Paddington Bear Experience does a great job of letting you feel you’ve stepped into them for a little while.