I'm currently watching the five (or de Vijf as it were) on the Dutch DVD box set that I received through the post the other day. While sorting out which episodes are on which disks (they are in the order they were broadcast, whereas I would prefer to view them in the order of the books) and after much counting and only coming up to 20 episodes I realised that Five Goes to Smugglers Top is inexplicably absent from the boxed set. I could have saved myself some time had I read this thread first.
Anyway, after pouting for a while, I started to watch the episodes. Having only seen the 70's adaptations, I wasn't too sure what to expect.
I must say that so far, I am pleasantly surprised. The locations look like they have been given some thought into with Enid Blyton's scenes and locations springing into life on the screen. The scripts (thus far), seem to faithfully follow the books as much as they can. I would say Jemima Rooper is perfectly cast as George with the other's working well in their roles.
My only fault so far is Julian's character, with his strong willed and slightly overbearing but friendly persona in the books translating as petulance on the screen. Though, this could well be down to the broken leg suffered by the actor as mentioned earlier in the thread.
Another minor niggle is that the actors try a little
too hard in places to emulate the "oh golly gosh, lashings and lashings of tomatoes" esque dialogue of the period the books were written. But to be fair, such dialogue would be very difficult for the children of the 90's and today to reproduce and make it sound natural.
The final niggle is that Timmy is supposed to be a big powerful dog and the on screen Timmy is, well, slightly lacking.
Minor complaints aside, I think this series is well made and eminently enjoyable.