Famous Five 90s Series

[Wolfgang]

Believe it or not, I once wrote a Journal article supporting the original stories as compared with the abridged editions that came out in the 1980s!

She obviously wasn't feeling well at the time.

I think she likes Noddy, it's just the books he appears in Anita's not happy with .

[Anita Bensoussane]

The Noddy illustrations are very attractive and I do enjoy some of the stories, though others seem long-winded and thinly-plotted in my opinion. However, Enid Blyton wrote over 800 novels/novellas, several thousand short stories and a large number of poems, plays and articles and I find most of her work absolutely delightful.

Courtenay, I'd love to see the entire Narnia series filmed. I don't think The Magician's Nephew, The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle have ever been tackled and it would be amazing to see an adaptation that would bring out the wondrous quality of the whole series.

For me the most important thing in televising a book is that it is in keeping with the spirit of the book.
Both the 70s version, as a (then) current version, and the 90s version, set in the earlier era, keep the spirit of the books very well, which is why I like them both.

Yes, I'd agree with that. Each version has its own strengths but they both convey a wonderful sense of freedom, adventure, togetherness and determination to do one's bit - all the elements that make the Famous Five books so appealing.

As comparison, the latest Swallows and Amazons version was a reasonable children's spy movie if you disconnect it from the books. However they veered so far from the spirit of the book, that I wouldn't want to watch it again.

For me, Swallows and Amazons is about the freedom to live apart from the adult world, the fun of childhood make-believe, the joy of exploration and the beauties of the natural landscape. All these are captured in the latest film of Swallows and Amazons and I don't consider the spy part intrusive so I'd say it's true to the essence of the book. I've seen the 2016 film and the 1974 film about four times each and they both transport me to a world of natural beauty and childhood pursuits and imagination. I find them uplifting to watch.

I'd love to set up a film company that does children's stories with the aim of keeping to the spirit, and characters/plot of the book as much as possible. Yes, some things need to be changed for film, but not make unnecessary changes.

Sounds good to me!

[timv]

I'd love to be part of a film/ TV company that recreated atmospheric children's books as near to the original as possible, and have plenty of my own ideas on this! I did some scriptwriting for a potential film project (a Viking / Irish historical epic) that failed to be finalised back in the 1990s and have some experience of this world, though I reckon you'd need a really sympathetic owner and lead director/ producer to be able to say 'no' to demands that you 'spice the story up' for young modern viewers to improve viewing figures! Possibly a 'Heritage Films' - orientated film company might work, with some authors such as Enid, C S Lewis, and Tolkie having a huge international following which the internet has helped to inter-connect?

I prefer the 1974 adaptation of 'Swallows and Amazons' myself as closer to the original, but the more recent film did get the overall atmosphere right too despite the (to me) rather unnecessary extra spy plotline. The latter seemed more Blyton than Ransome in tone, though there were a few genuine Soviet kidnapping plots in the West in the 1920s-30s (mostly aimed at emigrated anti-USSR 'White Russian' military personnel). Ransome's second wife Evgenia had once been Trotsky's secretary (he got her out of Russia into Estonia during the civil war and they started AR's sea sailing career there in the yacht 'Racundra', crewed by the original of veteran sailor 'Peter Duck') and he had known both Trotsky and Lenin when he was a newspaper correspondent for the 'Guardian' in Moscow in 1917-19, which is arguably where the film company mixing 'Captain Flint'/ Jim Turner up with Russians came from.

There seem to have been plans by the makers of the most recent set of C S Lewis 'Narnhia' film adaptations to move on from 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' (which I thought was brilliant and very atmospheric) to do a film of 'The Silver Chair', which I don't think has ever been filmed. This has stalled in the past few years - possibly due to legal arguments ? I think this would adapt well; we did a play based on it at my secondary school in the 1970s when 'Narnia' was already hugely popular.

[Courtenay]

Courtenay, I'd love to see the entire Narnia series filmed. I don't think The Magician's Nephew, The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle have ever been tackled and it would be amazing to see an adaptation that would bring out the wondrous quality of the whole series.

No, they haven't been. There were vague plans to do an animated version of The Magician's Nephew after the 1979 animated version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but it never got further than a few storyboard sketches. (I learned that from the NarniaWeb website, which by the way is excellent if there are any other fans who are interested. )

There seem to have been plans by the makers of the most recent set of C S Lewis 'Narnhia' film adaptations to move on from 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' (which I thought was brilliant and very atmospheric) to do a film of 'The Silver Chair', which I don't think has ever been filmed. This has stalled in the past few years - possibly due to legal arguments ? I think this would adapt well; we did a play based on it at my secondary school in the 1970s when 'Narnia' was already hugely popular.

The film of The Silver Chair has officially been scrapped — that was confirmed a couple of years ago by the production company. It was filmed once before in the early 1990s for the BBC Narnia series, with Tom Baker (yes, as in Doctor Who) playing Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle.

Now, as we do have an official Narnia/C.S. Lewis thread under "Other Authors", I will stop dragging this discussion off the topic of the Famous Five '90s series!!

