I went to see the new Paddington film this week. Informally it’s called Paddington 3 but in fact its title is Paddington in Peru. And financially it is doing rather well. On its opening weekend (November 8-10), it produced the biggest box office gross for a UK film since the 2021 release of No Time to Die, the 25th movie in the James Bond franchise. Licence to thrill, indeed. Many of the reviews were quite lukewarm but clearly the public are up for supporting the bear who is Brown by name and brown by nature.

As ever, Paddington’s voice is provided by Ben Whishaw (who, coincidentally, played Q in No Time to Die). Paddington is, if you need bringing up to date with his back story, in Peru because that is where he hails from and he and his adoptive Brown family have returned now that his lone surviving relative, Aunt Lucy, has disappeared from the nursing home where the Mother Superior is played by Olivia Colman, whose presence alone may have accounted for those record-breaking receipts. She is absolutely brilliant here, delivering her lines with panache and riffing a marvellous spoof tribute to Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. The other star turn is Antonio Banderas, who plays the boat captain who takes the Browns upriver. He’s a big name alright even if the script doesn’t give him any chance of emulating the magnificently dastardly Hugh Grant as Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2. However, some of his jungle scenes joyously acknowledge their debt to the adventures of Indiana Jones.

There are, of course, many marmalade sandwiches to be consumed and the film provides an excellent ‘solution’ to the existence of the mythical city of El Dorado. Several scenes call for a significant suspension of disbelief, including one in which (no spoiler-alert required!) the suspension of an aircraft is demolished beyond belief. But this is a comedy; very well done if arguably shorter of laugh-out-loud gags than either of its predecessors. If this wasn’t a comedy, it would be really bad of me to reveal the twists in ending. But I’m not going to do that anyway.

There is, though, a real-life consequence of Paddington’s success: its impact on the owners of the properties in the salubrious part of north London where the Brown family ostensibly live, which is in Primrose Hill, specifically Chalcot Square. (See photo on the home page.) Apparently Airbnb intends to market a Paddington-themed rental property in the area, to the inevitable annoyance of the residents. They also don’t like the drones that overfly their homes, seeking the perfect photo. One might almost feel sorry for the poor dears. OK, not! A recent leader on the phenomenon in The Times – headlined ‘Unbearable’ – suggested the locals shouldn’t expect this interest in their abodes to end any time soon.

“The famous blue door featured in Notting Hill is still a shrine for fans 25 years after the film came out,” it read. “And it isn’t even the same door any more.”