Nanny McPhee

First Movie: Nanny McPhee
Airdate: 21 October 2005

Widower (and undertaker) Cedric Brown has seven children. He is clumsy, loves his children but spends little time with them and cannot handle them. The children have had a series of nannies, which they systematically drive out by bad behavior. They also terrorize the cook, Mrs. Blatherwick.

Nanny McPhee comes to help. With discipline and a little magic, she transforms the family's lives. In the process, she changes from ugly to beautiful. The children, led by the eldest son Simon, first try to play their tricks on her, but gradually start to respect her and ask her for advice. They change to responsible people helping their clumsy father in solving the family problems, making McPhee less and less needed.

The family is financially supported by Cedric's nearsighted Great Aunt Adelaide. However, she demands custody over one of the children. She first wants Christiana (Crissy), one of the daughters, but Evangeline, the scullery maid, volunteers and Adelaide agrees, assuming she is one of the daughters.

She threatens to cut off the allowance unless Cedric remarries within the month. The family would lose the house, and it would not be able to stay together. Desperate, Cedric turns to frequent widow Mrs. Quickly. The children assume from books that stepmothers are terrible. Therefore they sabotage a visit of Mrs. Quickly, who leaves, angry at Cedric. After the children are explained the financial aspect they agree to the marriage, and appease Mrs. Quickly by confessing they were to blame for the disturbance of her visit.

However, they discover that Mrs. Quickly is unkind. When everybody is gathered for the marriage ceremony, they disturb the ceremony by pretending there are bees, chasing the guests, and throwing the pastries intended for the banquet at everyone present. Cedric understands they do not like the bride, and does not like her himself, and therefore starts disturbing the ceremony himself. Mrs. Quickly cancels the marriage. This seems to mean that Adelaide's marriage deadline is missed. Simon asks Evangeline whether she loves Cedric. She first denies, explaining that that would be inappropriate because of her station as maidservant, but then confirms she does. Aunt Adelaide claims that as her adopted daughter, the transformed Evangeline is her heir. Cedric marries Evangeline the same day, with magical wedding decorations, satifying Aunt Adelaide's demand.

Nanny McPhee leaves surreptitiously, in accordance with what she told the children before: "When you need me, but do not want me, then I will stay. When you want me, but do not need me, then I have to go."

Second Movie: Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang
Airdate: 26 March 2010

During World War II, Isabel Green is trying to keep the family farm, up working in the general shop, aided by the elderly and partly blind Mrs. Docherty, and looking after three dutiful yet boisterous children: Norman, Megsie and Vincent. All of this she has to do while her husband is away at war. By the time her children's two haughty and spoiled cousins, Cyril and Celia Gray, are sent to live on their farm, she is at her wit's end. She hears a mysterious voice telling her that she needs Nanny McPhee and, to her astonishment, Nanny McPhee appears on her doorstep one stormy night.

At first, the five children refuse to obey Nanny PcPhee and carry on fighting, but she magically causes them to start hurting themselves, and Vincent to break things with his cricket bat. Eventually, they apologize and the two groups promise to tolerate each other. Nanny McPhee then teaches them another lesson, to share, by forcing the older boys to share their bed with a goat, the girls with the family cow, and Vincent with a baby elephant, making them realize sharing with one another wasn't so bad. Meanwhile, Isabel's brother-in-law Phil has gambled away the farm and is being chased down by two hit women. He desperately attempts to make Isabel sell her half of the farm, using an array of schemes. These include digging a hole so that the family piglets can escape, but the children manage to round them up in time, completing the third lesson, to work together.

To celebrate catching the piglets, Mrs. Green takes all the children on a picnic, during which Mr. Docherty warns them all about bombs and how he imagines a pilot might accidentally release his bomb in the remote area in which the family lives. At the end of the picnic Uncle Phil delivers a telegram saying that Rory Green has been "killed in action" in the war. Isabel, along with everybody else, believes the telegram. Norman, however, does not and says that he has a feeling "in his bones" that his father is not dead. Cyril agrees to help Norman determine the truth by meeting with his father, Lord Gray, a high-ranking figure in the War Office. The boys manage to get Nanny McPhee to take them to London on her motorcycle.

Upon arrival in London, Nanny McPhee uses her status in the army to get the boys access to the War Office. At first, Lord Gray scoffs at Norman when he tells him about his disbelief of his father's death, but after Cyril angrily informs his father that he knows that his parents are getting a divorce, he gives in and goes to check on Rory's status. While he is gone, Cyril tells Norman that he and Celia have been sent away because their parents will be splitting up, and not because of bombings, and he is unsure where he and Celia will have to live. Norman tells Cyril that he and Celia are welcome to live on the farm with the Greens, to his delight. Lord Gray returns and informs them that Rory is not listed as killed in action, as the telegram had stated, but rather missing in action, and that there is no record of a telegram ever having been sent to Isabel.

Norman works out that the telegram brought to his mother by Uncle Phil was in fact a fraud to get Isabel to sell the farm. While the boys rush home, Megsie, Celia and Vincent are trying to stop Isabel from signing the papers and selling the farm. When their own efforts fail, Megsie calls to Nanny McPhee for help, who hears her plea and summons a baby elephant to stall for time. Just as Isabel is about to sign the papers, an enemy plane flies overhead. The pilot sneezes twice, and on the third sneeze, a huge bomb is dropped, but does not explode and is left sticking out of the barley field. When Nanny McPhee returns with Norman and Cyril, the five children go out to watch Mr. Docherty dismantle the bomb, but he falls from the ladder and faints, forcing Megsie to take over. She succeeds with the help of the other children and Nanny McPhee's putty-eating bird, Mr. Edelweiss. Nanny McPhee then helps to magically harvest the barley and save Phil from the hit women.

As Nanny McPhee walks away from the now happy family, true to her statement "When you need me, but do not want me, I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go", the children and Isabel chase after her, determined to prove they still need her. However, they discover that they in fact do not, as they round a bend to see Rory Green (Ewan McGregor), in army uniform and with an injured arm, runs to the arms of his children and wife and rejoices in the discovery that after leaving three children to go to war, he has returned to find five. As Nanny McPhee (now a beautiful woman) watches the reunion, she forgives Mr. Edelweiss and allows him to perch on her shoulder as they leave into the distance.