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's interesting that an animated version of The Magician's Nephew was considered, Courtenay.

That reminds me that the GWR adverts did a pretty good job of animating the Five. Animation allows one to play around with landscapes, buildings and characters in a way that isn't possible in reality, although for a "realistic" series like the Famous Five (as opposed to fantasy or science-fiction), nothing beats a sensitively-done live action version. Jemima Rooper is the highlight of the 1990s series for me as she's spot-on as George, though I like Michele Gallagher of the 1970s series very much too.

[FiveFanDownunder]

It’s often frustrating when movies or TV depart from the plot of a book, though I don’t feel I’m knowledgeable enough to know what ‘works’ on screen as opposed to books. Certainly, some of the Tolkien mentioned recently could not be brought to screen exactly as written, chiefly because the finished product would run for days perhaps?? Huge pieces of the story were left out ... I would have enjoyed a look at Old Man Willow and Tom Bombadill for starters ... even then the extended movies do run on a bit. Sometimes I think the ‘safe’ path is taken or things are dumbed down, even in a simple act of swapping sorcerer for philosopher in HP for example ... not a huge vote of confidence for US viewers I don’t think.

Not that making screen true to book is not a worthy aim.

Hobbit was different; quite a bit was added from other stories and licence was taken. I remember my eldest being quite disappointed that the banter between Smaug and Bilbo was very much reduced in the cinema, though I think it is a bit better in the longer versions of the movie. The riddling and to and fro was one of the things she and I loved.

There’s a well recognised Australian series Tomorrow When the War Began that has had about three versions of movie and TV show ... there’s one that didn’t make the leap so well. The book is narrated to us by the protagonist, Ellie, and to really be true to the book the movie would have to build the tension very, very slowly ... something that the TV people could not or did not try to do. The other problem with this series is its violence, which in context is not overdone, but although the series is aimed at teens, any movie that was true to the books would probably be too much on screen!

I remember always bring puzzled that my Dr Who novelisations were such a close match to the TV stories, until I realised a bit later that the TV came first in these cases. I always was a bit slow ...

Good luck with it tho Tim if you ever decide to go into production. I have seen Tom Baker in the role you mention Courtenay, it’s not easy to miss him ....

[FiveFanDownunder]

On another note, I had no idea Netflix had the rights to Narnia. Given how much cash they seem to have, and their ability to fairly often make beautiful television, this could be fantastic if done right. I wonder if they will ever tackle it .... this is a special series and deserves a respectful treatment.

And I agree Anita, Jemima Rooper is a striking George ... I remember an opening scene from one of the 90s stories where the Five are seated as a group talking. She looks so tall, even seated, and your eye is just drawn to her ... and the red shoes ...

[Courtenay]

Certainly, some of the Tolkien mentioned recently could not be brought to screen exactly as written, chiefly because the finished product would run for days perhaps?? Huge pieces of the story were left out ... I would have enjoyed a look at Old Man Willow and Tom Bombadill for starters ...

Yeah, so would I!!

I have seen Tom Baker in the role you mention Courtenay, it’s not easy to miss him ....

There were heaps of could-have-been-done-better things about the BBC Narnia series — it was hopelessly hokey even for the late '80s/early '90s — but it was lots of fun and I've always thought Tom Baker absolutely nailed the role of Puddleglum.

On another note, I had no idea Netflix had the rights to Narnia. Given how much cash they seem to have, and their ability to fairly often make beautiful television, this could be fantastic if done right. I wonder if they will ever tackle it .... this is a special series and deserves a respectful treatment.

I hope so too! The three more recent films of it were great visually, but even the first went a bit too far from the spirit of the book for my liking, and the other two went so far off the original plots that they put off a lot of fans and the series didn't go any further. Netflix Narnia is still in the rumours-and-whisperings stage — every now and then a Netflix spokesperson drops a mention that they've got a Narnia series in the pipeline, but virtually nothing has been confirmed, not even a speculative release date, let alone any more details. And of course the pandemic has probably been a huge setback for everything. We'll just have to see what happens...

[Moonraker]

YouTube has the complete 1990s available to watch. It starts with Five on a Treasure Island, and didn't appear in the 70s series, which combined it with the Five on Kirrin Island Again film.

It is very different to the 70s films, Quentin being much more of a scatter-brained buffoon - walking into doors and walls, for example. He calls Fanny, Frances, and she pronounces his name as Quintin - which "posh older people" used to do. We also discover that Julian's mother's name is Mary! I did find Julian a tad OTT, but Anne and George were excellent. Dick was okay, but I prefer Gary's portrayal of the character.

