Ballet Shoes

In 1930s London, an eccentric explorer known as Gum and his niece Sylvia take in three orphaned girls and raise them as sisters. Pauline, Petrova and Posy each dream of a different future: the stage, aviation and ballet. When Gum fails to return from one of his expeditions, the household is left without money or a guardian, and the girls must find ways to support themselves while holding on to their ambitions.

The film is a television adaptation of Noel Streatfeild's novel, directed by Sandra Goldbacher from a screenplay by Heidi Thomas, with Piers Wenger producing for the BBC and Granada Television. Emilia Fox plays Sylvia and Victoria Wood appears as Nana, while the three sisters are played by Emma Watson, Yasmin Paige and Lucy Boynton. Marc Warren, as Mr. Simpson, is among a credited cast of twenty-seven. The production runs eighty-five minutes.

Audience responses place the film in moderate territory: on IMDb it holds 6.6 out of 10 across roughly 9,500 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.3 out of 10 from a much smaller sample of 277. A critics' rating of 8 out of 10, drawn from six reviews, is noticeably warmer than either audience figure.