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BRIAN VINER reviews Mufasa: The Lion King: Spectacular, but this Lion King isn't a whisker on the original

BRIAN VINER: Mufasa: The Lion King strains with every sinew to make us feel the love tonight - to paraphrase one of the original song titles.

Anyway, after being swept far away from his parents Afia and Masego by raging floodwaters, Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) reaches adolescence as the adopted son of kindly lioness Eshe (Thandiwe Newton), whose disagreeable mate Obasi (Lennie James) is less well disposed to a ‘stray’. Mufasa forms a strong fraternal bond with Eshe’s natural son Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr), which intensifies when a belligerent army of lions, the so-called ‘Outsiders’, arrives to conquer Obasi’s pride. Luckily, dim-witted Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay, reprising his role in The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit) has a smarter sidekick, PC Mukherjee (Lauren Patel), while Wallace of course has the ever-resourceful Gromit, putting aside his reading matter (A Room Of One’s Own by Virginia Woof) to rescue the reputation of his hapless master.

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