I was watching it with my 9 year-old granddaughter, and she was quite happy with it, but I think she preferred the 70s series - understandable as she has watched it multiple times!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Famou ... TV_series)

[timv]

I'm keeping an eye open for the Narnia series on TV too - I liked the first of the films, the Lion Witch and Wardrobe version, which stuck quite close to the book and had excellent characterisation . The Prince Caspian and Dawn Treader versions seemed to add too much marginal material and PC had a more 'adventure and battle' and less 'magical' feel than the book, probably a move to try to draw in fans of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film series - though CS Lewis' Narnia was a different sort of world to Tolkien's Middle Earth and the books were written with different emphases. (You can see that CSL was primarily a medieval literature and religious allegory enthusiast and Tolkien was a Celtic/ Scandinavian myth expert - as shown by what they taught as Oxford academics.) The visuals of the Dawn Treader film were outstanding, though the story was not all as I remembered it from the book and it was more 'Pirates of the Caribbean' than Arthurian medieval magic.

I was a bit confused visually to have the costumes in the later CSL films 'Hispanic pirate' rather than fitting Pauline Baynes' medieval illustrations which were a big part of my visualisation of Narnia as an enthusiastic ten-year-old reader! But it does fit the Lewis 'backstory' for the human inhabitants of Narnia after Peter and co. left, as he states that they originally arrived as a shipload of pirates from the South Seas (ie Pacific , a region usually only open to Spanish and Portuguese ships in the C16th and C17th pirate era). It was a pity that the film series never got around to The Silver Chair, which we did as a House play at my secondary school. I can vaguely recall a TV version of Lion WW from the late 1960s, and there was also of course the Silver Chair TV version with Tom Baker as Puddleglum which I thought was excellent.

[Ice_Gemz]

YouTube has the complete 1990s available to watch. It starts with Five on a Treasure Island, and didn't appear in the 70s series, which combined it with the Five on Kirrin Island Again film.

It is very different to the 70s films, Quentin being much more of a scatter-brained buffoon - walking into doors and walls, for example. He calls Fanny, Frances, and she pronounces his name as Quintin - which "posh older people" used to do. We also discover that Julian's mother's name is Mary! I did find Julian a tad OTT, but Anne and George were excellent. Dick was okay, but I prefer Gary's portrayal of the character.

I was watching it with my 9 year-old granddaughter, and she was quite happy with it, but I think she preferred the 70s series - understandable as she has watched it multiple times!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Famou ... TV_series)

Thanks Moonraker! I've been wondering where I can find these after watching the 70s ones on ITVX recently (I also have them on VHS but the only VHS player we have is on a very small combi TV. With the YouTube videos I can play them on the big TV

[SteveB]

I have just finished watching the 90's series for the first time. Being a child from the 70's, my loyalty will always be with the 70's series, but i have to admit, after getting used to it, I found myself really enjoying the 90's version. So different, yet so familiar.

Jemima Rooper's portrayal of George was wonderful to watch, such a natural talent for acting. Some of the faces she could pull were fantastic. Laura Petela also gave us a wonderful version of Anne, just a shame she was so young, if only she had been a couple of years older she would have been a perfect Anne. Paul Child's version of Dick was solid, but some of it seemed a little forced at times compared with how naturally Jemima played George. Marco i really struggled with, his portrayal of Julian seemed to be painfully forced, almost edging on comical sometimes, which for me was the total opposite of what i would expect from the character from the books. And nice to see plenty of well known special guests from the 90's time period.

Whilst watching the series I thought i was familiar with some of the locations, after a bit of research on the forum i realised why, Hele bay, Sandy Cove etc are just ten minutes away from me. I will have to get more familiar with the scenes from the shows, then pay a bit more attention next time i am down that way with the grandchildren.

I find it interesting that with it being set in period i find it so reminiscent with the books i remember reading - books i might add that i have not read since the early to mid 1970's. Sends me straight into the world of Enid Blyton and the Famous Five. No other connection at all, other than walking down to my local library to get my next 3 or 4 books in the series! But once i started to read i was lost in the world of the Five. Yet when i watch the 70's series back, i am transported straight back to my own childhood, my memories of watching when it aired for the first time, the clothes they wore, the cars they used, and the long hot summers of that time period. Just very nostalgic. Nostalgia with a very heavy dose of the Famous Five and Enid Blyton. I can only guess that if the 70's series had been set in the correct time period that maybe my nostalgia hit may not be quite so big.

But on the whole, the 90's series were a joy to watch. Nice to get away from technology and to have some good old fashioned adventures! I have just ordered the collectors edition of the 70's series, now it's time to have a look for the 90's series on dvd. Do they have them all in one collection?

[MarkL]

Over the past few months I've re-watched both series. I liked them both. I watched the 70's version when it was on repeat on Dutch tele when I was a kid in the late 80's, so I'm a bit biased towards that version. That and the book covers at the time, which appeared to be inspired by the series, really shaped on how I envisioned the Five.

I do think the 90's version had better production values and the locations were awesome. Perhaps a bit more varied? The main thing I disliked about the 90's version was the portrayal of Julian. Over the top and a caricature of himself. And they could've cast a bigger dog as Timmy. The on-screen one would instill about as much fear in a hardened criminal as a fluffy bunny. One well aimed kick would send it flying from Kirrin Island to the mainland.

What I haven't watched yet are the two movies from the '50's and 60's.